Jean Mercer is a professor of psychology in the Division of Social Behavioral Sciences at Richardson Stockton College. She is also president of the New Jersey Association for Infant Mental Health.
Here's what she has to say about attachment issues and foster/kinship care:
*"Foster care programs need to take into account attachment issues, such as the need for familiarity, consistency and continuity of care. Frequent changes of placement do not give necessary support to early emotional development."
*"Along the same lines, foster care placement needs to involve permanency planning: the attempt to guarantee a secure, long-term placement for the child as soon as possible, rather than an open-ended arrangement without a sense of a secure home."
*"Attachment is an issue in kinship care, just as it is in other foster care placements... the genetic relationship is no substitute for the experience of a familiar relationship, and movement in and out of kinship care needs to be planned as carefully as any other care."
Source:
Mercer, Jean (2006). Understanding attachment. Connecticut: Praeger Publishers.
1 comment:
definately agree with you there. Moving from home to home, staff to staff, parent to parent, nothing seems stable.
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