Adoption & Fostering

Derek Kirton summarises responses from student social workers to a questionnaire on attitudes to race and adoption. The respondents were mainly second-year Social Work (DipSW) students specialising in work with children and families. Two key findings emerged from the survey. Firstly, questions of race and adoption evoke very diverse responses, with an overall tendency towards ‘soft’ support for same-race adoption. Secondly, perspectives are significantly divided according to ethnicity, with minority ethnic social work students markedly more in favour of same-race adoption than their white counterparts. In conclusion, Kirton outlines the possible implications of these findings for adoption policy and practice.

In recent years there has been an increasing demand to support adults, children and families affected and infected by HIV/AIDS. Current statistics in the Thames Region show that the majority of affected families are of African descent. This paper by Louise Matovu, Mary Mwatsama and Benigna Ndagire focuses on the need for permanence planning for children from East African families predominately from Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, who have migrated to the UK, and how their cultural values, family patterns and structures influence their perceptions and uptake of social services. The authors draw on their professional and personal experiences to highlight some useful ways in which an East African family could be supported through an effective permanence planning process for their children. The impact of migration as well as of HIV status is considered.

David Fergusson and L John Horwood examine findings from a longitudinal study of the outcomes of adoption in a birth cohort of 1,262 New Zealand children studied from birth to the age of 16 years. This study suggested that children who entered adoptive families were advantaged throughout childhood in a number of areas including childhood experiences, standards of health care, family material conditions, family stability and mother/child interaction. However, the environmental advantages experienced by children who entered adoptive families were not directly reflected in the pattern of adolescent adjustment of this group. In particular, children placed in adoptive families had rates of externalising behaviours (including conduct disorders, juvenile offending and substance use behaviours) that were significantly higher than children reared in two-parent birth families but somewhat lower than those of children who entered single-parent families at birth.

Annick-Camille Dumaret and Marthe Coppel-Batsch discuss findings from a French research study into outcomes for adults formerly placed in long-term foster care. The aim of the research was to measure the effects of adverse childhood experiences when followed by a minimum of five years' continuous care in a stable environment. A number of viewpoints were obtained during the course of the study, including those of foster carers and the agency through which all the placements in question were made. However, the findings in this article largely concentrate on the feelings, aspirations and living situations of a sample of 63 young adults, interviewed at least five years after leaving care. Despite clearly varied outcomes, the authors conclude that a stable care environment, backed up by substantial educational and psychotherapeutic support, can go a long way towards helping children separated from their birth families achieve satisfactory social integration in adulthood.

What are the best ways of finding families for disabled children? Who chooses to have them and why? Hedi Argent identifies some of the needs of disabled children who require permanent care and explores the type of qualities to look for, and those to avoid, in the search for prospective carers. Taking the case of George, among others, she emphasises the importance of devising recruitment publicity that is specially tailored to fit the situation of each individual child. Given the right approach, she argues, carers can be found for even the most severely impaired children.

This article is based on the book, Taking Extra Care — Respite, shared and permanent care for children with disabilities (BAAF, 1997), by Hedi Argent and Ailie Kerrane.

Pat Rajan and Liz Lister offer their views on the letterbox scheme which has been operating within Nottinghamshire's Support After Adoption team since June 1994. This confidential service aims to maintain links between adoptive parents and birth families once an adoption order has been granted. Rajan and Lister begin by outlining the background to the service's development, including the collection of information from consumers via national organisations. They describe concerns about confidentiality and recruitment of adopters, and discuss the criteria for selecting birth families most likely to respond to the scheme. By and large careful attention, both to the establishment of the letterbox service and to the selection of families who use it, has led to its success.