Abstract
This article presents findings from a small-scale qualitative research study exploring the experiences of adoptive parents during adoption transitions – the time between when a match with a child is made until a number of months after placement. What happens during this period can have a bearing on the future success of the placement and long-term well-being of the child. The article seeks to explore the experiences of adoptive parents during this stage of the process in order for practitioners to become better informed about what can make transitions successful.
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine parents to capture the narrative of their adoption transition experience. Thematic analysis of the conversations revealed five main themes: rigidity, scrutiny, support, overall reflections and the relationship with the foster carer. The findings suggest that the transition period was a significant but problematic stage in the adopters’ overall adoption journey. Considerable inconsistency in the approach taken to practice in this area affected their experiences. The research highlighted areas of practice which are out of sync with that recommended in the literature; the article concludes with recommendations for promoting consistency.
Background
From her experience as an adoption social worker and team manager, the author became concerned that the way in which adoption transitions are approached appeared to be modelled on a ‘belief system’ (Burnell, Castell and Cousins, 2009: 2) rather than an evidence base. This coincided with the publication of two articles (Boswell and Cudmore, 2014; Browning, 2015) that challenged current practice and a research report by Selwyn and colleagues (2014) which highlighted links between events in the transition period and placement success. This is particularly important at the current time due to the introduction of plans to regionalise adoption agencies throughout England and the subsequent need for consistent practice.
Literature overview
In the early 1950s, Bowlby (1951) established links between early childhood experiences and long-term mental health and personality development. Even those critical of Bowlby’s original work (e.g. Rutter, 1979) recognise the importance of early childhood experiences. Contemporary research has focused on early attachment and the importance of relationship quality with the caregiver (Dozier, et al., 2011; van den Dries, et al., 2009) and has argued that separation from a primary caregiver is detrimental to the long-term well-being of a child, particularly for those over 12 months of age (Gauthier, Fortin and Jéliu, 2004). As Dozier and colleagues (2011: 1467) explain, adopted children ‘are likely to have experienced problematic rearing conditions as well as disruptions in their previous caregiving relationships’. Indeed, within this group of children, only a minority will have a secure attachment (Schofield and Beek, 2006). It is also argued that sensitive adoptive parenting can be an effective way of countering damaging early experiences (Schofield and Beek, 2006; van den Dries, et al., 2009). Consequently, the child’s experience of transition to adoption is a significant element of their journey as it is the adoptive parents’ first opportunity to provide the parenting crucial to their child’s long-term functioning.
Despite authors suggesting as far back as the late 1980s that adopters’ experiences of this stage play a crucial role later on (Brodzinsky and Huffman, 1988), Boswell and Cudmore (2014: 19) recently found that the way in which transitions are approached is ‘out of synch with some of the fundamental principles established in attachment theory’. They have called for a change in procedures to correct this. While more evidence is needed, there are indications in the literature of the importance of this period for the subsequent course of the adoption placement. For example, adoption introductions were one of five themes to emerge from Selwyn and colleagues’ (2014) research on adoption disruption in the UK. In interviews with parents, a significant minority of interviewees identified issues with the quality of the support received from the adoption social worker and their relationship with the foster carer. They found that although 70% of interviewees reported that introductions had ‘gone well’ (p. 123), cases where they had not done so were associated with children leaving home. Similarly, Fahlberg (1994: 189) emphasises the importance of introductions when explaining that a ‘hasty, ill-planned, and inadequately supported move’ will cause harm that will take a long time to repair. As Byrne (2000) suggests, the period of introductions is an opportunity for the child and adoptive parents to work out whether they can live together as a family. Her concern is that if there is no opportunity to reflect and share people’s views at that stage, it can result in adopters feeling ‘emotional pressure to agree to a placement for all the wrong reasons’ (Byrne, 2000: 5), the implications being that this could lead to problems in the placement.
