Attachment Aware Schools: Working with Families to Enhance Parental Engagement and Home-School Relationships

Abstract

Background:Application of attachment theory in school contexts lacks empirical evidence. The Attachment Aware Schools pilot project was commissioned by two Local Authorities in England to improve the educational outcomes of Looked After Children, and to build an evidence base. Informed by attachment research, the Attachment Aware Schools program provides a coherent and integrated theoretical framework, discourse, and practice for all practitioners working with children and young people.Objective:The primary focus was to provide whole school and targeted attachment-based strategies to support children’s well-being, behavior, and academic attainment. This paper; however, documents a secondary objective, which was to facilitate collaborative partnerships with families.Method:As part of the mixed methods approach to the Attachment Aware Schools project, a series of case studies were collected and thematically coded. The case studies were generated by practitioners using an outcomes-based framework.Results:Although the case study sample size is small (N=10), the case studies presented here illustrate how the Attachment Aware Schools program can promote increased home-school engagement and shared practice between home and school. Outcomes include improved home-school relationships, reductions in behavioral incidents, and improved family dynamics.Conclusion:Attachment Aware Schools can be a vehicle for facilitating supportive home-school collaborative partnerships with positive outcomes for vulnerable children and young people.

Attachment Aware Schools: the impact of a targeted and collaborative intervention

“…Staff also reported improved relationships with parents thus strengthening personal and community 'school bonding' (Bergin and Bergin, 2009). The way in which the project fostered parental engagement and improved relationships between home and school is documented elsewhere (Rose et al, 2017).…”

“…The AAS framework (see model below) comprised of key elements to support effective implementation, such as school ethos, specific training packages promoting identifiable strategies, collaborative partnerships with the wider community and building an evidence base of practice. Preliminary pilot research findings have shown positive results (Rose et al, 2015;Rose et al, 2017).…”

“…Illustrative quotes are presented in this paper as a means to triangulate the quantitative data and provide a more distinct indicator of the participants' voice. However, some reporting of the qualitative data has been published elsewhere (Rose et al, 2017;Gus et al, 2017) which report on parental engagement with the project and their views regarding the impact of the project on their families. A further limitation is the dearth of representation from the perspective of the pupils themselves, again due to funding restrictions.…”