Enhancing Caregiving in Traumatized Families: An Attachment-Centered Approach to Working with Parent Groups

"This might be cliché, but it was a sense of family": Gang involvement among Indigenous young adults and their search for attachment, community, and hope

Indigenous communities in Canada continue to feel the ongoing impacts of colonialism, including socio-economic disadvantage, high rates of violent victimization, systemic racism and discrimination, overrepresentation in the criminal justice system, and intergenerational trauma. Based on in-depth interviews with 10 gang-involved Indigenous young adults, using attachment theory as a guiding framework, we explore how colonialism continues to negatively impact the attachment these young people have to their families, communities, and social institutions, and leads to their gang involvement which perpetuates violence and trauma. Yet, they exhibit hope for a better future. Drawing on participant experiences we suggest key points at which provision of supports and resources can assist with increasing attachments and facilitating gang desistance. We share these insights while acknowledging the continued structural, embedded violence many Indigenous youth experience today that necessitates a commitment to decolonization at all levels of Canadian society.

Enhancing maternal sensitivity in contexts of urban extreme poverty in Sierra Leone: A pilot study

This pilot study presents preliminary data on the efficacy of Strong Bonds, Strong Pikin (SBSP), a brief intervention program that aims to enhance sensitivity among mothers who care for their preschool children in a slum settlement in Freetown (Sierra Leone). SBSP adapts principles of attachment theory to intervention within a non-Western cultural setting, where families suffer from extreme poverty. A combination of psychoeducation, group work, video-feedback, and storytelling defines the methodology of the program. Maternal sensitivity, parenting stress, and the use of violent discipline practices were measured before (pretest) and after the intervention (posttest) in a sample of 43 mothers who participated in the program. Analyses showed a significant increase in observed maternal sensitivity, as well as a decrease in mother-reported parenting stress, child problems, and use of violent discipline practices from pretest to posttest. These results are discussed in terms of the potential value of culturally sensitive, attachment-centered interventions with caregivers who raise their children in non-Western settings affected by economic vulnerability.