Overall, there is a significant lack of information regarding how adoptive parents experience the period of adoption transition. Adopters’ views did feature in Tasker and Wood’s (2016) research, which established the concept of ‘unsafe uncertainty’ as a helpful way of describing the overall adjustment experience. However, this was in the context of their overall adjustment to becoming parents rather than their specific experiences of the transition period. Hence, most evidence in this area has not focused specifically on the voice or experience of the adopter in the introductory period. There is also very little research regarding ongoing contact between adopted children and foster carers. The current study seeks to address these gaps in the literature by focusing on the experiences of adopters in the introduction period, their relationship with the foster carer and the factors associated with contact between them.
Methodology
Adopters who had received the adoption order for their child/ren within the last five years were selected for study. In total, 57 families who had been approved by a single adoption agency were emailed an invitation to participate in the research and 25% responded. The first five to get in touch were interviewed, comprising four couples and one adopter whose spouse could not attend the appointment. Sampling adopters post-order meant that the child was legally secure, minimising any concerns for adopters that the information provided might affect the placement of their child.
In addition to this, adopters known professionally to the researcher were not eligible for participation. As the researcher was an adoption service employee, participants were made aware of her situation from the outset and the interview schedule was tightly geared to the aims of the study.
Findings
Rigidity of planning
The rigidity of planning the period of introductions was a dominant theme throughout the adopters’ narratives. They felt they had little say in the structure or timings of the plan and that these were not centred on the specific needs of their child/ren. Two respondents suggested that they would have liked to have had more input. Others also felt that foster carers’ views should have been given more weight but were told there was no flexibility: ‘I remember them [social workers] saying no, it’s got to be done like that.’
Adopters also reported that changes to the plan were sometimes made by the foster carer without informing the social workers. One carer asked adopters to come later than the agreed time of 7am to give her time with her own family. Another respondent recalled: On the first day they invited us to stop for tea … and they said, don’t tell anybody … they didn’t say, you know, it’s four o’clock, you have got to go.
Nevertheless, one couple acknowledged that if the plan had been shorter it may not have been a good thing for their child: We said … we could have probably took her home a bit sooner but … we don’t know what she would have been like if we had done that.
A fifth respondent, who subsequently had difficulties in bonding with her child, expressed a different view: I think someone said you will get a day off but we didn’t get one, we got an afternoon … but I daren’t say we need a day off because they would have said you obviously aren’t prepared to take a child. You won’t get a day off when you do.
Scrutiny
In the interviews, respondents described feeling under scrutiny throughout the transition period. This affected their level of honesty with social workers which, in turn, shaped the nature and extent of subsequent support (see below).
Two families described experiencing anxiety about the possibility of losing their child right up to the point of the making of the adoption order; even though one family recounted having a good relationship with their adoption social worker, they felt unable to be honest due to this concern: Feeling stifled, had a feeling my life had been ruined, didn’t tell social workers … worried about him [being] taken away.
Support
Adopters spoke of the value they attached to having a consistent adoption social worker throughout the assessment process and into the transition period but were more varied in their view of the relationship. Two families were very positive about this support, saying that it was ‘very intuitive and reassured us’, whereas they felt their child’s social worker was ‘absent in [the] process until he moved in’. In contrast, three families spoke negatively about the support from their adoption social worker who, they felt, restricted their ability to talk openly: I found her quite negative all the way through; I’m sure not in a completely nasty way but I always felt we were pulling back rather than moving forward.
Respondents also spoke about the lack of support for the foster carer from their social worker: [We] did introductions when the foster carer’s social worker was away and I don’t feel she felt very supported by them. [It] felt like you needed permission [to go out]. Staying in is like a pressure cooker; you don’t realise how long two weeks is.
All respondents mentioned the adjustment to becoming parents, which some found particularly difficult: She was a stranger in our house … you think she is absolutely fine but I remember the first night [we had] no idea what we were doing.
Adopters’ overall reflections
The overall tone of respondents’ descriptions of their transition experience was mostly negative, although some spoke positively about the support received from individual social workers. For example, many felt that the information they had been given was unnecessarily negative, such as how difficult the children will be to look after in comparison with birth children: When you go on the sessions, I don’t know how you get so many people because they put such a negative slant. Trouble is when you go on these courses all you want is a child … sometimes we don’t listen because we don’t want to hear and the social workers have got to tell you how bad it can be but you don’t want to listen.
