Betsy Keefer Smalley, LSW, and Dr. Richard Delaney lead this pre-service course on attachment. You’ll learn the difference between healthy and unhealthy attachment, how separation and loss affect attachment, and how attachment theory applies to real life. Supplemental handouts round out the course.

At the end of this course, you will be able to:

• discuss the importance of attachment for the healthy emotional development of a child
• describe the potential negative effects of maltreatment, separation and loss
• describe how issues of divided loyalty, perceived abandonment or rejection, reactivation of feelings from previous separations, and ambivalence about attachment and permanence play a role in emotional conflict
• discuss how insecure attachment established earlier in life impacts a child’s behavior while in placement