Clinical Guidelines for Accompanying Supervised Contact Visits – The Case of Young Children in the Transition from Foster Care to Adoption

The importance of continued contact between children in out of home care and their biological parents has long been recognized. Findings suggest that while quality contact promotes positive outcomes for children`s wellbeing and placement stability, poor quality contact can be disruptive, particularly for children with a history of maltreatment. However, only few studies have offered clear recommendations for the structure and level of interventions in supervised visitation.

In the current presentation, based on our work, as trainers and supervisors, of social workers from the adoption services in Israel over the past years, we aim to present clinical guidelines that can positively contribute to the parent-child interaction within supervised contact visits. We suggest adapting Child Parent Psychotherapy (CPP), a relational based trauma responsive multi-theoretical intervention model, as a theoretical and practical framework for the interventions.

The following guidelines will be presented: Creating a safe clinical setting; Providing emotional support and psychoeducation; Translating and mediating the child`s perspective to the parent and vice versa; Fostering moments of playfulness and joy; Promoting benevolence of the parent towards the child; Mediating the transition of the child between attachment figures; Creating a narrative of the events that led to the separation.

We will demonstrate through clinical examples of supervised visitation, how by using these guidelines social workers, supervising the meetings, can attune to the attachment needs of children whom have been separated from their primary attachment figure and reduce anxiety that meetings with biological parents can trigger.

Implications on training and supervising professionals accompanying supervised visitation in other out of care placements, will be discussed.