Two families described their introduction period as ‘smooth’, but also highlighted later difficulties in managing their child/ren’s behaviours. Another respondent mentioned that her child’s social worker had commented, ‘I have never seen a transition so smooth’; however, having reflected on this, she recognised that her daughter’s grief response became apparent later: ‘[She] just gets on with it, but in her head, this all comes out later.’ This experience was echoed by a fourth respondent who described a similar experience, commenting that the transition went ‘very, very smooth … she wasn’t upset’ and later acknowledging: ‘It was good for a while, then it kind of evened out and then she swung the other way.’
But, as throughout the study, in these circumstances there are always exceptions and one couple spoke about the distress experienced by their child during that period: ‘Taking him in the car, taking him back was causing him distress; he would scream … putting us on edge.’ They felt that it wasn’t ‘until after he moved in [we] built a relationship with him’.
Relationship with the foster carer
All respondents spoke at length about their relationship with the child’s foster carers. They all met them for the first time at the life appreciation day which was universally described as fraught: I think it would have helped to have met them prior to that separately; just a bit overwhelming … just had a morning of telling about birth parents and taking all that information in. I’m thinking you are getting paid; you shouldn’t be making me feel like I’m kidnapping a child. She were really good. I think she did really well at stepping back when I think it were really difficult for her. We were explained how important it is that it’s not someone else going out of their lives and we were quite happy with that. We sort of set a bit of a pattern in September, now exchange presents every birthday and Christmas so now we see each other every summer once and just before Christmas. I think it was about four months; they rang up and said we think it’s time, we are getting withdrawal symptoms.
Discussion
Through qualitative interviews, this research has explored how adoptive parents experience adoption transitions and identified a number of areas for improvement in policy and practice. Parents cited many difficult aspects of the transition period, such as the rigidity and timing of the process, the relationships with social workers and being provided with conflicting information regarding contact with foster carers. Prominently, there was a lack of consistency in how transitions were approached by professionals. By capturing the feelings experienced by adopters during transitions, this article adds to the existing literature covering this area.
The importance of the planning meeting and acknowledgement of the difficulties that can arise are referenced in the literature (see, for example, Byrne, 2000; Browning, 2015). However, the current research highlights that the setting of the meeting is also a critical factor in the overall experience of introductions. Adopters felt that the timings and length of introduction plans were too rigid and were not tailored to the specific needs of each situation, even though a flexible and child-centred approach to planning introductions is advocated in the literature (Byrne, 2000).
The interviews indicate that adopters did not believe that foster families’ needs were sufficiently taken into account in transition planning and suggested that they would have liked foster carers’ views to have been given more weight. Issues regarding co-operative working between social workers were also raised and in some cases there appeared to be a lack of collaborative team working which coloured adopters’ experiences. This is significant because Quinton (2012) acknowledges the importance of the team around the child working together to support the child and family. In addition, Browning (2015) recommends that a meeting of professionals should take place at the start of the transition planning process to clarify the roles of the social workers involved and create a team focused on ensuring that the transition is as positive as possible. This approach appears to fit with the views of respondents which demonstrate the requirement for workers to be united and able to prioritise the needs of the child and family members involved. Byrne (2000) also highlights the adoption worker’s role in empowering adopters by involving them in reviewing plans. This would both help to mitigate any feelings from adopters about not being able to contribute to plans and lead to a more open relationship with social workers.
In Boswell and Cudmore’s (2014) research into adoption transition, the adopters all described the process as having gone smoothly. Similar to several families in the current study, the children were described as ‘fine’ by their new carers. These adopters were also relieved that children were not showing signs of distress. But the researchers also questioned whether this ‘smooth transition’ was as it appeared. They argued that adults involved in transition periods experience a ‘blind spot’ that prevents them from tuning into the loss experienced by the child. Fahlberg (1994) similarly explains that professionals working with a child may be unable to identify when a child’s behaviours indicate that they are grieving. Browning (2015) makes a similar reference to adopters needing to understand the child’s grief.
