Teetering on the edge of care: the role of intensive attachment-based play therapies

Abstract

The number of children and young people who are being adopted is increasing, with moves to place more children for adoption as quickly as possible currently high on the UK Government's agenda. The House of Lords Select Committee on Legislation proposed, in March 2013, that adoptive parents should have a legal right to support, on the basis that support services are ‘critical in ensuring placement stability and in achieving the happy outcomes which adoption is designed to deliver’ (Butler-Sloss, cited by Burns, 2013 ). This article demonstrates how an adoptive family experiencing significant difficulties relating to their child's attachment benefited from an intensive piece of attachment play-based intervention, offered by a Looked After Children's Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service. The work included both the adoptive parents and the child in treatment. The authors advocate that in order to support families looking after children with complex attachment difficulties, a high level of therapeutic support is required from agencies for an extended period of time.