The Circle of Security is a user-friendly, visually based (makes extensive use of both graphics and video clips) approach to helping parents better understand the needs of their children. It is based extensively on attachment theory and current affective neuroscience.
Children with histories of maltreatment often have behavior problems, trouble using their caregivers for help, difficulty learning from their mistakes, and problems in regulating their own emotions and behavior. This 10-session course focuses on the use of methods for identifying children’s attachment patterns, areas of resilience, and emotional and behavioral habits stemming from their earlier maltreatment. The focus then turns to the use of strategies for shaping children’s behavior and interaction patterns toward health. In this course, participants will view and study numerous videotapes of various child interaction patterns (both healthy and high risk). Participants will have hands-on practice in identifying emotional cues, reading through miscues, and generating ideas for helping kids heal and behave better. The training materials used in this course are based on scientific research in the areas of attachment, child development, and neuroscience.
Through the course participants will learn:
- A user-friendly model of development and healing in maltreated children
- To identify children’s interaction patterns, both healthy and high risk.
- To identify children’s attachment-related emotional cues and miscues.
- To determine needs around the Circle of Security.
- To use intervention strategies based on attachment theory and research.
- To individualize caregiving strategies to the specific attachment-pattern of each child.
Birth parents, adoptive parents, foster parents, or any caregiver of a child or adolescent would benefit from the Circle of Security. It is a very useful psycho-educational group for families where their child may be at risk of entering foster care, or presently is in foster care and a reunification plan is being considered.