Aoife Bairead

Aoife Bairéad is a qualified social worker who specialises in attachment and trauma-informed work with children and families. Her post-graduate training includes specialised attachment assessments such as the Infant Care Index, the Adult Attachment Interview and the School Age Assessment and is qualifying to become a CARE-Index trainer. Aoife is also trained in therapeutic approaches including Theraplay, Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy and Mentalisation Based Treatment. Aoife has been working with children, young people and their families for seventeen years and has worked in Ireland, the US and Vietnam.

Since she began her career Aoife has been working with children experiencing mental health difficulties including infant mental health and those who have experienced separation, loss and trauma. Aoife has extensive experience working with children, adolescents and young adults who have experienced early childhood trauma and abuse and are now in care or have been adopted.

In 2018 Aoife set up Minds in Mind, a service providing assessments and therapeutic support for children and their families. Aoife works with those impacted by bereavement, parental alienation, gun and gang violence and children who are adopted, in foster care or residential care. Aoife uses evidence-informed assessment and interventions to empower families to find ways to improve their children’s and their family’s day to day lives. This is done holistically with those caring for the children providing an individualised and family-focused plan that caters to their needs and focuses on agreed goals and outcomes.

Aoife is a guest lecturer on the Masters in Social Work in University College Dublin and provides training to organisations such as the Irish Association of Social Workers, the HSE and Tusla Child and Family Agency as well as bespoke training for specialist groups, fostering agencies, youth and community programmes and services working with children with mental health, disability and complex needs.

Aoife is an Ad-Hoc Board Member of the International Association for the Study of Attachment and sits on the Special Interest Group for Children and Families with the Irish Association of Social Workers.