Boswell and Cudmore (2014) interviewed adopters relatively soon after transition, so they were unable to explore the potential impact of this ‘blind spot’ on later outcomes for the child. As the current research took place at least a year after the transition, it was able to take a longer-term perspective. In the cases where transitions were described as particularly smooth, this longer follow-up period enabled adopters to describe later challenges in parenting their children. Although causation cannot be assumed from this, the finding further highlights the importance of Boswell and Cudmore’s (2014) argument that the adults present in adopted children’s lives (e.g. foster carers and adopters) need to be equipped to recognise subtle indicators of a grief response. Conversely, the respondent whose child was outwardly distressed during the period of introductions found that problems reduced once family life had settled. These findings suggest that a ‘good’ introductory period should not be judged on face value and it is important for adopters to explore what is happening for the child and themselves during this time.
One respondent who was experiencing challenges in parenting her child felt that she would have benefited from more time for reflection, despite the questions about its value discussed earlier. This case is important in light of Selwyn and colleagues’ (2014) disruption research – the sense of not having had enough time to reflect and this linking with difficulties in or disruption to the placement. Indeed, there are several references to the dangers of adopters feeling rushed, noting that the majority of those interviewed had introductions over periods of less than two weeks. If introductions took place over a longer period, as suggested by some authors (Browning, 2015; Burnell, Castell and Cousins, 2009) as a positive step for the child, then the opportunity for reflection time would consequently increase. But this may also lead to some adopters feeling that the introduction process was unhelpfully drawn out, as was the case with four of the five respondents in this study. It seems that more discussion with adopters and opportunity for flexibility in plans to suit the child, foster carer and adopters’ needs in the introduction process would be a way forward.
Selwyn and colleagues’ (2014) study also found that support provided by the adoption social worker during the introductions had a bearing on people’s overall experience of introductions. The significance of this relationship is corroborated in this research and a range of emotions were portrayed by interviewees. In accordance with the literature (Turney, Ward and Ruch, 2010), the importance of relationship-based practice during introductions became apparent. Adopters valued their social worker spending time getting to know them and their family. Value also seemed to be placed on adopters getting on well with them on a personal level.
On the other hand, respondents also spoke of the negativity they experienced from social workers during the preparation training. They felt that the focus on the child’s potential difficulties was unnecessary and out of sync with their reality of adoptive parenting. One respondent, who suffered from post-adoption depression symptoms, recognised that she had been so focused on becoming a parent that she had not fully taken in the information during the assessment process. Therefore there is an argument that had she been able to take on board what social workers were saying, her expectations might have adjusted accordingly, leading to a better outcome. As Foli (2010) highlights, being clear about the challenges is important to prevent unrealistic expectations compared with the reality of adoptive parenting and the risk of post-adoption depression, which is just as high for adoptive mothers as birth mothers in the general population (Senecky, et al., 2009).
In highlighting the importance of the support provided by social workers at the transition stage, Byrne (2000) recommends providing adopters with explicit permission to share their feelings at the planning meeting. Foli (2010) takes this one step further in providing examples of how to talk to adopters in a way that acknowledges the common difficulties; for example, ‘Sometimes bonding can take time with a child. What kinds of activities do you enjoy with your child?’ (p. 397). Although these approaches may not fully mitigate against the powerful feelings of scrutiny, concealment, distrust and fear of losing the child, they should help adopters express how they are feeling with less judgement.
This finding is particularly important given that respondents were interviewed after their adoption orders had been granted. Browning (2015) describes a model of a plan of introductions and within that explains that the first meeting with the child can take place without professionals being there. This arrangement may help to ease the anxiety experienced by adoptive parents and, consequently, the child.
