Availability
Caregiving dimension one
Availability is the first of five caregiving dimensions that together make up the Secure Base Model. This article looks at how it might apply to your role as a foster carer and the likely developmental benefits for your foster child.
Helping your foster child trust others.
What Do We Mean by Availability?
To be available to the child you are caring for is vital. It means that you are there for them, both in a physical and an emotional way. Being alert to their needs and signals, and doing and saying things that help to change their expectations of themselves and adults.
This diagram illustrates how availability works within the caregiving cycle.
Your Own Experience
You can probably identify with the experience of a parent or other caregiver who has ‘been there’ for you throughout your formative years. From when you were small and first venturing away from them to explore the world and to form relationships, they were reliably there for you to return to and to comfort you when you experienced stressful situations. This was them, demonstrating their availability.
Your Expectations
They reacted with warmth and loving attention and helped you to feel safe. You were sure that they would be there, ready to meet your needs and to protect and reassure you when things went wrong. You trusted their availability and this helped you to feel confident, even when you were away from them.
Your Foster Child’s Experience
But what might the early experiences of a child in foster care have been like? Many will have experienced inconsistency of care. They won’t have learned to expect their caregivers to respond to their needs with warmth and kindness.
Sometimes, they may have received negative responses. This might have included hostility, rejection, anger, or even physical aggression. The unpredictability of their past caregiver’s responses may have had a damaging effect. As a result, they might become distressed, anxious or confused in times of need. They may not feel able to rely on their needs being met in a kindly, empathic way. Associating any approach by would-be caregivers with suspicion and fear.
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How Will This Affect the Relationship You Try to Build with the Child You’re Caring For?
You will naturally strive to give your foster children all the care and attention you believe they need. But they might draw away from you. They may appear to be rejecting you, cling to you a lot, or try to control everything. Ultimately, they might become overwhelmed by their feelings of helplessness.
These are all defence strategies which they have developed in order to cope with the inconsistency and unpredictability they have experienced in their early interactions. You are likely to feel rejected and personally hurt by this behaviour.
How Will This Impact on You as a Caregiver?
This means you are presented, as the new caregiver, with a challenging and complex situation. Your aim will be to alter your child’s feelings and expectations and to help them learn to trust adults and to expect them to meet their physical and emotional needs.
This will not be easy for you or for your foster child. At first, their words and actions could seem to indicate that they don’t want or need you. It might feel like they want to be in charge of you and the family setting, or that however hard you try you will never be able to satisfy their needs. This is likely to make you feel disheartened.
How Will You Overcome These Barriers to Your Caring Intentions?
It will be important for you to keep focused on your foster child’s true needs, despite all the negative messages they are giving you. It’s likely that you will look for extra support at this difficult stage of your relationship with them. It will help you if you can put yourself in their place and try to appreciate what they have learned to expect from adults, as a direct result of their early experiences.
With patience and support, you will gradually earn the trust of your foster child and work out strategies and behaviours designed to reassure them that you will not let them down, that you will be there for them, reliably, consistently, and unconditionally.
How Can You Demonstrate Your Availability?
You will need to look out for opportunities to change your foster child’s expectations, both of their own behaviours and of your reactions and responses. You will use verbal and non-verbal signs of your availability. The important (and tricky) challenge for you is to do this in a sensitive way that is in tune with their needs.
Importantly, your interventions must be acceptable to your foster child and you must both feel comfortable and relaxed about them. This will need imagination and heightened awareness on your part. You will need to remain flexible in your approach, taking into account what is going on for your foster child at that moment. For instance, if there have been any upsetting events recently, or anything which might have undermined the progress you are both making. And you will need to judge when to intervene and when to stand back, waiting for them to approach you.
How Will You know You're Succeeding?
Gradually you will notice little changes in the behaviour and thinking of your foster child, and you will sense a growing trust in them towards you and other adults. Slowly, they will learn that you are not going to disappear or fail to be there when they need emotional support. Their feelings of safety and self-worth will be growing and they will ultimately be capable of trusting other adults too. They will begin to recognise that they ‘count’, and their anxiety levels will be reduced.
Exciting Progress
Their confidence will increase and enable them to become involved in play and exploration and to engage in new relationships. They will be happy to move away from you, to ‘take you for granted’, sure of your availability when they ‘return’. They will enjoy a new closeness with you, their caregiver, and this will be satisfying and rewarding for you both. These changes will be affirming, exciting and encouraging.
Availability within the Secure Base Model focuses on how to help your foster child learns to trust. The next dimension Sensitivity is about helping them to manage their feelings.
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