1. Using Secure Base: assessing prospective foster carers and adopters
Mary Beek

2. Sam and Linda: secure base caregiving in all five dimensions

3. Providing a secure base
Foster carers and adopters are a key resource for looked after children.
Their tasks are complex and demanding.
Secure Base can provide a framework for understanding strengths and limitations.

4. Using Secure Base in the assessment process
Part of routine information gathering.
Strengths based: evidence of capacities within each dimension.
Can highlight need for training/support.
Can contribute to decision making

5. Availability: caregiving tasks
‘Be there’ for the child – physically and emotionally (as an individual, a couple, a family)
Provide nurture/reassurance and support exploration.
Show this child that they are reliable and trustworthy

6. Availability: issues for assessment
Evidence of:
Receiving/providing secure base caregiving (specific examples).
Openness and trust in existing close relationships.
Time and energy available/implications for financial support.
Story that is coherent, makes sense
Acknowledges positives and negatives
Can describe what helped/helps them when they were upset
Can describe what helped/helps them to feel confident to ‘explore’ – learn, play, enjoy

7. Sensitivity: caregiving tasks
Think about what the child is thinking and feeling.
Recognise and discuss feelings
Manage their own feelings
Support child in experiencing and managing full range of feelings.

8. Sensitivity: issues for assessment
Evidence of:
Thinking and talking about own feelings and behaviours – and making the connection.
Reflecting on range of feelings and behaviour at different life stages – especially adolescence
Capacity to stand in the shoes of others.

9. Acceptance: caregiving tasks
Accept and enjoy child for who they are, strengths and difficulties.
Accept themselves: and model this for child.
Value and promote ethnic and cultural identities.
Promote education and talents AND that it’s OK not to win/be successful.

10. Acceptance: issues for assessment
Evidence of:
Positive self-esteem
Capacity to reflect on times of low self-esteem.
Acceptance and enjoyment of difference: culture, class, religion, sexuality, ethnicity etc.
Willingness to support diverse talents and interests.

11. Co-operation: caregiving tasks
Form co-operative alliance with child.
Set firm boundaries/negotiate within them
Promote choice and effectiveness.
Promote developing autonomy.
and that young people may make inadvisable choices

12. Co-operation: issues for assessment
Evidence of:
Understanding and managing own needs regarding control/co-operation.
Resilience and ‘stickability.’
Capacity to be appropriately assertive/co-operative
- within assessment process
- within partnership/family/community

13. Family membership: caregiving tasks
Include new and diverse family members.
Give message: you are fully included in this family, AND you can connect, at a comfortable level, with your birth family.

14. Family membership: issues for assessment
Evidence of:
Firm but flexible boundaries around the family
Open communication with other systems – schools community groups etc.
Acceptance that ambivalence/mixed feelings – will emerge and re-emerge for all children and young people.
Evidence /examples of
Firm but flexible roles in the family –is there a role for the child?
Acceptance of child’s history / empathy towards the birth family
‘Communicative openness’ -David Brodzinsky

15. Using Secure Base in decision making
Most foster carers and adopters will have strengths in some dimensions, and some limitations in others.
Additional training and support might fill these gaps.
If little evidence of strengths in any dimension, this might contribute to a negative recommendation.

16. Further uses of assessment information
Thinking, feeling and behaviour within each dimension can be affected by the needs and difficulties of the individual child.
Dimensions can be re-visited as part of matching, support and supervision.

17. Using Secure Base: understanding the needs of children in placement and their caregivers
Gillian Schofield

18. Using the Secure Base to understand the needs of children in placement
Secure base dimensions
Trust
Managing feelings
Self-esteem
Feeling effective
Belonging / family membership
In the context of
Appropriate development for this child’s chronological age and stage
Actual development, emotional age and stage of this child
Evidence
The child’s behaviour in the family, with friends, at school
Potential links to thoughts and feelings

19. 0-18 months: implications for matching and placement of the Secure Base dimensions
Trust: capacity to seek and accept comfort from selected caregivers, explore and enjoy play, have fun.
Managing feelings: capacity to show range of emotions, to wait for attention, for early regulation of feelings / behaviour
Self-esteem: capacity to express pleasure at achievements, approach others with confidence, manage set backs
Feeling effective: capacity to make choices, persist in activity, co-operate.
Belonging / family membership: capacity to relax/recognise /respond warmly to family members

