Adoption & Fostering
Abstracts
Summer 2006 - Vol 30 (2)
Editorial
Roger Bullock
Newspoints
More than just a letter: service user perspectives on one local authority’s adoption postbox service
Julie Selwyn, Lesley Frazer and Peter Wrighton
Key words: adopted children, adopters, adoption, birth family, contact, postbox services
Postbox contact, in which an adoption agency mediates the exchange of letters between adoptive and birth families, now appears to be the most common contact plan for young adopted children. Despite their prevalence, postbox services have received little attention from researchers and are not the subject of any national policy or practice guidance. This article draws on a recent evaluation of one local authority’s postbox service and in particular the perspectives of adopters, birth mothers and extended birth family members using it. The evaluation found that adopters and extended family members were often very committed to sustaining the service for the benefit of children. However, birth fathers were rarely involved and birth mothers had great difficulty in writing, although they valued receiving news of their children. There was considerable scope for disappointment when parties embarked on postbox with different expectations and could not directly communicate their motives and wishes. Overall, the paper concludes that postbox users require more support if this form of contact is to be sustained. It also calls for researchers, practitioners and policy makers to devote further attention to postbox and in particular its longer-term impacts on children.
Julie Selwyn is Director, Hadley Centre for Adoption and Foster Care Studies, School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol
Lesley Frazer is Research Fellow, Hadley Centre for Adoption and Foster Care Studies
Peter Wrighton is a BAAF Trainer Consultant
Disabled foster children and contacts with their birth families
Claire Baker
Key words: long-term foster care, contact with birth family, disabled children
Researchers from the University of York have been working with seven local authorities in England on a major programme of foster care research (Sinclair et al, 2004, 2005a, 2005b). Part of this work included a three-year longitudinal study of 596 foster children. Baker used data from this study to look specifically at the experiences of disabled foster children and here discusses findings in relation to contact with birth families. Earlier studies of disabled children who are looked after suggests that their need for family contact is at least as great as that of others, but that a combination of practical difficulties and professional attitudes may lead to a lower level of contact. This article shows that disabled foster children do, on average, have lower levels of contact than their non-disabled peers. It then uses qualitative data to consider possible reasons for this, along with the implications for good practice.
Claire Baker is Research Fellow, Social Work and Development Unit, University of York
Core principles and therapeutic objectives for therapy with adoptive and permanent foster families
Angie Hart and Barry Luckock
Key words: adoption and fostering support, adoption and fostering therapy, attachment therapy, child and adolescent mental health, adoptive family practices and narratives
Hart and Luckock provide an organising framework for integrated practice decision-making in specialist therapy with adoptive and permanent foster families. The framework is located in current available insights from theory and evidence from empirical research, personal therapeutic practice and family life. The authors formulate an initial case example and use it to illustrate their approach throughout as it demonstrates the distinctiveness of adoptive and permanent foster family life. They go on to outline a set of core principles and objectives in relation to which therapy for these families should be planned.
Angie Hart is Principal Lecturer and Psychotherapeutic Counsellor, University of Brighton/CAMHS, Sussex Partnership Trust
Barry Luckock is Senior Lecturer in Social Work and Social Policy, University of Sussex
The mental health needs of looked after children in a local authority permanent
placement social work team and the value of the Goodman SDQ
Lin Richards, Nola Wood and Luisa Ruiz-Calzada
Key words: looked after children, emotional and mental health needs, permanent placements, pre- and post-care experiences and screening
The authors investigated the current level of emotional and behavioural need and pre- and post-care experiences for children placed in one local authority social care department permanent placement team. A cohort of 41 looked after children was assessed by foster carers, teachers and young people aged 11─16 years themselves, using the Goodman Strengths & Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). The results were related to a number of factors taken from each child’s individual historical experiences as understood from their social work files. The results supported the growing body of research indicating that the mental health needs of looked after children are significantly higher than those of the general population. A range of factors was found to reach statistical significance in relation to increased mental health difficulties. The research highlighted the complex and multi-factorial nature of the experiences of the looked after cohort that contribute to overall emotional well-being and positive mental health. The study also sought to identify a suitable screening tool for the early identification of mental health need and Goodman’s SDQ is discussed in this light.
At the time of writing, Lin Richards was Principal Social Worker, Southend on Sea Child and Family Consultation Service (CAMHS), South Essex Partnership Trust
Nola Wood is a mental health worker with specific remit for looked after children with the same Trust
Luisa Ruiz-Calzada was a psychology assistant in the same department
Users’ views of ‘looked after’ children’s mental health services
Alison Beck
Key words: looked after children, mental health, qualitative, service user
This article explores the views of young people in the care of Lambeth local authority, and those of their carers, about the young people’s mental health and their access to and experience of mental health services. It is associated with a separate paper which used a quantitative design to clarify mental health needs in the same population (Beck, forthcoming) and which identified two particularly disadvantaged subgroups: young people living out of the borough and young people who moved their placements frequently. Their views are considered separately, where relevant, in this paper.
The main methodology was a postal questionnaire survey comprising open-ended questions. The results highlighted a number of themes: young people tended to identify internal emotional problems while their carers predominantly focused on externally visible problem behaviours; young people generally valued contact with social workers but reported this lacking; both groups of respondents described barriers to accessing mental health services. These included physical obstacles, such as distance to travel, as well as psychological barriers such as the belief that only ‘mad’ people use such services. A two-limbed service model is proposed to address the needs of young people in local authority care incorporating: provision by mental health professionals of information about mental health services and liaison between all parties to secure appropriate services; and mental health interventions aimed at engaging young people with local CAMHS.
Alison Beck is a consultant clinical psychologist, Springfield Hospital, London
‘Theatre of Attachment’: using drama to facilitate attachment in adoption
Joan Moore
Key words: adoption, drama, therapy, attachment, children
This article describes an innovative drama therapeutic approach to facilitating attachment between adoptive parents and their children who suffered abuse and neglect in their family of origin. Children of hostile parents often display fear of adults’ proximity. Play is proposed as the most natural way to increase empathy between these children and adoptive parents. Their joint engagement in ‘make-believe’ invites discovery of new perspectives and heightened self-awareness. The child’s life story is explored, initially using the metaphor as fictional contexts provide the privacy of distance that allow us to confront what may otherwise be too disturbing or painful.
It is argued that working in the child’s home, using sensory materials, assists transfer of learning from the therapeutic play space to daily life. Children begin to reassess their survival of adversity as ‘heroes’ rather than ‘victims’. Released from blame for events over which they had little control, children explore continuing troublesome patterns and, through theatrical enactment, create new ways of being. Parents’ direct involvement in performance of the child’s story (both fictional and real) leads to improved mutuality. The shared emotional experience brings parent and child closer, and parents gain more confidence to support their children.
Joan Moore is a freelance registered drama/play therapist and ASA (Adoption Support Agency) individual provider
Legal notes: England and Wales
Deborah Cullen
Legal notes: Scotland
Alexandra Plumtree
Legal notes: Northern Ireland
Kerry O’Halloran
Health notes: Four years on – lessons learned from the implementation of an Integrated Care Pathway to address promoting Health of LAC guidance (2002) in an English local authority
Patricia Emery
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