Building Secure Futures: Bonding and Attachment Support for Parents and Their Infants Affected by Substance Use
Overview
Twenty percent of all child welfare removals in 2020 involved infants under the age of 1. Bonding and attachment in these early months are crucial to the health of the parent-infant relationship and the infant’s overall well-being. Despite this, many families involved in the child welfare system face significant disruptions to healthy relationship development. Separation, parental substance use (SU) and substance use disorders (SUD), mental health disorders, trauma histories, and the shame/stigma they encounter prevent parents and infants from establishing strong bonds and secure attachment patterns. FTC teams, often serving postpartum parents, can use their understanding of bonding and attachment to offer interventions that support and heal the parent-child relationship. This session will reorient professionals to the science of bonding and attachment while noting strategies to support the parent-infant relationship in families affected by SU/SUD.
Learning Objectives:
- Distinguish between bonding and attachment; describe parenting behaviors related to both strongly and poorly established bonds
- Analyze how parent-child separation, SU and SUD, mental health disorders, trauma, and shame can disrupt bonding and attachment
- Adopt strategies to support bonding and attachment for families affected by substance use
This video orients professionals to the science of bonding and attachment while noting strategies to support the parent-infant relationship in families affected by substance use.
- Dr. Marian Silverman | Director | Child-Parent Psychotherapy Program | Hope for Youth (New York)
- Dr. Elizabeth Bard | Pediatric Psychologist | Child Study Center | OU Health (Oklahoma)
- Raven-Lynn Lipford | Research Analyst | Father’s Feelings/Maternal Vitality Studies | OhioGuidestone (Ohio)
- Dr. Moshe Moeller | Associate Program Director | HERO Dads | Montefiore Medical Center (New York)
- Tessa Richter | Senior Program Associate | Center for Children and Family Futures
- Office Hours with CCFF staff to ask your TA questions!
CCFF hosted a national peer-to-peer idea exchange on November 16, 2023 on the topic of bonding and attachment. Practitioners from around the country joined the call to share challenges, barriers, strategies and successes.
Building Secure Futures: Bonding and Attachment Support for Parents and Their Infants Affected by Substance Use
- Policy & Practice Tips: Use this guide to review key points from the video, explore attachment-focused supports and interventions, and consider policy strategies to gain sustainable access to infant and early childhood mental health services.
- Live Conversation Agenda
- Live Conversation Chat and Resource Links
- Video Citations
- Previous Practice Academy Course: Parent Child Relationships: Supporting Families in FDCs for Recovery, Reunification, Permanency
- Previous Practice Academy Course: Disrupting Stigma to Support Meaningful Change for Families in Family Treatment Court
- Previous Practice Academy Course: Harnessing the Power of Parenting Time to Strengthen the Parent-Child Relationships and Support Reunification Efforts in Your FTC
- Plans of Safe Care Learning Modules
- Implementing the Substance Use Disorder Provisions of the Family First Prevention Services Act.
Outside Resources:
- Title IV-E Prevention Services Clearinghouse
- How can frequent, quality family time promote relationships and permanency?
- Postpartum Support International
- Postpartum Support International: Provider Search
- Australia’s Centre of Perinatal Excellence: Assessing Mother-Infant Interaction and Safety of the Woman and Infant
- Alliance for the Advancement of Infant Mental Health
- Medicaid Policies to Help Young Children Access Key Infant-Early Childhood Mental Health Services: RESULTS FROM A 50-STATE SURVEY
- Exploring State Strategies for Financing Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Assessment, Diagnosis, and Treatment
- Responsive Care: Nurturing a Strong Attachment Through Everyday Moments
- Essentials for Childhood Creating Safe, Stable, Nurturing Relationships and Environments for All Children
- Protective Factors Conversation Guide: Nurturing and Attachment (English) (Spanish)
- Parenting Books for Dad, suggested by Dr. Moeller
- Father’s Feelings/Maternal Vitality Studies Flyer
Research and Book Recommendations:
- Concepts travel faster than thought: an empirical study of the use of attachment classifications in child protection investigations
- Attachment goes to court: child protection and custody issues
- Father involvement, father-child relationship, and attachment in the early years
- Psychotherapy with Infants and Young Children: Repairing the Effects of Stress and Trauma on Early Attachment
- Don’t Hit My Mommy: A Manual for CPP with Young Children Exposed to Violence and Other Trauma
- Ghosts in the Nursery: A Psychoanalytic Approach to the Problems of Impaired Infant-Mother Relationships
- Angels in the Nursery: The intergenerational transmission of benevolent parental influences
- Ted X – Beyond the Cliff – Laura van Dernoot Lipsky
- Black Women’s Mental Health: Balancing Strength and Vulnerability
- The First Forty Days: The Essential Art of Nourishing the New Mother
- My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
Learning Opportunities
Grantee TTA Projects