The Routledge Handbook of Attachment: Implications and Interventions

The Routledge Handbook of Attachment: Implications and Interventions offers an introduction to therapies produced as a result of the popularity of attachment studies. These therapies can be divided into two categories: those that are ‘attachment-based’, in that they use evidence-based attachment assessments in their development, or ‘attachment-informed’, in that the theories of attachment have been integrated into the practice of existing schools of therapy.

The book reviews the field and provides a range of interventions for children, adults and parents, beginning with a detailed review of both evidence-base and evidence-informed interventions including individual psychotherapy, family therapy and parenting. The remaining chapters provide accounts, from the practitioner’s perspective, of interventions that address issues of attachment from the level of one-to-one therapy, family and social work to social interventions involving courts and Care Proceedings, illustrated with examples from day-to-day practice.

Discussing how an understanding of formal assessments of attachment can be used to inform therapeutic, social and legal interventions to assist and protect children, The Routledge Handbook of Attachment: Implications and Interventions is an indispensable guide for clinical psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers working with children and families, clinicians in training and students.

Paul Holmes is a child and adolescent psychiatrist who also trained as an adult psychotherapist. He worked in community child and adolescent mental health teams for many years, and with specialist services for fostered and adopted children. He has increasingly applied his long-standing interest in attachment theory to his work in providing expert psychiatric opinions to the British courts in child care proceedings.

Steve Farnfield is a Senior Lecturer and established the MSc in Attachment Studies at the University of Roehampton, UK. He is a social worker and play therapist with many years’ experience and a licensed trainer for the Dynamic Maturational Model of Attachment Infant CARE-Index, Preschool Assessment of Attachment and Adult Attachment Interview developed by Patricia Crittenden.