20. 18 months – 4 years: implications for matching and placement of the Secure Base dimensions
Trust: capacity to seek comfort appropriately when stressed? (e.g. signal their needs c.f. shut down on feelings; cling, demand, resist comfort; helpless; controlling)
Managing feelings: capacity to express and name a range of feelings, regulate feelings and behaviour, understand that other people have different thoughts/ feelings that link to their behaviour
Self-esteem: capacity to enjoy success and praise - and to cope with set-backs; capacity to take risks / try new things
Feeling effective: persistence in completing tasks, shows competence and confidence, plays with others
Belonging / family membership: understanding family

21. 5 –10 years: implications for matching and placement of the Secure Base dimensions
Trust: Capacity to use an attachment figure (s) as a secure base, to appropriately approach / trust adults outside the family, to manage increasingly important peer relationships
Managing feelings: show range of feelings/ reflect on their own and others feelings, empathy –social emotions e.g. shame and guilt
Self-esteem: has a positive but realistic self-esteem
Feeling effective: feels competent, knows and accept the rules, can co-operate
Belonging / family membership: developing a coherent sense of family membership / sense of who they are /their history, where they belong / norms and values.

22. 10 –18+ years: implications for matching and placement of the Secure Base dimensions
Trust: capacity to manage autonomy and closeness with adults, peers, partners (for mid /older adolescents); lack of destructive defensive strategies;
Managing feelings: capacity for more sophisticated self-regulation of emotions/behaviour (e.g. not using aggression, drugs, self harm); capacity to reflect / mentalise /plan;
Self-esteem: capacity for positive feelings about self; coping with set-backs; managing school /performance challenges
Feeling effective: competence /engagement in constructive activities; can negotiate; persistence / hopefulness
Belonging / family membership : coherent sense of family belonging /connection; pro-social norms

23. Secure Base interview: e. g
Secure Base interview: e.g. child’s capacity to trust -caregiver’s capacity to be available
NB Aim is to encourage narratives of specific incidents –language can be adapted to the child / the caregiver
Can you think of a particular time when he/she was upset or worried about something?
What did (child) do – just before, during and afterwards?
Why do you think he/she behaved in this particular way?
What do you think he/she was thinking and feeling?
What did you do at this time?
How did that work out?
Was this your usual approach when he she is upset or worried or have you found other ways of helping?
How did (the child’s) behaviour at this time make you feel?

24. Trust / availability analysis - child attachment patterns /strategies and caregiver responses
Helpful to be aware of the different secure and insecure patterns /strategies for managing anxiety/relationships
Parents may have
rejected the child’s emotional demands
responded unpredictably
been frightening or frightened
Children will have developed different defensive strategies to cope with each type of caregiving
How is the foster carer /adopter able to respond to different strategies /behaviours in the child?

25. 0-18 months: analysis of the caregiver’s capacity / need for support to be available
Evidence
Availability is being provided emotionally and practically in ways that recognise this child’s age / stage / needs – from fretful newborn with minute to minute responsiveness to demanding toddler
Caregiver’s understanding of the caregiving cycle-the importance of the child’s capacity to trust and the potential therapeutic impact of their availability-appreciating signs of progress
Barriers to availability in the caregiver's thinking, feelings, family and community environment?

26. 18 months – 4 years: analysis of the caregiver’s need for support for sensitivity / attunement
Evidence
Content and language of the interview
Description of the pre-school child’s behaviour
References to mental states / emotions
How the child is being described e.g. caregiver’s curiosity / flexibility about what may be in the child’s mind
Capacity to link thoughts and feelings to behaviour –in the child and in themselves
Language that suggests warmth, empathy, sympathy
Responsiveness
Not just understanding and mentalization - also use of understanding to guide their caregiving responses to the child
Barriers to sensitive attunement and responsiveness?

27. 5-10 years: analysis of the caregiver’s need for support for acceptance / building self-esteem
Evidence
Caregiver’s understanding of self-esteem and its importance to children in this age group / the child in their care
Caregiver’s acceptance of the child / promoting positive activities
Barriers to accepting this child /building this child’s self- esteem?

28. 5-10 years: analysis of the caregiver’s need for support for co-operation
Evidence
Caregiver’s understanding of the need for children in this age group to feel effective and competent in a range of settings – at home, at school
Caregiver’s understanding of how the child in their care is managing or not managing challenges, tasks.
Extent to which the caregiver is able to support the child’s autonomy alongside learning the ‘rules’ / learning to co-operate

29. 11-18 years: analysis of the caregiver’s need for support to provide family membership/ belonging
Evidence
Caregiver’s perspective on the young person’s family memberships / connections in the foster / adoptive family and birth family
The caregiver’s support for the young person in managing that complexity e.g. coherent /incoherent narratives about the past; contact, including social media; anticipated futures
Potential role for external support for the caregiver, the young person, other family members, the birth family?