THE MODEL

The Secure Base model provides a positive framework for therapeutic caregiving which helps infants, children and young people to move towards greater security and builds resilience. The model focuses on the interactions that occur between caregivers and children on a day to day, minute by minute basis within the caregiving environment. But it also considers how those relationships can enable the child to develop competence in the outside world of school, peer group and community.

It can be helpful, first, to think about caregiver/child interactions as having the potential to shape the thinking and feeling and ultimately the behaviour of the child.

This process begins with the child's needs and behaviour and then focuses on what is going on in the mind of the caregiver. How a caregiver thinks and feels about a child's needs and behaviour will determine his or her caregiving behaviours. The caregiver may draw on their own ideas about what children need or what makes a good parent from their own experiences or from what they have learned from training. The caregiving behaviours that result convey certain messages to the child. The child's thinking and feeling about themselves and other people will be affected by these messages and there will be a consequent impact on his or her development. We have chosen to represent this process in a circular model, the caregiving cycle, which shows the inter-connectedness of caregiver/child minds and behaviour, as well as their ongoing movement and change. 

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This caregiving cycle encompasses the many interactions of family life or life in a residential care setting. These range from the moment to moment exchanges over breakfast to managing major emotional or behavioural crises. Each interaction conveys a number of messages to the child and has an incremental effect on the child's beliefs about him or herself, beliefs about other people and the relationship between self and others. These internal working models will influence the child's functioning and development.

For the purposes of the Secure Base Model, we have grouped these caregiver/child interactions into five dimensions of caregiving. The first four dimensions are drawn from attachment theory. We have added to the model an additional dimension, family membership, that is relevant for all children but can be particularly challenging for children who are separated from their families of origin.

Each of the five caregiving dimensions can be associated with a particular developmental benefit for the child, as shown in the table below.

Caregiving dimension                        Developmental benefit

AVAILABILITY                                                                       Helping the child to trust

SENSITIVITY                                                                         Helping the child to manage feelings and behaviour

ACCEPTANCE                                                                       Building the child's self esteem

CO-OPERATION                                                                    Helping the child to feel effective - and be co-operative

FAMILY MEMBERSHIP                                                         Helping the child to belong

It is important to bear in mind that the dimensions are not entirely distinct from each other. Rather, in the real world of caregiving, they overlap and combine with each other. For example, a caregiver who is playing with a child in a focused, child-led way may be doing so with sensitivity and acceptance as well as demonstrating availability and promoting co-operation.

Research (Beek and Schofield 2004) has demonstrated that, over time, positive caregiving across the five dimensions provides a secure base from which the child can explore, learn and develop in a positive direction.

The caregiving dimensions and their developmental benefit to the child are represented by the The Secure Base model.

Implications for practice

The Secure Base Model provides a framework for caregivers and for those who support them to think in more detail about the different but connected caregiving approaches that can help a child to move towards greater security. It is a positive, strengths based approach that focuses on the interaction between the caregiver and the child, but also considers how that relationship can enable the child to develop competence in the outside world and manage often complex relationships with birth family members.

A 'Secure Base'

What is a secure base and why is it important
for children's development?

A secure base is provided through a relationship with one or more sensitive and responsive attachment figures who meet the child's needs and to whom the child can turn as a safe haven, when upset or anxious. When children develop trust in the availability and reliability of this relationship, their anxiety is reduced and they can therefore explore and enjoy their world, safe in the knowledge that they can return to their secure base for help if needed.

The concept of a secure base is important, because it links attachment and exploration, and provides the basis of a secure attachment. A securely attached child does not only seek comfort from an attachment figure, but through feeling safe to explore develops confidence, competence and resilience.

Do adults also need a secure base?

Yes. As we move through the lifespan, we form new attachment relationships with friends and partners. These relationships serve the same function for adults as for children; they provide a secure base which offers comfort and reassurance and at the same time, allows us to operate in the world with confidence. In the words of Bowlby:

All of us, from the cradle to the grave, are happiest when life is organised as a series of excursions, long or short, from the secure base provided by our attachment figures. (Bowlby 1988)

What happens when children do not have a secure base?

