Adoption & Fostering
Abstracts

Spring 2001 - Vol 25 (1)

Editorial Malcolm Hill

Newspoints

The White Paper, Adoption: A new approach: a ‘curate’s egg’? Caroline Ball

The Government published its proposals for the partial reform of adoption law in the White Paper, Adoption: A new approach in December 2000. Caroline Ball provides a critique of the proposals in the context of the needs of the adoptive population at the beginning of the 21st Century and the wide-ranging though as yet unrealised reform process of the past decade. The article acknowledges the extent to which the Government’s proposals recognise and partially address identified problems in childcare and court procedure for children in the public care who cannot return to their birth families and for whom adoption is the preferred outcome. It is also identifies the extent to which the proposals are fundamentally flawed by significant omissions in regard to the identification of problems and the consequential range of necessary reforms.

Caroline Ball is Senior Lecturer in Law, University of East Anglia, Norwich

Initial agency responses to black prospective adopters: results of a small-scale study Roger Fenton

A prospective adopter’s initial contact with an agency sets the tone for the rest of the assessment and placement process; an unsympathetic, culturally inappropriate response can lead to potential adopters turning elsewhere or giving up the idea of adopting altogether. Prior research has shown that negative feedback can also affect their friends’ and family’s likelihood of proposing themselves as adopters. Roger Fenton reports the results of a small-scale study of UK agencies, which indicate that agencies may be losing a valuable potential resource by their poor handling of initial enquiries from black out-of-area prospective adopters.

Roger Fenton and his wife have experienced adoption in a marriage which is mixed ethnically, in religion and in nationality. Both are physically disabled. The couple have four adopted children of various ethnic backgrounds, currently aged from 12 to 19.

Early adversity and adoptive solutions Ann and Alan Clarke

A belief that early experience has profound influences on later development has been common for hundreds of years, reinforced in the middle of the last century by the early work of John Bowlby. Such views were rapidly transformed by research on the mainly good outcomes for children rescued from severe adversity. Ann and Alan Clarke have researched this field for more than 40 years and sample here some relevant research findings and their implications for current practice. Resilience is built into the human system, but requires a positive social context for its full expression. Adoption is the strongest form of intervention and its usually good outcome challenges other forms of care. Large differences in adoptive practices and a decline in the numbers adopted suggest that dated attitudes are partly responsible for the under-use of adoption.

Ann and Alan Clarke are both Emeritus Professors at the University of Hull

Family building in adoption Barbara Prynn

Much anxiety is generated about whether or not a particular family placement will have a satisfactory outcome for the children concerned. Barbara Prynn’s article is based on research in which the relationship between adopters and their adopted children was examined. The parents of 50 adoptive families were interviewed. They were asked about their early lives in their families of origin, their experience with their adopted children and their life as adopters in the wider social context. Links are made between a number of aspects of adoptive family life and outcome, in particular the significance of adopters’ own early attachment experience.

Barbara Prynn is a local authority worker in adoption, part-time lecturer at the Tavistock Centre and a Director of the Centre for Adoption and Identity Studies at the University of East London

The effect of foster carer training on the emotional and behavioural functioning of looked after children Helen Minnis and Clare Devine

The Foster Carers’ Training Project was a three-year research project which examined the effect of training foster carers on the emotions and behaviour of the children they were looking after. The research produced useful quantitative findings, outlined in a paper recently published in Archives of Disease in Childhood (Minnis et al, 2001), but the training itself also provided rich information about foster carers’ communications and interactions with the children in their care. Helen Minnis and Clare Devine describe the training, the difficulties children presented, the communications which carers had to deal with and the empirical results of the research.

Helen Minnis is Specialist Registrar and Research Fellow in Child Psychiatry at Yorkhill NHS Trust, Glasgow

Clare Devine is Lecturer in Social Work at Paisley University, and an independent social work trainer/consultant

Allegations against foster carers and the implications for local-authority training and support Sheila Bray and Brian Minty

This report presents findings of a small in-depth study of allegations made against foster carers in six agencies: how the allegations were experienced by foster carers, the consequences for them and the children involved, the antecedents of the allegations, and the implications for the support and training of foster carers. Sheila Bray and Brian Minty found that, although less than ten per cent of allegations were substantiated, no children removed during an investigation were returned to their foster carers. Foster carers were investigated in the same way as birth parents accused of child abuse, but without their legal safeguards, and they were sometimes denied support by their agencies. They manifested considerable stress symptoms as a result of the allegations, sometimes aggravated by insensitive methods of investigation. Although, for many, the allegation followed a period of difficulties between child and foster carer, the majority of carers were astonished at, and devastated by, the allegations. Sheila Bray is a former foster carer, and now manages a private children’s home for disturbed children Brian Minty is an Honorary Fellow in the Department of Psychiatric Social Work, University of Manchester, and is also a former foster carer

Work in progress: concurrent planning in the adoption of children under eight years Elizabeth Monck

Legal notes: England and Wales Deborah Cullen

Legal notes: Scotland Alexandra Plumtree

Medical notes: health inheritance - the importance of family history for children in public care Catherine Hill

Book reviews

Abstracts

Diary

Index