Adoption & Fostering

Significant concerns remain in many countries about the high numbers of children needing an adoptive placement relative to the low numbers of prospective adopters, the high level of long-term therapeutic support needs for many adopted children and their families, and whether there are appropriate services to meet them. There has been an increase in ‘priority’ children waiting over 12 months to find a family. These are often children aged four years and over, in care with siblings, with additional needs or developmental uncertainties and from minority ethnic backgrounds. The financial and emotional costs of long-term fostering when plans are changed are huge. This article describes a major development in child care practice in Wales that has occurred over the past two years. The Adopting Together Service (ATS) involves a unique, innovative and multi-layered collaboration between the voluntary adoption agencies (VAAs – non-governmental charities) and regional adoption teams (statutory agencies) to secure permanence for children who wait the longest to find families. It explains how the ATS has been developed and embedded, including an account of the referral process, the approach to recruitment, linking and matching, and therapeutic activity before, during and after placement. It also describes the process of securing sustainable social procurement under the guidance of the British Standard for Collaborative Working (ISO 44001; British Standard Institute, 2017), the creation of a Joint Relationship Management Plan between VAAs, and the implementation of service level agreements between the voluntary and statutory sectors. These developments are considered in the context of the Welsh Government’s implementation of the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, which lays out collaborative expectations to the statutory sector as one of its sustainable development principles. The article concludes with an initial evaluation of progress, noting challenges to the service and the views of the social workers, foster carers and adoptive parents involved.

When children are first looked after, a significant challenge for those who support them is helping the children understand the reasons why they are in care. The Narrative Model is a model for supporting social workers to structure conversations with children about their entry to care and other complex issues. This article summarises the Narrative Model and shows how it supports placement stability for children. It clarifies how it differs from life story work and how it includes birth parents in the process. It then describes how the child’s response to the experience of having a narrative shared with them can aid social workers when making decisions about what the child may need next.

In the general population, confiding is typically associated with increased well-being, reduced distress and strengthened relationships. However, there is a lack of research exploring the role of confiding among young people who have been in the care system. The current study employed Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to guide the analysis of semi-structured interviews with eight young people with a range of care experiences, looking at the topic of confiding in others. Five themes emerged from the data analysis that indicated difficulties with confiding related to: holding unacceptable identities that are difficult to reveal to others; holding anticipations and expectations that confiding leads to harm; experiencing internal conflict between wanting to be open versus wanting to remain closed; and varying opportunities to develop trusted, confiding relationships across different environments within the care system. The findings suggest a need for safe, secure and stable care placements that can support the potential development of trusted confiding relationships wherein young people may be able to develop greater attachment security, and the capacity to build safe, supportive and trusted relationships through their lives. Implications for practice are discussed.

This article discusses the challenges faced by people in the adoption process who are living with HIV, looking especially at resilience factors. Resilience is framed in the context of HIV-related infertility that motivates people living with HIV to apply for adoption. The article draws on psychological definitions of resilience and presents four factors that promote and sustain it: individual strengths, good health management, social network and wider recognition in society. This is illustrated by a case study. The study emphasises that ‘the prospective adoptive child’ should always be at the centre of any assessments and encourages social workers to consider sensitive and inclusive practice when assessing prospective adopters living with HIV.

When looked after children who have been exposed to substantial trauma enter foster care, the manner in which they present can be extremely challenging for the carers and can persist for a substantial period of time. In response, foster carers may attempt to create a nurturing environment for the children. However, the way the children behave can evoke powerful and unwelcome feelings in carers, such as rage and hatred towards those they look after. The manner in which the children present and the frightening feelings this may trigger can overwhelm the foster carers’ capacity to sustain a nurturing stance in relation to the children and jeopardise the placement. In this article, two case studies chart such a dynamic and show that if carers are able to reflect upon the painful and unwanted feelings evoked in them, and acknowledge and take responsibility for what has become enacted in the placement, there may be an opportunity for this harmful dynamic to be processed and repaired. Moreover, there may be a change in the nature of the relationship between carers and children, creating a renewed hope for the life of the placement. The child, too, may benefit from an experience where the frightening, hated aspects of him- or herself are finally felt to be understood and are less overwhelming, enabling them to tolerate these perceptions and contain their enactment in the placement, so increasing their trust and belief in the nurture offered.