This article highlights Stern's recent conceptualization of the infant's development of internal working models of attachment and the relationship between internal working models and the narrative self. Research studies, including Ainsworth's and Main's seminal work on types of infant attachment models, are reviewed. These include secure, avoidant insecure, ambivalent insecure, and disorganized-disoriented types of infant attachment. Later research supports the continuation of these same attachment patterns in the children at age six. A clinical case, a sixteen year old and her infant, is presented to illustrate how the client's working model of attachment plays out in the treatment process.In reviewing infancy research, social work theoreticians Saari (1991) and Palombo (1992) have stated that the concept of meaning is central to the process of clinical treatment. The process of constructing meaning begins in the non-verbal discourse between mother and infant. The infant and the mother have lived, shared experiences; and the mother helps the infant to affectively integrate, or make sense, of these experiences through the process of affect attunement (Stern, 1985). Thus, experiences begin to be organized into meaningful patterns from infancy. These lived interactive experiences would include mother-infant attachment experiences.

This paper presents the results of a survey of 69 schools of social work that asked who in each school is performing the role of the field liaison. In addition, the differences in the liaison roles of two large, midwestern schools of social work, one public, one private, are examined. How each approach impacts the partnership between school and agency is explored.

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