Early experiences of separation or neglectful or abusive parenting will cause children to remain anxious and to distrust close relationships. Children adapt to the lack of a secure base by developing different patterns of behaviour. For instance, they may become wary and defended or especially needy and demanding of care and attention. Some children with unpredictable or frightening care may try to make their environment more predictable through role-reversing and controlling behaviour. All of these behaviours are characteristic of insecure attachment patterns.

What happens when children are removed
from a harmful environment?

For many children, serious experiences of neglect and maltreatment will have had a profound effect. They will have developed negative expectations of adults as part of their internal working model of relationships. They will transfer these expectations into new environments (such as foster or adoptive families or in residential care), along with the patterns of defensive behaviour that have functioned as survival strategies in the past. In these circumstances, children will find it hard to let adults come close enough to establish trusting relationships and provide a secure base. The risk, then, is that feelings and behaviours might become fixed in destructive loops and the damage of the past will not be healed.

What can be done to help?

Attachment theory would suggest that exposure to warm, consistent and reliable caregiving can change children's previous expectations both of close adults and of themselves and there is ample evidence from research and practice to support this (Howe 1996, Wilson et al 2003, Cairns 2003, Beek and Schofield 2004,).

The role of adults who can provide secure base caregiving, therefore, is of central importance. They must take on a parenting / caregiving role for the child, but they must also become a therapeutic caregiver in order to change the child's most fundamental sense of self and others (internal working model). In order to achieve this, they must care for the child in ways that demonstrate, implicitly and explicitly to the child, that they are trustworthy and reliable, physically and emotionally available and sensitive to his or her needs. In addition, they must be mindful of the protective strategies that the child has learned in order to feel safe in the past and adjust their approaches so that their parenting feels comfortable and acceptable to the child rather than undermining or threatening. The ensuing relationships will provide a secure base, from which children can develop and be supported to explore and maximise their potential.

This outcome may be supported by the use of the secure base model across all services to vulnerable children.

The Secure Base model is based in attachment theory. An in-depth knowledge of attachment theory is not necessary for people to use the model, but an understanding of some of the basic concepts of attachment is helpful.

Attachment Theory

The starting point of John Bowlby's theory of attachment is an evolutionary one, in that babies are seen as having a biological drive to seek proximity to a protective adult, usually the primary caregiver, in order to survive danger (1969, 1973, 1980). The goal of this drive for closeness is to feel safe, secure and protected. This leads to a range of proximity promoting attachment behaviours.

Attachment behaviours may attract the caregiver's attention in a positive way, for example, cooing, smiling and reaching out. But attachment behaviours also include protest behaviours, such as crying and fretting, which will also bring the caregiver closer in order to soothe the child and end the behaviour. In the toddler years, attachment behaviours will include more direct actions, such as approaching, following, clinging and other behavioural strategies that can achieve proximity to the attachment figure.

All of these behaviours give strong signals which lead caregivers to approach and respond to the needs of the baby. In the first months of life, the signals are repeated countless times. When the baby is hungry, lonely or uncomfortable the sensitive and responsive caregiver will both recognise and react promptly to meet the baby's needs. This experience of a secure base settles the baby and reduces his anxiety, which in turn allows him to play and explore. When the baby is relaxed, smiling and playful, the caregiver will share and reinforce this mood. Through the process of attachment behaviours being responded to promptly and appropriately, therefore, the baby's survival is ensured, and also, his emotional, social and physical development is enhanced and maximised in the context of the relationship.

As attachment behaviours become more organised, so that demands for food or play become more targeted, the adults who respond to them become highly significant to the growing baby. In optimal conditions, attachment behaviours become linked with strong feelings of joy and delight in both directions. Caregivers, of course, respond to the needs and demands of their children in different ways and this gives rise to different attachment patterns.

Selective attachments, then, begin to form from birth and early infancy is a critical period for their development, but there are further key stages throughout childhood. During the toddler years, mobility, play and language develop, providing opportunities to extend attachment relationships to siblings and close adults. By the age of 4 years, secure children are able to think about other people's thoughts and feelings – key to managing relationships with peers and at school.

During the pre-school and primary years, secure children develop the capacity to hold the secure base relationships in mind when they are separated from them (for example, at nursery or school), leaving them free to explore and learn.

