This indispensable book shows how an understanding of assessments of attachment can be used to inform interventions to assist and protect children.
The Routledge Handbook of Attachment: Implications and Interventions offers an introduction to therapies produced as a result of the popularity of attachment studies. These therapies can be divided into two categories: those that are 'attachment-based', in that they use evidence-based attachment assessments in their development, or 'attachment-informed', in that the theories of attachment have been integrated into the practice of existing schools of therapy.
The book reviews the field and provides a range of interventions for children, adults and parents, beginning with a detailed review of both evidence-base and evidence-informed interventions including individual psychotherapy, family therapy and parenting. The remaining chapters provide accounts, from the practitioner's perspective, of interventions that address issues of attachment from the level of one-to-one therapy, family and social work to social interventions involving courts and Care Proceedings, illustrated with examples from day-to-day practice.
Discussing how an understanding of formal assessments of attachment can be used to inform therapeutic, social and legal interventions to assist and protect children, The Routledge Handbook of Attachment: Implications and Interventions is an indispensable guide for clinical psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers working with children and families, clinicians in training and students.
'Dr Paul Holmes was Family Futures' first child and adolescent psychiatrist and helped support its inception in a climate where attachment was not widely recognised as relevant to thinking about how to heal traumatised children. It feels appropriate, therefore, that it is Dr Holmes who has edited such a seminal trilogy about the significance of attachment theory to assessment and treatment.
The gaze, tender touch and smell of a parent eases one's way in the world and helps us find ways to manage the stress of life. When that gaze, touch and smell is replaced by fear one's very basic trust in the world is damaged. The implications of this are huge and infiltrate all areas of our development and our relationships with ourselves and others. The interventions to help when this instinctive bond is ruptured are still evolving as our understanding grows. This book is an excellent guide to the most up to date thinking on attachment and some of the appropriate interventions. It is refreshing and inspiring to read so many different professionals reflect on how they have integrated this thinking into their practice, and a sign of the huge strides that have been made in the last twenty years.' - Jay Vaughan, Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapist and Dramatherapist and Co-Founder of Family Futures, UK
