Patchwork Families: A Grounded Theory of How Video Interaction Guidance Facilitates Foster-carers’ Relationships With Children in Their Care

Video Interaction Guidance (VIG) has been used with a range of different client groups to support positive interactions (Kennedy, Landor and Todd, 2011). There has been little research into how this intervention might work with foster-carers of primary school-aged children who are in Local Authority care. Using Grounded Theory Methodology (Corbin and Strauss, 2008), interview data from 7 foster-carers of primary-school aged children who had taken part in a video-feedback intervention, VIG, was analysed. Data was collected prior to and subsequent to the intervention. The theory that developed from this analysis, The Patchwork Explanatory Model, elucidated the complexity of the lives of the foster-carers through identification of relational factors that affected effective interactions between them and the children in their care. These include; the child’s attributes, foster-carer’s beliefs, child behaviour, the child and carer’s histories, foster-carer’s capacity to reflect, other people and the foster-carer’s affective state. Processes that are inherent to the delivery of VIG that are found to be important are that it is a strength-based intervention where time is given for foster-carers to micro-analyse moments of attuned interaction. The underlying mechanisms are that of conscious awareness of the foster-carer’s skills and mentalisation. Foster-carers felt validated by the intervention; their perceptions of the behaviour of the children in their care was normalised either because it had changed or was seen differently; and they reported changes in their own behaviour. An unexpected finding was that foster-carer’s perceptions of trauma appeared reduced. The theoretical explanatory model created also explains different responses to the same intervention with a further underlying mechanism of self-protection. Self-protection is actively carried out by foster-carers to reduce the current and future risk of trauma or feeling overwhelmed. It can affect the beliefs held by the foster-carer and interactions of the foster-carer and these can influence the foster-carer’s ability to mentalise so that they can be less effective in their reflections of their own and the child’s actions with a consequent impact on the perceived quality of the relationship.