Suchergebnisse

Acknowledgements -- Contents -- List of tables -- Chapter 1: Introduction -- The Content of the Book -- References -- Chapter 2: Locating the Study of Adoptive Parenthood -- Introduction -- What is Meant by Adoption from Care? -- What is Meant by Open Adoption? -- The Study -- The Method -- Notes -- References -- Chapter 3: Parental Entitlement and Proper Parenting: 'We Are the Parents Now' -- Introduction -- Conferred Parenthood-Formal and Informal Approval -- Proper Parenting and 'Fit' Parents -- Parental Investment and the Constraints of Blood Ties -- Family Membership and Dual Connection

This book explores what it is like to be involved in contemporary open adoption, characterised by varying forms of contact with birth relatives, from an adoptive parent point of view. The authorℓ́ℓs fine-grained interpretative phenomenological analysis of adoptersℓ́ℓ accounts reveals the complexity of kinship for those whose most significant relationships are made, unmade and permanently altered through adoption. MacDonald distinctively connects adoption to wider sociological theories of relatedness and personal life, and focuses on domestic non-kin adoption of children from state care, including compulsory adoption. The book also addresses current child welfare concerns, and suggestions are made for adoption practice. The book will be of interest to scholars and students with an interest in adoption, social work, child welfare, foster care, family and sociology. Mandi MacDonald is Lecturer in social work at Queens University, Belfast, UK. She has extensive social work experience in statutory child welfare services in Northern Ireland, most recently undertaking permanence planning and public adoption for children in care.

Abstract
There are recent calls to consider face-to-face birth family contact for more children adopted from care. Given that the threshold for this authoritative intervention is significant harm, post-adoption contact should be sensitive to the possible impact of early childhood trauma, and be adequately supported. This article draws on adopters' reports of face-to-face contact with birth relatives, and their evaluation of social work support to suggest an approach to practice informed by principles of trauma-informed care. Twenty-six adoptive parents participated in focus groups, and seventy-three completed a web-based questionnaire, all from Northern Ireland where face-to-face post-adoption contact is expected. Findings are structured thematically around principles of trauma-informed care: trusting relationships; physical and emotional safety; choice and control; and narrative coherence. Most families had a social worker attending contact, and help with practical arrangements. Less common but important practices included: deliberate consideration of children's perspectives; safeguarding their emotional well-being; and facilitating communication outside of visits. Findings suggest that visits are a context in which trauma-effects may surface, and social workers supporting contact should be sensitive to this possibility. This article suggests a systemic approach to helping all parties prepare for, manage and de-brief after contact, attending to both adult-to-adult and adult–child interactions.

AbstractSocial work has a central role in negotiating and supporting birth family contact following adoption from care. This paper argues that family display (Finch) offers a useful conceptual resource for understanding relationships in the adoptive kinship network as they are enacted through contact. It reports on an interpretative phenomenological analysis of adoptive parents' accounts of open adoption from care that revealed direct and indirect contact to be contexts in which they and birth relatives performed family display practices: communicating the meaning of their respective relationships with the adopted child and seeking recognition that this was a legitimate family relationship. The analysis explores how family display was performed, and the impact of validating or invalidating responses. It aims to illuminate these social and interpretive processes involved in adoptive kinship in order to inform social work support for contact. The findings suggest that successful contact may be promoted by helping adoptive and birth relatives validate the legitimacy of the other's kin connection with the child, and through arrangements that facilitate family‐like interactions.

Continuous caring relationships are crucial to the wellbeing of children living in out-of-home care, with the family environment of long-term foster care usually the preferred placement for achieving relational permanence. Some children, however, experience a cycle of instability with the impact of placement disruption exacerbating emotional and behavioural difficulties and thereby undermining subsequent foster relationships. This paper reports on a service evaluation of a residential facility specialising in short-term placements for children who have experienced disruption, with the aim of interrupting the cycle of placement instability. Overview of 34 children's placement trajectories show that most were enabled to re-enter foster care and of those who are now aged over 18 years ( n = 29), over half ( n = 16) remained in family placements until adulthood. For four children, detailed individualised assessment indicated residential care as the most appropriate option for avoiding future disruption. The paper gives cause for optimism that relationships in the residential setting have the potential to build emotional resilience and capacity for connection. There is paucity of information on how residential staff achieve these relationships in practice. Focus groups and interviews with ten staff and managers illuminate relational practices in the residential setting that are simultaneously family-like and trauma-informed.