Boswell and Cudmore (2014) found that the social workers and adopters in their study described wanting the foster carers to remain professional and not to express their emotions too openly. But, interestingly, most of the respondents in this study demonstrated empathy and understanding of the foster carers’ role and specifically commented on feeling positive that they expressed upset because it showed how much they cared about him or her. This was especially so in the two cases where the foster carers had expressed a wish to adopt the child. While one still managed to support the transition in a positive way, the other carer struggled, leading the adopter to feel as if she was ‘kidnapping’ the child. This resonates with the findings of Selwyn and colleagues (2014) whereby foster carers were obtrusive in nearly a third of cases, including situations where they had wanted to adopt the child.
It is clear that adopters’ contact with previous foster carers is a practice issue requiring clarification. In this study, all five families had direct contact with the foster carer following the move and the majority have retained this and established a suitable pattern. But in the time after the move, there was confusion regarding whether direct contact was appropriate and, if so, when it should happen. In every case there was a break of at least a couple of months, which is inconsistent with the evidence advocating no break in contact between the child and foster carer once the child has moved (Boswell and Cudmore, 2014; Browning, 2015; Romaine, 2007). What is significant, however, is that only one family made specific reference to keeping in touch with the foster carers for the benefit of the child, so echoing previous research findings that the contact appeared to be primarily focused on the needs of the adults rather than the child (Boswell and Cudmore, 2014).
Limitations
There are several limitations to be acknowledged when interpreting the results of this study. First, adoptive parents were purposively sampled through one local authority, meaning that results may not be generalisable to the wider country. Second, findings may be biased towards adopters who had strong views about this topic so were more likely to participate. Third, as only prospective adopters were interviewed, the views were arguably adult rather than child focused. Finally, the interviewer’s known status as an adoption team manager may have influenced the information obtained. Several steps were taken to mitigate these: the selection of the first five respondents to reply to the research interview; interviewing prospective adopters at least a year after transition; and repeated assurances of the anonymity of responses during the interviews.
Conclusion
Currently there is no up-to-date practice guidance on the period of adoption transitions for social workers. The findings in this study have highlighted many areas in the transition period where clear guidance would be helpful, although further research is needed, especially on the longer-term impact of current practice. This study makes the following recommendations for consideration when planning transitions:
Support adopters and foster carers to build a relationship, including facilitation of at least one meeting before the life appreciation day. Facilitate foster carers’ and adopters’ contribution to the planning process, e.g. by holding at least one informal meeting prior to the formal planning meeting. Set out the roles of each social worker clearly and ensure regular contact from them with both adopters and foster carers during the transition. Consider the value and impact of social worker presence during the first contact between the adopters and the child. If a social worker needs to be present, explain the purpose of this to adopters. Provide explicit permission for practical amendments to be made to the plan to respond to the child’s needs. Consider longer plans of introductions that allow for more time for children to grieve the loss of their carers as well as to allow more fluid reflection time. Incorporate transitional contact with foster carers in the introduction plan to prevent breaks in contact and reduce inconsistency and confusion. Encourage adults involved in the child’s transition to reflect on the loss they are experiencing and avoid using unhelpful positive language such as ‘smooth’ when describing the transition, as this does not reflect the child’s experience. Avoid the provision of highly rigid advice about the initial period of placement, e.g. a requirement to stay home based. Incorporate discussions of feelings regarding post-adoption depression when working with adopters, including in the assessment period.
In practice, there has been a lack of consistency with regard to support and planning in this period of time. The approach to supporting transitional contact between foster carers and children has long been at odds with the literature. The importance of relationships also extends to workers supporting a constructive relationship between adopters and foster carers. In addition, the relationships between adopters and their social workers have implications for how empowered they feel to voice their true views. If this can be achieved, the issues regarding rigidity, not feeling supported, not continuing contact with the foster carers and other factors mentioned that limit a successful transition can be addressed. It is recognised that there are challenges in implementing some of the findings of this study. This includes the adoption scorecard measure, which theoretically encourages agencies to plan shorter periods of introductions for children, and the onset of regionalisation. Despite these challenges the recommendations are clear, evidence based and have few practical limitations.