Parent-Child Attachment Resources

  • Charles Zeanah of Tulane University School of Medicine and the Tulane Institute of Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health
    Charles Zeanah, MD conducts research on child attachment patterns in high-risk environments, institutionalized children, psychopathology in early childhood, and infant-parent relationships. Educational information and current research projects can be viewed on the website.
  • The Bucharest Early Intervention Project
    BEIP is a collaboration which began in 2000 between researchers at Tulane University, University of Maryland, and Boston Children’s Hospital which seeks to examine the effects of early institutionalization on child brain and behavior development, and to examine the impact of high quality foster care as an intervention for institutionalized children. Romanian children from infancy through age twelve have been followed and studied, assessing a wide range of developmental domains including measure of physical growth, cognitive function, social-emotional development, attachment, and brain development.
  • New York Attachment Consortium
    The New York Attachment Consortium is an association of university faculty in the New York metropolitan area working to advance John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth’s attachment theory.
  • The State University of New York and NY Attachment Consortium
    A library of publications and on-line articles about attachment theory, assessment and treatment. This site is an excellent resource to understand the origin of attachment theory along with up-to-date research projects and research outcomes.
  • The International Association for the Study of Attachment
    A multi-disciplinary association of mental health professionals     focused on how humans cope with danger, how attachment relationships affect this, and how later adaptation to life circumstances draws on these experiences. 
  • Circle of Security
    COC is an evidence-based parent reflection model created by Dr.’s Kent Hoffman, Glen Cooper, and Bert Powell of Spokane, Washington. Using graphics and video training, parents are taught relationship skills fundamental to promoting a secure parent-child attachment (i.e., reflective functioning, attunement, engagement, sensitively responding to children). The site has useful handouts and explanations of attachment processes in children.
  • Child-Parent Psychotherapy
    CPP is an intervention model created by Dr. Alicia Lieberman for children aged 0-5 who have experienced a traumatic event (e.g. maltreatment, the traumatic death of someone close, a serious accident, sexual abuse, exposure to domestic violence) leading to mental health, attachment, and/or behavioral problems. Treatment is based in attachment theory but also integrates psychodynamic, developmental, trauma, social learning, and cognitive behavioral theories. Sessions focus on supporting and strengthening the relationship between the child and caregiver to restore the child’s functioning.
  • The Mary Ainsworth Attachment Clinic
    Under direction of Dr. Robert Marvin, The Ainsworth Attachment Clinic provides clinical services for children and families who have experienced challenges or disruptions to their relationships and/or attachment bonds with parents or primary caregivers. This includes foster and adopted children, those having difficulties with custody/visitation arrangements because of foster care or parental separation, those whose families have experienced a traumatic event, and those with a child suffering a chronic medical illness. Training and consultation services for professionals are also offered.
  • Attachment & Biobehavioral Catch-up Intervention
    Led by Dr. Mary Dozier of the University of Delaware, this evidence-based intervention is part of the Infant-Caregiver Project. Biobehavioral Catch-up helps birth, foster, and adoptive parents to understand and sensitively respond to their children’s emotional needs. There is an emphasis on providing nurture to children even when they appear not to need it, providing nurture when it feels unnatural for parents to do so, and providing a stable, predictable environment for children.
  • The Theraplay Institute
    Invented by Dr. Ann Jernberg in the late 1960s, Theraplay® is a directive, specialized form of developmental play therapy based on attachment theory, object-relations theory, and self-psychology. Theraplay® consists of activities designed to facilitate healthy parent-child relationships in a playful atmosphere of empathy and attunement—eye contact, gentle touch, close physical proximity, sensory motor stimulation, and rhythmic movements are used.
  • Trust-Based Relational Intervention®
    TBRI® is a caregiver intervention model created by developmental psychologists Dr. Karyn Purvis and Dr. David Cross, founders of the Institute of Child Development. The method is based on neurodevelopmental theory and designed for children who have experienced relationship-based traumas such as institutionalization, multiple foster placements, maltreatment, and/or neglect.