This article combines practitioner insight and research evidence to chart how principles of partnership and paramountcy have led to birth family contact becoming the expected norm following contested adoption from care in Northern Ireland. The article highlights how practice has adapted to the delay in proposed reforms to adoption legislation resulting in the evolution of increasingly open adoption practices. Adoption represents an irrevocable transfer of parental responsibility from birth to adoptive parents and achieves permanence and legal security for children in care who cannot return to their birth family. Its enduring effect, however, makes public adoption a contentious field of child welfare practice, particularly when contested by birth parents. This article explores how post-adoption contact may be viewed as reconciling the uneasy interface between paramountcy principles and parental rights to respect for family life. The article highlights the complexity of adoptive kinship relationships following contested adoption from care, and how contact presents unique challenges that mitigate against meaningful and sustainable connections between the child and their birth relatives. In conclusion, a call is made for sensitive negotiation and support of contact arrangements, and the development of practice models that are informed by an understanding of the workings of adoptive kinship.

AbstractAdoption policy in the UK emphasizes its role in providing secure, permanent relationships to children in care who are unable to live with their birth families. Adoptive parents are crucial in providing this life‐long, stable experience of family for these vulnerable children. This paper explores the experience of adoptive parenthood in the context of changes to adoptive kinship relationships brought about by new, unplanned contact with birth family during their child's middle adolescence. This contact was initiated via informal social networks and/or social media, with older birth siblings instrumental in negotiating renewed relationships. The contact precipitated a transition in adoptive family life resulting in emotional challenges and changes in parent/child relationships, which were experienced as additional to the normative transitions expected during adolescence. Parental concern as a dominant theme was founded in the child and birth sibling's stage of adolescence, coupled with constraints on adoptive parenthood imposed by the use of social media, by perceived professional attitudes and by parental social cognitions about the importance of birth ties. Adoptive parents' accounts are interpreted with reference to family life‐cycle theory and implications are suggested for professional support of adoptive kinship relationships.

The trend towards more open adoption presents adopters with unique parenting challenges associated with satisfying the child's curiosity about their origins and maintaining relationships with birth family through contact. This article by Mandi MacDonald and Dominic McSherry focuses on the experiences of 20 sets of adoptive parents who were interviewed as part of the Northern Ireland Care Pathways and Outcomes Study. Interviews were analysed following the principles of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). The article explores adoptive parents' experience of talking to their child about adoption and of post-adoption contact with members of the birth family. Adopters discussed adoption sensitively with their child but were concerned that difficult and complex family histories would present a risk to the child's self-esteem and emotional well-being. All forms of contact proved emotionally and practically burdensome; however, adopters were committed to making it work for the child's benefit and were open to increased contact should the child wish it in the future. There was little relationship with birth family outside of formal contact. The study reveals the need for a mechanism to facilitate communication with birth families if adopters are to be able to respond to the child's changing need for contact and information.

This study describes an investigation into the characteristics, needs and experiences of kinship foster carers in Northern Ireland. By adopting a mixed-methods approach with 54 carers, a number of salient themes was captured. The respondents were predominantly grandparents who experienced a significant incidence of health-related issues. The cohort also endured high levels of stress, particularly at the beginning stage of the foster placement. Consequently, their need for practical, emotional and respite support was most evident. In terms of the children for whom they cared, many required help at school, and some presented with challenging emotions and behaviours. Overall, these findings emphasised the importance of relationship-based social work and demonstration of accurate empathy to the carer.

Many children are cared for on a full-time basis by relatives or adult friends, rather than their biological parents, and often in response to family crises. These kinship care arrangements have received increasing attention from the social sciences academy and social care professions. However, more information is needed on informal kinship care that is undertaken without official ratification by welfare agencies and often unsupported by the state. This article presents a comprehensive, narrative review of international research literature on informal kinship care to address this gap. Using systematic search and review protocols, it synthesises findings regarding: (i) the way that informal kinship care is defined and conceptualised; (ii) the needs of the carers and children; and (iii) ways of supporting this type of care. A number of prominent themes are highlighted including the lack of definitional clarity; the various adversities experienced by the families; and the requirement to understand the interface between formal and informal support. Key messages are identified to inform the development of family-friendly policies, interventions and future research.

