About this course
The Child Attachment Interview (CAI) course provides a good grounding in the use and application of the instrument to assessing and understanding attachment in middle childhood. The training is designed to familiarise participants with the method and covers both administration and coding of the CAI. Participants completing the CAI training component will gain a good understanding of how to administer and code interviews and this knowledge may be useful as a framework for understanding children’s attachment difficulties. This course does not provide certification as a reliable CAI coder and this may be required if the CAI was to be part of a formal and rigorous assessment, both for research or clinical purposes.

To become an accredited CAI coder you will need to complete a second phase of training to ensure reliability which is undertaken separately and includes the additional coding of 30 interviews provided by Yael Shmueli-Goetz, the course leader. We are in the process of creating new teaching materials for this, to comply with new data protection regulations, and we hope to be able to offer an updated version of the reliability training in the future.
- Who is this course suitable for?
Child mental health professionals, researchers, social workers and teachers. Some experience of interviewing children would be an advantage, as would some familiarity with attachment theory, methods or research. However, nothing beyond interest in learning about the method is required.
- Pre-course preparation
You will be required to do a pre-course task.
- Aims of course
To teach the rationale and technique of using the CAI as a tool for the assessment of child-parent attachment relationships in middle childhood (8-15 year olds) through videotaped interview.
This includes the teaching of the manualised method of coding and reviewing various interviews, providing practice in the coding of the CAI. The CAI training and associated materials are copyright of the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families. At present the only way to be trained in using the CAI tool is through the Centre’s training and reliability test. At present, the reliability element of the training is not being offered for the foreseeable future whilst we work on developing new materials.
- System requirements for online training
The online platform Zoom will be used to deliver this training. Prior to booking on, please ensure you meet the system requirements so you're able to join this training.
Before the training, please test your equipment is working by going to Zoom.us/test and follow the instructions.
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