Adoption & Fostering
Abstracts

Winter 2005 - Vol 29 (4)

Editorial:
Roger Bullock

Newspoints

Fostering Now: Messages from research - a summary
David Berridge

Key words: fostering

David Berridge summarises the main conclusions of the latest research overview in the Government's Messages from Research series. The overview, Fostering Now by Ian Sinclair, includes findings from 16 studies.

David Berridge is Professor of Child and Family Welfare at the University of Bristol.

Time for a change: a review of Fostering Now and other programmes of research on children in need
Michael Little

Key words: fostering, children in need, children's services

Fostering Now (Sinclair, 2005) is one of the most important books on foster care in recent years. It presents new information and is part of a series of publications on children's services designed to convey research messages to policy makers and practitioners. However, Michael Little argues that if key questions are to be answered and effective services developed, different types of research and new methods of dissemination are needed.

Michael Little is a researcher at Chapin Hall Center for Children, University of Chicago, and Dartington Social Research Unit, UK

A European survey of the number and characteristics of children less than three years old in residential care
Kevin Browne et al

Key words: young children, residential care, institutions, risk of harm

Research evidence shows that young children in residential care without parents are at risk of harm in terms of attachment disorder, developmental delay and neural atrophy in the developing brain. This damage caused by early privation of parenting has been shown to have long-term consequences. Browne and colleagues report on a survey of 33 European countries that was conducted to identify the number and characteristics of children less than three years old placed in residential care without their parents for more than three months during the year ending 31 December 2003. Ministries of Health in Europe were contacted and asked for official data.

For the 31 countries that responded it was estimated that 23,099 children (11.2 per 10,000) aged less than three years were living in institutions. There was great variation between countries for the proportion of young children in institutions and family foster care. Although residential care was shown to cost on average three times as much as foster care, 33 per cent of countries had more young children in institutions than fostered. Those countries with lower GDP and health expenditure had larger proportions of young children in institutions associated mainly with abandonment, disability and medical problems. Only four per cent of children were biological orphans with deceased parents.

It is recommended that no child less than three years should be placed in residential care without a parent. Even when high-quality institutions are used as an emergency measure, research has suggested that a child should be moved into family foster care as soon as possible.

Kevin Browne is Professor at the Centre of Forensic and Family Psychology, University of Birmingham

Developing the Incredible Years Webster-Stratton parenting skills training programme for use with adoptive familiesy
Kay Henderson and Norma Sargent

Key words: adoption support, parent training

This article reports on the development of an adoption-specific parenting skills programme that took as its starting point the widely used Incredible Years package by Carolyn Webster-Stratton. Four courses of the BASIC Incredible Years programme were run at Coram Family for adoptive parents. During these sessions notes were taken of adoption-related material that arose in discussion and during individual interviews with participants. Additional material for trainers and parents was developed by staff from Coram Adoption Service and the Anna Freud Centre. The courses were also evaluated and parents reported feeling significantly less stressed and more competent after the training, found their children more pleasurable and reported significant reduction in the children's levels of hyper-activity, conduct disorder and behavioural difficulties. The value of combining proven behavioural management strategies with consideration of the specific challenges facing adoptive parents is highlighted.

Kay Henderson is a Researcher at the Anna Freud Centre, London
Norma Sargent is a Post Adoption Worker at Coram Adoption Service, London

Children's advocacy in Wales: organisational challenges for those who commission and deliver advocacy for looked after children
Andrew Pithouse and Odette Parry

Key words: children, advocacy services, Wales

The authors set out results from a Welsh Assembly Government-funded study of all children's advocacy services commissioned by local authorities in Wales. The results are presented in relation to key organisational themes that include the characteristics of children's advocacy services in Wales and the views of advocacy services held by local authority staff. Particular prominence is given to matters concerning looked after children where it will be seen that (a) advocacy providers tend to deliver case- or issue-based services and do relatively less in the way of cause-based advocacy, (b) most advocacy providers see themselves as both insufficiently funded by and independent of those commissioning their services, (c) local authority staff typically view advocacy as a service of benefit to children and families rather than of any direct benefit to authorities and (d) there remain significant difficulties in providing advocacy for 'hard-to-reach' children such as fostered children, children in respite care and children placed out of the local authority area. The paper concludes that there is a strong case for national government in Wales to promote a step-change in the way children's advocacy is organised so that a more strategically coherent and regional approach is taken that can deliver an independent, equitable, accessible and more uniform quality of advocacy provision for vulnerable children and young people.

Andrew Pithouse is Professor in the Cardiff School of Social Sciences, University of Cardiff, Wales
Odette Parry is Professor, Social Inclusion Research Unit, University of North East Wales Institute

Holding and sharing memories: the significance of social work recording for birth record counselling
Julia Gannon

Key words: adoption, files, birth record counselling, recording, birth history

Julia Gannon explores the findings of a study into the recording style and content of adoption files and the influences of these on the birth record counsellor's decision-making process. Her article focuses on the specific information shared or not shared with the adopted adult. It asserts that birth record counselling is one of the few tasks that propel the social worker back into the history of social work practice while supporting service users through their search for information about their birth history and adoption. There is an emphasis on assessing how serviceable the recording style and content of adoption files are for adoptees. The research design involved semi-structured interviews with eight social workers currently holding birth record counselling cases. Four of the respondents were employed in local authority adoption teams and four were independent self-employed social workers in the field of adoption. The author's findings suggest that the knowledge birth record counsellors' gain from adoptees about how they experience their files has potential for practical application to social work practice in children and families teams today.

Julia Gannon is Senior Lecturer in Social Work, Middlesex University, Enfield, Middlesex

Legal notes: England and Wales
Deborah Cullen

Legal notes: Scotland
Alexandra Plumtree

Legal notes: Northern Ireland
Kerry O'Halloran

Health notes: Age assessment in adolescents: why is it needed?
Colin Michie

Book reviews

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