Relational dynamics between educator and child in foster care context

Objectives. - To our knowledge, there is not a lot of research to understand relationship between educator and child in foster care context analyzed by the attachment theory and a psychodynamic approach. For that, we will think about dynamics of this relationship in this specific institution with this approach complementary. We will ask ourselves to what extent educator has a specific attachment relationship with child placed in foster home. Reciprocally for professional we will ask how this alternative attachment relationship promoted an insecure attachment expression, and what is link with his caregiving compulsive system. To better thinking about complexity of this relational dynamic between two protagonists of this meeting, we will suppose existence of counter-transference phenomena for professional. For child, we will suppose existence of transference phenomena. Patients or materials and methods. - For this study we have eight subjects divided into two main conditions (educators and children placed in foster care). The tools used to measure professional's attachment are Edicode which is an interview inspired by Adult Attachment Interview and the relationship questionnaire (or RQ). We will evaluate counter-transference by a clinical interview experimental research semi-structured of thirty items. To measure children's attachment we used these instruments: the CCH, the RQ and the Ca-mir. Transference will be experimentally evaluated through a clinical interview semi-structured search and by drawing test. Results. - For children, results show an attachment insecurity and transference phenomena expression. In addition, results demonstrate existence of an attachment relationship between children placed with their educators, these last thus constituting for them a figure of alternative attachment. For professionals, we find different results depending on the instruments used. In more Edicode shows attachment insecurity and counter-transference phenomena. Conclusions. - In our view, lack of attachment disorganization among children could be explained on the one hand, because of the small size of our sample and secondly because lack of sensitivity on our instruments on this type of attachment. For that, we believe necessary to strengthen methodology by other measuring instruments such as the use of Edicode for children from 10-12 years. Moreover, we think that kind of attachment is important to understand secure base among children placed. About educator we feel it would be an alternative attachment figure and we question about his secure base, namely to what extent this security base would be dependent on construction of that child. Finally we believe that study concern of educator's attachment must be articulated with a psychodynamic approach by introducing two concepts that we consider key in his understanding: the process of parentification and the notion of repair (in Klein's view). (C) 2016 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.