Suchergebnisse

A growing number of children placed for adoption are found to have attachment difficulties. Such difficulties can be profound, leading to disruptive behaviour which adoptive parents often find hard to cope with and understand. As Mary Beek contends in this paper, one of the challenges for adoption agencies is to offer such families appropriate support. In examining a project carried out by the Norfolk-based Adoption and Family Finding Unit's post-adoption service, she demonstrates how specialised help involving parents and post-adoption social workers can dramatically improve the quality of care for adopted children — and indeed the quality of life for all the family. She also underlines the value of attachment theory as a tool for helping adoptive parents understand their children's behaviour.

ABSTRACTAs the UK Government White Paper, Care Matters: Time for Change, suggested, foster children need the care system to provide them with good quality foster family care that will help them through childhood to success and fulfilment of their potential in adult life.This paper draws on the third phase of Growing Up in Foster Care, a longitudinal study of 52 children in planned, long‐term foster care (1997–2006). It aims to increase our understanding of the transformational power of foster family relationships over time and particularly in adolescence. It shows how a secure base parenting model, using concepts from attachment and resilience, can be applied to foster care of adolescents. The paper uses case material to demonstrate each dimension of this secure base model and to emphasise how, even when adolescents have had stable and effective placements, they are likely to need support through into adulthood.

Mary Beek and Gillian Schofield analyse the care given to four children with severe learning difficulties who have made excellent progress in long-term foster care. Their foster carers were found to be providing sensitive care across five dimensions of parenting: providing availability, tuning in to the minds and feelings of the children, building self-esteem, promoting autonomy and including the child as a full member of the family. The capacity to tune in to the minds of the children, to see the world from their perspective, was seen as key to the building of warm, positive relationships. Secure in these relationships, the children's anxiety levels were reduced and they were freer to learn, play and develop their potential.

There is undoubtedly a need to establish a firm legislative, policy and practice basis for adoption. At the same time, it is recognised that a range of permanence options is required to meet the needs of children for whom adoption is not appropriate, not achievable or against their wishes. Although the Prime Minister's Review of Adoption recommended consultation on all aspects of the Adoption and Children Bill, it was not clear whether there would be mechanisms for consulting foster carers who currently offer permanent placements to children. As a result, the Nuffield Foundation funded a series of three focus groups to take place during the Bill's passage through parliament, with a view to contributing to the debate on what might be needed to ensure the effectiveness of the range of permanence options sought by the Government. This paper by Mary Beek and Gillian Schofield is a result of that consultation exercise. However, the richness of the discussions in the groups allowed the authors to go beyond and behind the immediate question of legal options and explore how foster carers view their role in offering children a long-term commitment and a place in their families.

Intro -- Contents -- Introduction -- TIme 1: the preschool years -- TIme 2: middle childhood -- Time 3: follow-up in late adolescence -- The adopted young people: how were they getting on in adolescence -- The adoptive families: what contact was taking place with birth relatives? -- Adoptive families' experiences of direct contact -- Adoptive families' experiences of indirect contact -- The satisfaction of young people with their contact arrangements -- The adoptive families: adoption communication openness -- Young people's perspectives on adoption communication openness -- Being adopted: young people's construction of an adoptive identity -- Birth relatives: well-being and adjustment to the adoption, 16 years on -- The birth relatives: contact pathways and experiences -- Social networking websites: new challenges for adoptive parents, birth relatives and adopted young people -- Summary of findings and practice implications -- Publications from earlier stages of the study

AbstractIn the literature on work–family balance, role and boundary issues are commonly discussed in relation to parents who work outside of the home. Work and family are considered as two different spheres of activity, with different role identities and cultural meanings. For foster carers, however, in very significant ways, their family is their work and their work is their family – so roles are not so clearly separated and boundaries are not so clearly defined. This paper reviews theoretical approaches to the work–family interface and draws on qualitative data from 40 interviews with long‐term foster carers. It provides an analysis of their accounts of their roles as professional carers and/or committed parents to explore how they manage different and potentially contradictory role identities. The study found that foster carers primarily identified as carers or as parents, but that some foster carers could move flexibly between these roles while others could not. For foster carers who could be flexible, the two roles enriched each other rather than causing stress and role conflict. Implications for supporting professional foster carers who can also meet the parenting needs of long‐term foster children are discussed.