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Amendments to the child protection legislation in New South Wales (NSW), enacted in October 2014, prioritise adoption over foster care for children who cannot live safely with their families. Therefore, psychologists could have an increasing role in conducting assessments and interventions in this field. The purpose of this article is to provide psychologists and adoption researchers with a conceptual model for the psychosocial adjustment of foster care adoptees with a background of maltreatment. A scoping review of the literature on contributors to outcomes for children adopted from care was conducted. A model of adjustment was proposed in which the relationship between risk factors and adjustment is moderated by both adoptive family factors and relationship factors, and indirectly impacted by system supports. Finally, we name some of the psychological assessments and interventions that may have a key role in enhancing the adoptive family resources and parent–child relationships as moderators of outcomes.

We would like to acknowledge the help of the many people who made this study possible, some of whom cannot be named individually for reasons of confidentiality. The research was funded by The Nuffield Foundation and was carried out in 2012 and 2013. Firstly we would like to thank all the adopted young people, adoptive parents and birth relatives who took part in the study. Their willingness to share their personal experiences and to take time to fill in questionnaires was vital to the success of the project. We would also like to thank the social workers and administrative staff from the participating adoption agencies who assisted us in tracing participants whose contact details were out of date. We are grateful to the help of After Adoption who assisted us in recruiting a group of adopted young people to advise us on the early stages of the study, and of course to the young people themselves who made many valuable suggestions which informed our data collection strategy.

This study examined the relationships between trait mindfulness, a positive psychological characteristic, attention and procrastination. One hundred and seventy-four Australian participants, 133 women and 41 men, with a mean age of 35.44, completed measures of trait mindfulness, ability for sustained attention and procrastination. Participants recorded a task they thought they might delay completing and were randomly assigned to a brief mindfulness exercise or a control exercise. Participants afterwards rated their intention to work on the task. Greater trait mindfulness was associated with better ability to sustain attention and with less procrastination. Attention mediated the relationship between mindfulness and procrastination. With engagement held constant, participants in the mindfulness exercise condition expressed more intention to work towards completing a task on which they tend to procrastinate than participants in the control condition. These findings have implications for better understanding procrastination and for the use of mindfulness to assist those who procrastinate.

The aim of the study reported in this article was to gain an understanding of the experiences, developmental trajectories, and mental health status of Australian trans men. Participants were 279 trans men. The majority preferred to identify as “male”; from an early age, they had experienced their gender identity as different from that normatively expected of their natally assigned sex and had undertaken practices so as to facilitate their presentation as male in accordance with their gender identity. A majority reported a diagnosis of depression or anxiety within the last 12 months and attributed suicidal ideation and self‐harm and attempted suicide to personal issues with gender identity. Going through a masculinisation process and coming out reportedly led to improved mental health. The findings highlight the need to educate mental health and health care professionals on trans issues.

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