Therapeutic Fostering
“In a relationship, one mind revises another; one heart changes its partner. This astounding legacy of our combined status as mammals and neural beings is limbic revision; the power to remodel the emotional parts of the people we love.”
Lewis.T, Amini.F, Lannon.R: A General Theory of Love, 2001, New York: Vintage Books p.144
Our ethos is that in fostering the relationship between foster parent and child is the therapeutic intervention.
Consistency, security, a warm physical environment, resilient attachment, belief in the child’s potential, extensive training and supervision, understanding that behaviour has meaning – all promote families who offer a therapeutic environment, 24 hours a day; 7 days a week.
To introduce yet another adult in a child’s life, in the form of a therapist, for maybe just one hour a week may not be as helpful as it is tempting to think, especially if the child’s difficulties can be contained and engaged within a relationship that is consistent, thoughtful, alert and reflective.
This is not ‘therapy at home’, but an informed ability to offer a warm and boundaried relationship within which skilled communication can occur.
Nothing is more powerful for the child than to know that another person can stay with them in the midst of their turmoil – if someone else can sit alongside them, can survive the consequences of their trauma and continue to live healthily the child learns that they can do the same… the unbearable slowly becomes bearable, the child begins to live rather than simply survive.
- Lambert’s (1992) research suggests that of the factors in successful therapeutic interventions 70% is to do with what the individuals bring to each other – 70% is to do with relationship, rather than anything else.
- Lewis, Amini and Lannon (2001), frustrated with the limits of their own field of psychiatry, talk about the workings of the brain to further reinforce why relationship is everything:
“That open-loop design means that in some important ways, people cannot be stable on their own – not should or shouldn’t be, but can’t be. This prospect is disconcerting to many, especially in a society that prizes individuality as ours does. Total self-sufficiency turns out to be a daydream whose bubble is burst by the sharp edge of the limbic brain. Stability means finding people who regulate you well and staying near them.”
