Books, booklets & multimedia

Adoption with Contact: Implications for policy and practice

	Price: £9.95	BAAF 1996 ISBN 978-1-873868-37-9

This excellent study provides a firm base from which to begin to look at adoption with contact, especially when it involves the placing of older children.
Professor John Triseliotis

Openness in adoption is becoming a central plank of adoption policy in the UK and practitioners have sought to find imaginative ways in which to implement this as practice.

Fratter’s study makes a significant contribution to the growing literature on the subject by examining the experience of adoption with contact in the case studies of 32 children placed in 22 families. Rich in detail and illustrated with accounts by family members, the study considers the experience of contact for the adopted child, adoptive parents, and the birth parents, and highlights the policy and practice issues that emerge.

Whilst the findings support the move towards more open forms of adoption, Fratter urges caution and stresses the need for a child-centred approach.