Also during this stage, children continue to learn to manage their feelings, co-operate with others and take into account the thoughts and feelings of others.

During adolescence, young people are becoming increasingly confident and competent. Their thinking is more complex and more reflective. There may be experimentation with the rejection of parental norms and values and moving away from the secure base. BUT, family ties and the knowledge that the secure base is still available in times of difficulty remain very important.

The formation and development of attachment relationships continue through the lifespan, so that adult children's relationships with their parents will change and, for example, as adults we both care for and receive care from our partners.

Two important concepts of attachment theory that are relevant for the secure base model will be briefly summarised here: internal working models and mind mindedness.

Internal working models

To understand the lessons that are learned in these early relationships and why they go on to affect subsequent relationships, Bowlby developed the concept of ‘internal working models'. An internal working model is a set of expectations and beliefs about the self, others and the relationship between the self and others. Thus, the internal working model of an individual will contain particular expectations and beliefs about:

• My own and other people's behaviour

• Whether or not I am loveable and worthy of love

• Whether or not others are available, interested and able to help/protect/ support me

Internal working models begin to be formed in early infancy. If, for example, the baby finds that his feelings of hunger and his accompanying crying behaviour results in a prompt response from a loving adult who makes him feel better, he will learn that certain of his behaviours are linked with the positive behaviours of his caregiver. At the same time, he will feel that he is loved and nurtured and that he ‘deserves' this response. A more generalised expectation of adults as people who are likely to be there to help and protect also develops over time. At the other end of the spectrum, a response that is unavailable or cold will lead to an internal working model of the attachment figure as rejecting, the self as unworthy of care and others as not to be relied on for help and support.

The models are termed ‘working' models because they are subject to change and development according to changing experiences in relationships. Bowlby observed that these models are established in the first few years of life and as children get older models retain some flexibility but become increasingly resistant to change.

Children's behaviours become organised around their expectations of themselves and others and, as they grow older, these expectations tend to influence the way in which others relate to them. In this way, positive and negative cycles of reinforcement are set up. For example, the young person who feels good about herself and expects others to be mostly warm and friendly will present herself to a potential new friendship group in a way that signals ‘you can trust me. I will be a good friend' and so elicits a positive response. Conversely, a young person who expects rejection, has low self esteem and a sense of the world as a hostile place is likely to signal ‘I don't need or want your friendship, don't come close to me', which tends to bring about further rejection of the kind they most fear. Positive internal working models can cope with a degree of rejection. Negative internal working models tend to see hostility even in neutral behaviour. Thus to change children's negative expectations of self and others requires caregivers who can sustain availability and sensitive responding in the face of apparent hostility and lack of trust.

Mind mindedness

Bowlby's view of what was necessary for sensitive care relied on the caregiver thinking about the thoughts and feelings of the child, and over time enabling the child to think about the thoughts and feelings of the caregiver and other adults and children.

Modern attachment researchers have built on the foundations of Bowlby's thinking. Meins et al (2001) have shown the importance for secure attachment and social development of what they call the caregiver's ‘mind mindedness'; their capacity to be interested in what the child is thinking and feeling, to see things from the child's point of view, and to communicate this to the child.

This process begins in infancy with the sensitive caregiver viewing even the tiny baby as having thoughts and feelings. The caregiver speculates about these thoughts and feelings and reflects them back to the baby (Are you hungry? Were you feeling lonely?). In doing so, the baby begins to understand and make sense of his inner experiences and feelings and gradually to manage and express them appropriately.

As the baby grows, the mind minded caregiver also finds it natural to talk to the baby about their own feelings and behaviour (‘Mummy's tired now, so we'll stop the game and have a drink') and that of others (‘Your friend felt sad when you wouldn't share the toy, that's why she went off into the other room'). Through this sort of interaction and verbalisation of thoughts and feelings the child learns to distinguish between different feelings in self and others, to express feelings in ways that are effective and socially acceptable, and to empathise with others.

As David Howe (2011) puts it, ‘Parents who focus on their children's subjective experiences help them understand their own and other people's psychological states and how these are linked to actions and behaviour.'

video resources 

The following five videos provide examples to illustrate each of the five Secure Base dimensions, as described by foster carers and young people. it demonstrates how varied are-giving can be in each dimension.