Parenting Videos Help Reduce Foster Placements

Parenting Videos Help Reduce Foster Placements – U.S.Expert

Visiting U.S. child
therapist Glen Cooper

Showing foster parents videos of how they interact with children in their care is one of the most effective ways to help them understand those children’s needs and can cut down on how often they are shifted between caregivers, says a renowned visiting U.S. family therapist.

Glen Cooper says the filming technique – part of an early intervention parenting programme called Circle of Security (COS) that helps parents bond with their babies – is key to parents and foster parents having an “aha” moment when they understand the underlying needs expressed in children’s disturbed behaviour.

“Filming “parent-child” and “parent-child-stranger” scenarios that create controlled stresses for a child helps parents and foster parents to understand their responses to children and positively reinforces their good parenting techniques,” says Cooper.

Cooper, who pioneered the Circle of Security programme now used increasingly in the United States and countries including Germany, Canada, Norway and Australia, works at a clinical intervention centre in Spokane, Washington. He is also a child mental health counsellor and has been a foster parent himself for several years.

Cooper is visiting New Zealand from May 15 to 21 as a guest of the Anglican Trust for Women and Children (ATWC) which has piloted and now runs programmes based on his COS work at its pre-school, residential parenting program, counselling and child therapy facilities in South Auckland.

One of the ATWC’s filmed 20-minute scenarios might involve a parent playing with a child then leaving, a stranger entering the room but not engaging with the child, the parent coming back and responding to the child’s stress, the stranger leaving, and the parent then playing with the child again.

“The positive, celebratory moments from the video are then played back to the parent so they can see what they did well,” says the ATWC’s CEO Wilson Irons, who says the COS model is extremely effective and should be supported by funding agencies.

Cooper says the “circle” is symbolic of the way a child feels safe with a parent and forms an attachment with them, circles away from them to explore, and then circles back for reassurance, safety and connection.

“When children are repeatedly shifted between foster parents and caregivers it inhibits how they how they form attachments.”

He says “disorganised attachment” is experienced as an emotional state rather than through thoughts and words and typically leaves children feeling:
• always afraid
• on the verge of losing emotional and behavioural control
• and feeling adults are not able to care for and protect them

Such babies and young children show a variety of distressed behaviours.

“At about their third birthday they begin to organise their behaviour by attempting to take care of their caregiver, being punitive towards their caregiver or switching between taking care of them and acting in a punitive manner.”

With foster children in the United States, the Circle of Security programme aims to prevent the negative effects of long-term insecure and disordered attachments.

“Without a ‘map’ to understand attachment patterns, studies show that even experienced foster parents don’t know how to help children move from disordered attachments to secure attachments,” says Cooper.

According to latest Department of Social Development figures:

• More than 4500 children and young people are in foster homes in New Zealand, including one fifth who are in whanau or family placements

• Up to June 30, 2009, more than 45 per cent of children placed in foster homes over the previous two years were moved at least twice and up to four times.

• Up to November 30, 2009, children between 0 and 13 years in foster homes for more than five years had been placed in an average of seven homes.

In response to a question about how children are affected by multiple placements, The Ministry of Social Development said: “Research indicates that children who experience instability in care, such as multiple care placements, are more likely to experience poorer psychological outcomes that children who receive stable and personalised care.”

Mr Irons said despite the fact that the Child Youth and Family Service had acknowledged that it was now more aware of attachment issues, as far as he knew, CYFS did not offer caregivers specialised training about the importance of attachment relationship.

Cooper and two colleagues have this year released an educational DVD in the United States, Canada and Europe which explains the principles of the Circle of Security and is aimed at parent educators, caregivers and organisations like New Zealand’s Child Youth and Family Service.

The DVD will be officially released with an Australian voiceover in Canberra and Perth this month where Cooper is running a series of four-day training programmes that must be undertaking by those using the DVD.

Cooper also plans to run ATWC-sponsored training programmes and release the DVD in New Zealand later this year.

ENDS

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