Adoption & Fostering
Abstracts
Summer 2004 - Vol 28 (2)
Providing a secure base: tuning in to children with severe learning disabilities in long-term foster care
Mary Beek and Gillian Schofield
Key words: attachment theory, communication, children with severe learning disabilities, good progress, long-term foster care
The authors analyse the care given to four children with severe learning difficulties who have made excellent progress in long-term foster care. Their foster carers were found to be providing sensitive care across five dimensions of parenting: providing availability, tuning in to the minds and feelings of the children, building self-esteem, promoting autonomy and including the child as a full member of the family. The capacity to tune in to the minds of the children, to see the world from their perspective, was seen as key to the building of warm, positive relationships. Secure in these relationships, the children's anxiety levels were reduced and they were freer to learn, play and develop their potential.
Mary Beek is a Senior Research Associate at the University of East Anglia and a part-time independent social worker in adoption and fostering
Gillian Schofield is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Work and Psychosocial Studies and Co-Director of the Centre for Research on the Child and Family, University of East Anglia
Removing barriers to service delivery: an outcome evaluation of a 'remodelled' foster care programme
Yvonne Unrau, Michael Wells and Mary Ann Hartnette
Key words: foster care, outcome evaluation, permanency outcomes, stability outcomes
This article describes a US family-centred, needs-based foster care programme named Promise and presents evaluation findings based on a comparison group design evaluation. Promise allowed for greater discretion among line-level workers to meet the unique service needs of families served, promoted greater team-oriented communication and involved more foster family involvement than the comparison group. An initial statistical comparison revealed that foster children in the Promise group (n = 380) experienced greater stability in their caseworker assignment and, to a lesser degree, greater placement stability over a 15-month period when compared to foster children served under the conventional model (n = 436). However, only the caseworker continuity effect remained when further analysis was undertaken. Similar rates of permanency achievement were reported for both models. Implications for foster care policy, practice and research are presented.
Yvonne A Unrau is Associate Professor, School of Social Work, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan
Michael A Wells is Foster Care Administrator, Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Peoria
Mary Ann Hartnett is Associate Director, Children and Family Research Center, School of Social Work, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The emotional and behavioural difficulties of looked after children: foster carers' perspectives and an indirect model of placement support
Kay Sargent and Kate O'Brien
Key words: foster placements, looked after children, emotional and behavioural difficulties
Recognition of the emotional and behavioural difficulties experienced by looked after children and the impact of these, both on the children and young people and those caring for them, has been increasing. Child and adolescent mental health services have been trying to find better ways of meeting the needs of these children. The authors draw on an evaluation of a joint social services and health authority project set up to support carers and professionals responsible for children in foster placements. They also seek to give foster carers' perspectives on their foster children's difficulties and the services offered and discuss the issues and implications arising from an indirect approach to providing this support.
Kay Sargent is a Lecturer in Child Care and Early Childhood Studies at the University of Bristol
Kate O'Brien is Adoption Planning Manager, Bristol City Council
Attachment and behavioural difficulties in internationally adopted Russian children
Lana Farina, Myra Leifer and Ira J Chasnoff
Key words: international adoption, institutionalisation, attachment, behavioural problems, parenting stress, Russian adoptees
Farina et al assess the impact of institutionalisation and parenting stress on the quality of attachment and behavioural difficulties among Russian children adopted by US families. Some children had been diagnosed with an Alcohol Related Neurodevelopmental Disorder (ARND) or mild developmental delays. Twenty-nine families completed a Demographic Questionnaire, Attachment Security Questionnaire, Child Behaviour Checklist and Parenting Stress Index. It was found that parenting stress was significantly correlated with insecure attachment and increased child behavioural difficulties and attachment insecurity was significantly correlated with the severity of behaviour problems. Length of institutionalisation and age at adoption did not correlate with parents' perceptions of their attachment relationships with their children or the severity of their children's behaviour problems. No differences were found with regard to gender or diagnosis of ARND.
Lana Farina completed this research at Children's Research Triangle and the Illinois School of Professional Psychology Chicago, Illinois; she is currently at the NYU Child Study Center in New York
Myra Leifer is a PhD graduate, Argosy University, Chicago, Illinois
Ira J Chasnoff is a medical doctor, Children's Research Triangle, Chicago, Illinois
User views and experiences of post-adoption service: a study of a regional post-adoption agency
Perlita Harris
Key words: user views, post-adoption, adoption support, adopted people, birth relatives, adoptive relatives
While there has been a growing awareness of the need for post-adoption services for all those personally affected by adoption, little is known about the views and experiences of those who make use of them. The findings reported here derive from a collaborative study by the University of Warwick and the West Midlands Post Adoption Service (WMPAS), undertaken as a doctoral research project. The aim of the study was to centralise the views of users of WMPAS. The analysis revealed that nearly all service users had approached other people and places for help prior to contacting WMPAS, that most evaluated WMPAS services highly and that, for the majority, receiving a service had in many ways made a positive difference to their life. Implications for the provision of post-adoption services are discussed, together with some of the study's recommendations. In particular, the latter address publicity, the development of new services and increasing accessibility.
Perlita Harris is a lecturer at the University of Bristol, School for Policy Studies
Report on a longitudinal research project, exploring the development of attachments between older, hard-to-place children and their adopters over the first two years of placement
Jeanne Kaniuk, Miriam Steele and Jill Hodges
Key words: adoption outcomes, attachment, abuse and neglect, permanence planning, looked after children
The study under discussion explored the development of attachments between a group of 63 children aged four to eight years at placement, all of whom had a history of separations and neglect or abuse. The 63 children and their adopters (42 families) were followed up for two years after placement. They were compared with a group of 48 children who had been adopted as infants (under 12 months of age) but who were of similar age as the research sample at the time of the study. Measures used included measures of the children's attachments and psychological development and of the adopters' attachment status and experience as parents. Uniquely in the field of adoption, this project has included measures of attachment that look below the surface to explore the inner worlds of both the children and the adopters. The children's schools were also contacted for a report on their progress.
Jeanne Kaniuk is Head of Adoption and Permanent Families Service, Coram Family
Miriam Steele is Course Organiser, Department of Psychology, University College London/Anna Freud Centre and Child Psychotherapist, Anna Freud Centre
Jill Hodges is Consultant Child Psychotherapist, Great Ormond Street Hospital
and Honorary Senior Lecturer, Brain and Behavioural Sciences Unit, Institute of Child Health
Lecture: Primitive forces in society: holding the asylum-seeking child in mind
John Simmonds
This lecture was first presented at a Tavistock Clinic Social Policy and Human Relationships seminar in February 2004. A prologue and references have been added; otherwise the paper is printed here in the style in which it was delivered, as a lecture rather than an article for publication.
John Simmonds is Director of Policy Research Development, BAAF
Legal notes: England and Wales
Deborah Cullen
Legal notes: Scotland
Alexandra Plumtree
Legal notes: Northern Ireland
Kerry O'Halloran
Health notes: Looked After Health Assessment - statutory responsibility or opportunity? A personal view
Jan Welbury and Judith Fletcher
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