Secure Base Model
and the five caregiving dimension
Whether you’re already fostering children or ‘just wondering if it’s for you’, sooner or later you will hear people referring to ‘The Secure Base Model’ as a firm foundation for your involvement with foster care.
Use of the Secure Base Model in Foster Care
This model provides a clear structure around which you can build your role as a caregiver. This article looks at how the model works in foster care. How it can help you bring about better outcomes for your foster child – and hopefully a happier fostering experience for you, too.
What is the Secure Base Model of Care?
Think of it as a framework for therapeutic caregiving, designed to respond to every aspect of a child’s developmental needs. While you will certainly find it helpful if you’re a foster carer, it isn’t unique to looked after children, as it reflects each critical dimension of any child’s needs.
The model is based on the extensive research by John Bowlby. You’ve probably heard of his ‘Attachment Theory‘. Prof. Gillian Scofield and Dr Mary Beek used his research and also drew on theory and practice to develop a model at the University of East Anglia that promotes security and resilience.
Through close observation of the intimate interactions between a child and their main caregiver, Bowlby could identify the essential elements of a successful relationship. In such a relationship, a child experiences stability, consistency, and availability. This enables them to venture into the wider world and explore it, knowing that they can return to their caregiver for reassurance in times of stress.
How the Secure Base Model Works
The model focuses on all the interactions between a child and their main caregiver. These are crucial because over time, they have a big effect on the child’s thoughts and feelings. Those thoughts and feelings a child has will then influence their behavioural patterns.
Your Child’s Needs and Your Thoughts/Feelings About Them
To begin with, you must acknowledge and address your child’s needs. But it’s important to look at your thoughts and feelings about their needs too because this will influence your caregiving approach. You will have developed your ideas about parenting styles and children’s needs, through your own experiences. You will also be able to draw on any related training and advice that you’ve received.
The Influence You Will Have on Your Child’s Thoughts/Behaviours
How you behave in your role as caregiver will convey powerful messages to your child. These messages will shape how your child thinks and feels about themselves. Your interactions will also influence their thinking about others, and affect their ongoing development.
This cycle is illustrated in the diagrammatic model below. It shows how the mind and behaviour of both child and caregiver are inter-connected and shows how change and movement occur.
The Caregiving Cycle
This Caregiving Cycle encompasses the many interactions of family life. These range from the everyday exchanges at mealtimes, to managing emotional or behavioural crises. For the purposes of the model, these interactions have been grouped into five dimensions of caregiving.
Caregiving Dimensions
The Secure Base Model incorporates Bowlby’s proven theory of what leads to secure attachments. But it also adds ‘family membership’ which forms an important part of a successful fostering relationship. After all, who doesn’t want to feel as though they belong?
This additional part of the model highlights the need for fostered children to feel they have a valid place in the fostering family, that they belong and are valued. They may also be able to hold the idea of belonging to their birth family, alongside being a part of their foster family.
As you can see from the diagram, the model describes key areas to consider when looking to provide any child with a secure foundation for their personal growth and development. By learning more about them, and applying them to your role, you can enhance your experience of fostering.
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Here’s a summary of the 5 caregiving dimensions. Use the links to see how they apply to the role of a foster carer and the developmental benefits they promote for children in foster care:
Availability
Making yourself available to the child you’re caring for is vital. It means that you are there for your child, 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. Do you want to encourage them in their personal goals, taking notice of their feelings and wishes?
Sensitivity
When it comes to fostering children, sensitivity is a special quality that you need to bring to your role. It describes the way in which you are so able to identify with your child’s needs and perspective, that you can virtually see the world from their point of view – ‘put yourself in their shoes’.
Acceptance
To feel accepted, unconditionally, by their caregiver, is a basic need of looked after children. It is a vital dimension of the caregiving cycle. It could be argued that, unless this aspect of caring for a child is satisfactorily accomplished, little progress will be made in the relationship. Read More…
Co-operation
Are you wondering how to help your child towards greater independence and a sense of their own validity in their thought and behaviour? Do you recognise their need to be effective, to ‘make their mark’?
Family Membership
We all need to feel we ‘belong’. We take this for granted when we are part of a family unit, however small. We don’t question our acceptance and inclusion. Because of this, we are able to explore and develop personally.
You will notice that these 5 points focus on feelings and ideas about the self and about others. These feelings are powerful and shape the child’s reactions and interactions within the family and in their wider circle. The dimensions can overlap and so are not distinct from each other.
This model can be adapted to be used with any caregivers and is applicable to children and young people at any stage of their development.
How Can the Secure Base Model Help You?
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If you’re in any doubt about the value of the model, there’s plenty of support for it’s use in foster care, both in the UK and around the world.
In 2007 the Government policy document (Care Matters: Time for Change) recommended the Secure Base Model as a basis for foster carer training and support. It has since been implemented in local authorities and independent fostering agencies across England. It’s also been the focus of practice development training in more than a dozen other countries.
You may already feel that you’re making progress as a foster carer and that your foster child is responding. But there might be times when you’re puzzled by their reaction to a situation. This could lead to you feeling disheartened or inadequate. You will want your foster children to grow up to be healthy, happy, and self-reliant. But maybe there are times when you feel as if you’re taking 1 step forward and 2 back.
These are a few of the ways this model can help you:
- A good understanding of this model will give you a point of reference and a comprehensive framework for your role as a foster carer.
- By using this model you’ll find it easier to nurture your child’s social, emotional, psychological, and intellectual development.
- By using this model you’ll find it easier to nurture your child’s social, emotional, psychological, and intellectual development.
- The model sets out 5 caregiving dimensions that will help you provide a secure base from which your foster child can explore, learn and develop in a positive way.
- By embracing the caregiving cycle within this model, you will find it easier to identify – and attune to – your foster child’s needs.
- The knowledge you gain from using this model will help you to develop your fostering skills in an effective and rewarding way.
If you’re a foster carer, it’s likely that you’re using some (or all) of the 5 caregiving dimensions proposed in this model. And that’s great because each one is associated with a developmental benefit for the child. But it can still be helpful to know which aspects of your approach are having the desired effect.
Don’t see the Secure Base Model as a ‘set of rigid rules’. Think of it as a guide to a deeper awareness of what your child needs to function happily and successfully. This applies both within the family circle you’re providing, and in the wider world too.
Use of the Model in Foster Care
There are advantages to using this model, or keeping it in mind within your role as a foster carer. By doing so, you’ll be better equipped to promote a trusting, empathic relationship. One where you can discuss difficulties without negative judgment or intolerance.
A child who is being nurtured within this Secure Base Model will learn that they can trust those who care for them. They can then grow in confidence and self-esteem and be better equipped to deal with life. They are then more likely to feel safe, loved and valued, unconditionally. In other words, feel secure.
Eventually they will be able to ‘take for granted’ the consistent care and attention of their foster carers. They should then find it easier to form other relationships at school and in the wider community.
Taking time to understand and build on this framework can bring greater harmony, satisfaction, and purpose to the relationship you form with your foster child. But to deliver this kind of therapeutic caregiving, you may need to think differently, do things differently, and be persistent. If you do, the benefits for you (as a foster carer) and for your foster child, could be huge.
So, if you’re involved with fostering children, or plan to be, grab the Secure Base Model with both hands and place it at the center of your fostering strategy. Embrace it, refer to it, and practice using it because it could transform your experience of fostering.
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