About the Project

This project developed out of a growing recognition by St. Joseph's Women's Health Centre of the need to inform and educate community-based agencies across Canada on the value of supporting and promoting cross-cultural attachment practices in their everyday programming and responsiveness to families with young children. It also acknowledges the fact that families and children now living in Canada require additional support and understanding in preserving, adapting, and sharing their effective attachment practices.

The project was an exploratory research project, conducted as a qualitative study of parents, with children aged 0-5 years, across Canada. In addition, with this research, we aim to assist organizations across Canada in promoting and maintaining positive cross-cultural attachment practices among program participants, by creating practical resources for them.

The project aims to:

• Acknowledge and validate parent-child attachment beliefs, values, and practices used by women/families coming from diverse backgrounds and countries abroad.
• Identify the impact of migration and resettlement on mothers/families maintenance of effective attachment practices.
• Enhance the knowledge and understanding of cross-cultural attachment beliefs, values, and practices and the impact of migration and resettlement, within community-based agencies.

The Objectives of the project are:

1. To identify, support and validate similarities and differences in attachment beliefs, values, and practices used by immigrants/refugees to promote attachment of their children between the ages of 0 and 5 years.
2. To identify the impact of migration and resettlement on attachment beliefs, values, and practices of immigrant and refugee families from diverse backgrounds.
3. To identify specific strategies used to maintain effective practices for ensuring positive attachment of children in diverse ethno-specific communities.

Who is guiding the Project?

The Project, "Sharing Attachment Practices Across Cultures: Learning from Immigrants and Refugees" is a national project funded by Health Canada's National Projects Fund.

It is being led by the St. Joseph's Women's Health Centre (WHC) in Toronto, and by the project it hosts, the Parkdale Parents' Primary Prevention Project (PPPPP), one of over 800 CAPC and CPNP projects across Canada.

The project also benefits from the direction of a National Advisory Panel made up of representatives of each region across Canada.