Being removed from one's home is traumatic for children -- even when the home itself is traumatizing. Children may find it extremely difficult to trust their foster parents -- or anyone else -- and their difficulty in trusting others may be especially severe depending on the conditions they have been exposed to.
The harm from dislocation that a foster child feels can be mitigated if foster parents and social workers are attentive to the dynamics of attachment. Providing an environment in which children can form secure attachments is one of the most valuable things that caregivers can provide children. (This is of course true for both children at home and in foster care.) But it can be very difficult for caregivers "to anticipate, respond to and interpret the child's attachment behaviour."
Caregivers without secure attachments with others, may also find it difficult to respond to a child in such a way that will lead to the formation of a secure attachment.
Having a caregiver who provides consistent, responsive care helps children to learn to recognise the nature of their own emotions, and to regulate their own behaviour and emotional states. Through experiencing responsive and sensitive caregiving a child also develops social competencies, empathyand emotional intelligence, and learns how to relate to other people and understand what to expect from them. When a caregiver is sensitive to a child's emotional needs and responds positively, this helps the child to develop a sense of being loved and lovable. This is how children learn that they will be able to rely on others for help in times of trouble later in life. Children are better able to cope with traumatic experiences when their earlier experiences are of being safe and protected.
The above passage both describes one of the key duties of caregivers...
Many of these people wish to provide the kind of good, secure childhood to their own children that they themselves were denied. But having no good role models of their own from their own families, they may simply have no good understanding of what it takes to provide a secure, safe, and supportive atmosphere for their own children. But if they fail to provide a healthy environment for their children, not only will they fail to help their own children to achieve their potential but they will also prevent their own children from having good role models. And so when these children grow up and have children of their own they will continue to perpetuate the same cycle of negligence. But parents or other caregivers who are able to learn new patterns, who can create healthy styles of communication, who honor their children's autonomy while at the same time giving them the tools to engage fully in their families and communities, who recognize that both they and their children deserve the full range of human rights will help to create children who will take their places fully in the world.
References
New South Wales, Australia, Children's Services Regulation 2004. Retrieved 25 March 2010 from http://www.community.nsw.gov.au/for_agencies
_that_work_with_us/childrens_services/regulation.html
Quality Improvement Accreditation System (QIAS) standards. Retrieved 23 March 2010 fromhttp://www.ncac.gov.au/publication_extracts/qias_qpg_preambles.pdf
United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Retrieved 24 March 2010 fromhttp://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/pdf/crc.pdf
