ABSTRACT
The most significant loss for a child is the absence of someone to whom they have become attached, a parent, sometimes a grandparent, another attachment figure or someone close such as a sibling or friend. Loss may come about through parental separation or divorce, or through bereavement – death. Children may experience other significant losses, for example, the death of a pet, loss of a transitional object, moving house and the loss of familiar surroundings, belongings and people. This latter is particularly severe if loss of country, and with it language and culture, is involved, as is the case for many asylum seeking and refugee children. Separation from an attachment figure may be brief or lasting, and can involve a change of home, temporary or long term, with different or unfamiliar people giving care. Understanding of attachment theory, specifically of the importance for their future mental health of an infant’s attachments to their parents or caregivers, provides us with some insight into the emotional effects of separation and loss. Until the work of Bowlby, which together with the Robertsons’ films revealed the damaging effects on young children of separation from their parents, there was little concern to minimize the need for that separation or to provide the secondary or substitute attachment figure that could help a young child manage the experience.
