Understanding and supporting parent-child relationships during foster care visits: attachment theory and research

Parent visitation, the scheduled, face-to-face contacts between parents and their children in foster care, is the primary intervention for maintaining and supporting the development of parent-child relationships necessary for reunification. A review of the child welfare literature, however, reveals that for some parents and children, visits are problematic. Indeed, parents and children's experiences of visits, the quality of interaction observed during visits, and outcomes for children vary widely. The parent-child attachment relationship is one important factor influencing the quality of visits. Attachment theory and research indicate that there are universal, developmental, variable, and problematic aspects of attachment relationships. These aspects of attachment relationships provide a heuristic approach for understanding, assessing, and intervening in parent-child relationships during foster care visits.