About Adoption & Fostering

A brief history of Adoption & Fostering journal

BAAF's quarterly journal, Adoption & Fostering, has been at the cutting edge of debate on childcare issues for over 50 years. First published as Child Adoption in 1953, the journal has always given practitioners, academics and others connected with adoption and fostering a much-needed forum in which to share informed discussion on current research and practice issues, from both the UK and overseas.

Over the decades, Adoption & Fostering has evolved from a 20-page booklet featuring two or three brief articles into an internationally respected publication that attracts more readers and an increasing number of submissions every year. A major development was the introduction of the peer review system in 1997 under the editorship of Malcolm Hill, Director of the Glasgow Centre for the Child & Society. At the same time, the journal was redesigned with more pages and the inclusion of abstracts from other related journals, as well as new occasional sections on "research in practice" and "work in progress".

More recently, April 2003 saw the highly successful launch of Adoption & Fostering online. For no extra cost, subscribers also have access to the two previous years' volumes with plans to extend this back catalogue in the future. Further developments include a special issue on "listening to children" which guest editors Caroline Thomas and Nigel Thomas are preparing for publication in April 2005.

Currently under the expert editorship of Roger Bullock, Fellow at the Centre for Social Policy at Dartington, BAAF's seminal journal is set to continue fulfilling its reputation as "an island of intellectual solidity" for many years to come.