ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the author’s clinical research, a study of therapeutic observation with an infant in foster care. The rationale for the research included a lack of studies of and knowledge about the earliest stages of life in the care system. The research aims were to understand more about the early experiences of a baby in care, and the experiences of his or her foster carers and social workers, and to generate ideas and hypotheses for investigation in further research. I describe the grounded theory methodology for analysing the research data and provide a narrative taking the reader from the first moments of the observation of the baby in his or her foster home to the last days before he or she was adopted.
