This book offers an analysis and summery of the use and limitations of child attachment theory as the basis for decision-making and planning in contemporary child welfare practice.

This book explores controversies related to increasing diagnoses of ‘attachment disorder’ in child welfare assessments and arguments both for and against the use of attachment specific therapies for children in care. The author calls for a new pedagogy of relational child welfare and considers the relevance of attachment theory to transnational and migrant families, refugees fleeing conflict, adoptive and surrogate children in diverse families and the increased number of families that are in poverty after the global financial crisis.