Abstract
Building Better Futures (BBF) is a structured and systematic model developed in Northern Ireland for assessing parenting capacity when there are childcare concerns. This article focuses on the iterative development of the model, through a social work, practitioner–academic, research collaboration. BBF was developed using a mixed method, flexible and multi-modal, iterative design embracing a collaborative approach between social work academics and practitioners. Five senior practitioners (SPs) were appointed for a three-year period to work on the project. The formative implementation and evaluation of the model consisted of a series of co-produced, in-depth mixed-method evaluation studies across the region. The project outcomes confirmed the utility of the model for social work practitioners and the benefits to families. An evaluation of the co-production methodologies identified the importance of building an inclusive, collaborative team with shared trust. The importance of managing power between the groups was identified, and the absence of parents as part of the collaboration was acknowledged. Engagement in research can enhance professional identity and job satisfaction for social workers and develop social work tools and processes which are 'fit for purpose' because they have been influenced by the views of the end users.

This article reports on a study conducted in two counties in the Republic of Ireland designed to elicit the views of fostering and adoption stakeholder groups on the mental health needs of the children, young people and families for whom they are responsible. Included in these groups are young people, adoptive parents, foster carers and professionals who manage and deliver mental health services or refer cases to them. Focus group methodology was employed to ascertain participants' views. The emerging data was analysed thematically and the key findings include: the need for a universal and integrated system offering mental health services; the importance of an attachment- and trauma-informed approach, incorporating a 'whole-family' perspective; the difficulties many families face in accessing timely and appropriate services with the associated risk of destabilising placements; the tension created by the balance between crisis responses and longer-term therapeutic support; poor levels of communication and collaboration between services; and a general aspiration to fashion a dedicated therapeutically focused service open to all foster and adoptive children and their families. Findings and recommendations are discussed in light of the existing models of good practice for providing integrated mental health services.

Children adopted from care, either internationally or locally, can have diverse, and often more complex, needs to their non-adopted peers. Many children adopted internationally from institutional care, or domestically from foster care, will have experienced significant early adversity, which can cause emotional, behavioural, developmental and attachment related difficulties. However, research also suggests that adopted children can and do thrive because of the high commitment of adoptive parents, their responsive parenting (Koss et al.,2020), and the availability of post-adoption support services aimed at supporting adoptive family relationships (Misca, 2014). Reinforcing the child's network of caring adults is a crucial component of care for children who have experienced early adversity or childhood trauma, and systemic approaches are recommended to support children who experience trauma-related difficulties (Bath, 2008), meaning that support for adoptive families should be targeted at both individual and interpersonal levels. For services to be effective it is crucial that they are readily available to families in a timely manner. However, in a range of studies in different countries, adoptive families have experienced difficulties in accessing and availing of the services they need, when they are needed. In Ireland, the arrangements for the provision of adoption services have changed considerably over time, and with recent legislative reform, adoption is moving to a more central position within the child welfare system (O'Brien & Mitra, 2018). Thus, the quality and effectiveness of post-adoption services in meeting adopted children's needs should be examined. In 2020 Barnardos commissioned the School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work in Queens University Belfast in 2020 to evaluate the Post-Adoption Service to extend and deepen understanding of the value of the Post-Adoption Service model of work with participating children and parents, and to inform ongoing service development.

PurposeThis paper aims to describe the challenges and potential benefits of moving a mentoring programme for young people in care and care leavers to an online mode of delivery in response to the South African Government's efforts to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus disease COVID-19.Design/methodology/approachA descriptive account incorporating reflections from staff responsible for the move to e-mentoring and from South African and UK researchers undertaking an exploratory study of mentoring vulnerable youth at the time when COVID-19 restrictions were imposed.FindingsE-mentoring can provide an effective means to maintaining the essential elements of a well-established mentoring programme for young people in care and care leavers under government enforced "lock-down". E-mentoring presents particular challenges and benefits in the South African context. Youth in care and care leavers have unequal access to a digital infrastructure, but this can be overcome by investment in resourcing, equipping and training carers, mentors and mentees. The geographical reach offered by online platforms gives young people access to a more diverse pool of mentors.Originality/valueBoth care leaving services and the use of e-mentoring to meet the needs of vulnerable young people are emerging areas of practice and research interest. This paper brings the two areas together in the context of South Africa under COVID-19 "lock-down" through describing the response of one mentoring programme and highlighting the benefits and challenges.