Suchergebnisse

This article provides a summary of one voluntary adoption agency's attempt to look at a specific area of its own practice over the decade 2001–2011. In the UK the understanding of adoptive placements that disrupt is hampered by the lack of consistently gathered national statistics. This gap can be addressed only at central government level and it seems remarkable that, given the well-publicised investment of successive administrations in adoption, we are unable to track trends on such a fundamental issue. The voluntary agency, Families for Children, placed over 300 children during that period. Twenty-four placements ended in a disruption – 12 before an adoption order could be made and 12 after an adoption order. We used predictors of disruption from previous research to interrogate the data available in our own files. Our findings may reveal nothing that is radically new but they provide us with a tool by which to measure our performance and focus on the things that we need to do better.

John Randall summarises the findings of an in-house study undertaken by Families for Children, a voluntary adoption agency based in the southwest of England. It took a consecutive sample of 103 children placed from care for adoption between 2003 and 2005, using Matching Needs and Services, a method designed for analysing need in child care populations and developing services best suited to meeting them. The study identified nine need groups of varying degrees of complexity and looked at the service responses to those identified needs. The children placed came from 41 local authorities ranging from nearby local authorities to the wider southwest, London and the southeast, the Midlands and the north of England. The sample offers a snapshot of the contemporary challenges presented by children placed for adoption from care.

• Summary: Evidence-based practice is a familiar, if contested, theme in contemporary health and social care. If it is to be more than a passing fashion, there need to be much stronger and more credible partnerships between practitioners and researchers. This article identifies key lessons derived from a small local experiment (DATAR) in the UK which sought to build a bridge between a locality in a large rural social services department and a child care research unit.• Findings: If knowledge is seen essentially as 'one-way traffic', from research to practice, then evidence-based practice is likely to be a project destined for disillusionment.• Applications: For evidence-based practice to succeed and benefit the children and families that each partner seeks to serve, it needs sustained commitment, authentic collaboration and a shared belief in each other's contribution to the development of knowledge that works. Rather than indulge in rather futile contests between art and science or between process and product, we need to increase our capacity to embrace different sorts of knowledge

Child and family social work has changed considerably over the past 60 years. Arabella Weyts and John Randall chart these developments in England since the radical legislation of 1948 and identify enduring tensions that arise from role conflicts, shared responsibilities and balancing specialist and generalist work, each of which presents challenges for overarching organisations such as BAAF.