ATTACHMENT-BASED PARENTING INTERVENTIONS: OPTIONS, EVALUATION & SUPPORT
Anne-Marie Maxwell, PhD
July 29, 2025
Early life experiences influence children’s developmental trajectories. The parent-child relationship is central to children’s experience of the world during these critical early years. Attachment theory, with its focus on the parent-child relationship from the earliest days, underpins parenting interventions that aim to promote the development of secure attachment relationships by supporting parents to provide sensitive, responsive caregiving.
In Australia, the most widely available attachment-based intervention is Circle of Security Parenting, or COSP. But COSP is one of many such interventions, which approach this work in different ways, and are likely to have differing impacts in different populations and contexts. So, what attachment-based interventions are available in Australia and beyond? How do they differ from one another? And how might one choose between them?
This seminar will address these questions and more. It will:
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Provide a brief overview of attachment theory
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Present a selection of attachment-based interventions with a summary of the evidence base for each
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Discuss appropriate evaluation tools for attachment-based interventions including the Composite Caregiving Questionnaire (CCQ)
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Introduce the Healthy Attachment Australia & New Zealand (HAANZ) network
About the presenter
Dr Anne-Marie Maxwell is Research Manager at Tresillian Family Care Centres, Australia’s largest not-for-profit early parenting service, and an Adjunct Fellow at Macquarie University. Her research focuses on evaluating parenting programs, with an emphasis on program impact on parent mental health and the parent-child relationship, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Anne-Marie’s research is enriched by her background in early childhood education, more than twenty years’ experience working with children and families in diverse contexts, and her passion for nurturing parent-child relationships. She currently serves as Treasurer of Healthy Attachment Australia & New Zealand (HAANZ) and is a longstanding committee member of The Northern Centre.