El acogimiento familiar: orientaciones desde la teoría del apego

Abstract

In each fostering process, the affective bonds have a central role regarding its development, maintenance and loss.The child suffers because of the separation and needs to relay on a caregiver providing him with good emotional scaffolding that allows him to cope successfully with life in an autonomous form.This requires the foster parent to be a sensitive person, or to be helped to develop this quality, and, in case of reunification, the biological parent must be able to continue supporting the child's trajectory.This is the reason to consider as highly relevant topics in the fostering process the following: the quality of the interrelationship within the biological family and its consequences on the attachment bond from the child towards his/her parents; the suitability of the selected type of fostering and its stability; the competence of the foster and biological parents; the relationship between the child and the biological family during the fostering period through the visiting arrangements; and the strengthening of the child's security.In order to comply with these topics a varied set of requirements are needed: to promote prevention with services and programmes that avoid family break-up; to be extremely careful during the process of evaluation, planning, follow up and monitoring; to prepare both the families and the child to address the break-up, the visits and the reunification; to provide good training to the professionals and the families; and to improve the resilience of the child.