Suchergebnisse

This article discusses the methodological and conceptual issues surrounding a long-term follow-up study of girls adopted from orphanages in China around the age of two years. The aim of the study was to see if any effects of early negative experiences affected the women some 45 years later. Seventy-two out of the original 100 women were assessed by means of interviews and questionnaires that explored their health, behaviour, achievements, life satisfaction, self-esteem, relationships, ethnic identification, community connectedness and personality profiles. The results were compared with data from the UK National Child Development Study of children born in 1958. It was found that on the measures used, the adopted women were little different from the national population, suggesting that early disadvantage can be reversed and positive developmental pathways re-established. The article then reviews the methods and instruments used to assess adults in mid-life, especially those sensitive to identifying adversities resulting from early neglect. It is suggested that checklists of psychological problems may be insufficient to produce a complete picture and that a wider range of measures is needed to capture important features of interpersonal relationships and parenting histories, with an additional requirement to incorporate the experiences and variables introduced by adoption. Two concepts – 'life-long preoccupations' and 'a carapace' – are suggested as especially useful in this respect.

Alan Rushton discusses thinking over the last 30 years in developmental psychology as it affects fostering and adoption. He charts significant progress in six areas and assesses BAAF's contribution to various aspects of this accumulating knowledge.

This review of research literature is concerned with selected aspects of adoption support, namely the problems for the placed children, the characteristics of the new families, the needs of both children and parents for services and what is known about the effectiveness of interventions for placements in difficulty. Alan Rushton identifies the most useful findings and considers their relevance for providing a modernised adoption support service. He concludes that knowledge is accumulating in many areas although more evaluative research needs to be conducted on promising interventions.

This paper presents the main messages from a survey of adoption support services in local authority and voluntary adoption agencies throughout the UK. The survey examined developments in service provision and delivery resulting from the Government's drive to increase the use of adoption as an option to secure permanence for looked after children. Alan Rushton reports that substantial changes are taking place in many agencies, but that there is further to go to achieve equitable and timely access to specialist services when they are needed.

SUMMARY:This questionnaire and interview‐based survey of a sample of principal adoption and fostering officers in English social services departments was designed to explore current viewpoints about policy implementation and practice in the permanent family placement of older children. Variations and commonalities of opinion are described in relation to topics such as recruitment policy, contact with birth parents, race matching and post adoption support The reaction of the agencies to new proposals will be important in the consultation process which is to follow the recent Government White Paper on Adoption

Summary
The evolution of professionalism in Minnesota began when allopathic and homeopathic physician leaders organised medical societies and colleges to define and perpetuate their styles of practice. The epidemics of diphtheria that ravaged the state demanded prompt public health measures of quarantine to reduce the spread of the disease. Then the successful utilization of diphtheria antitoxin in Europe encouraged its local production in Minnesota and the re-education of all physicians there to convince them that they were no longer helpless to treat this infection that killed so many children. Their professionalisation was completed when they implemented the cure for diphtheria that laboratory science had produced. Homeopathic and allopathic practices converged as Minnesota physicians transformed their occupation from merely caring and comforting to actively treating and curing a serious infection.

The aim of the study described here was to assess the types of additional specialist service available to adoptive parents participating in a randomised controlled trial (RCT) of post‐adoption support whose ex‐care children were showing substantial psychosocial problems. Parents from 37 families who volunteered for the RCT were asked about access to professional help with problems arising from the placement, additional to the tested support: questions focused on which services they had received, how long they waited and whether the services were, in their terms, satisfactory. The study found that 23 families had used or applied for 37 separate specialised services to support the child or family. Although 56% of families were positive about services, 12 families had waited more than a year for a first contact with specialists and 44% of parents said the services had not met their needs. The experiences of these parents show that more timely and targeted services are needed for adoptive families with a child with psychosocial problems.