The New Zealand family group conference (FGC) approach to decision making in child welfare and protection has attracted strong interest among policy makers and professionals all over the world. While New Zealand’s legislation makes use of FGCs more or less mandatory in child protection, other countries permit social workers to refer families to an FGC at their own discretion. Knowledge about social workers’ attitudes towards the model is thus paramount if we want to understand implementation and evaluations of FGCs outside New Zealand. This study looks at attitudes towards and actual referrals to FGCs amongst 219 social workers from 18 local authorities in Sweden and the UK. Results reveal an overwhelmingly positive attitude towards FGCs in both countries. Given these attitudes it was striking that only 42% of the social workers had initiated at least one FGC over an 18‐month period. The number of implemented FGCs was almost exactly the same in Sweden and the UK, after adjusting for time and number of social workers. Possible explanations for this paradox are discussed, using data from the survey and child welfare literature.

A B S T R A C T This article offers a critique of the work of Quinton, Rushton, Dance and Mayes (1997) concerning the merits, for the various parties, of the maintenance of contact between children living temporarily or permanently apart from their parents. It contests their view that there is no research based evidence to support the practice of maintaining contact in these placements, and suggests that for a number of reasons their analysis of available evidence is fundamentally flawed. In particular this article questions their view of what the foundations for evidence-based practice should be, highlights central omissions in their review of the research and challenges the accuracy of some of their reporting. It also suggests that a grounded historical perspective on post placement practice would regard the severance of birth relative links, rather than their preservation, as representing what Quinton and his colleagues describe in their article as a 'social experiment'.

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The quality of relationship between families and professionals is clearly crucial to the development of good social work practice, especially where the care and protection of children are concerned. After tracing the origins of the Family Group Conference in New Zealand, Murray Ryburn and Celia Atherton describe the procedure and explain how this model, based on a commitment to partnership, is being adapted and used in the UK.

It seems reasonable to suppose that the bitterness of an adversarial contest and the granting of an order to which birth parents are strongly opposed are unlikely to offer a foundation for successful future contact. Murray Ryburn reports on the findings of a study of contact after contested adoptions.

A family can suffer few more public judgements of social failure than to have a child compulsorily removed from its care. Murray Ryburn records the views and experiences of twelve such families, and considers whether the recommendations of the Adoption Law Review Working Party will ensure that their voices are heard in future.

SUMMARY: It has long been accepted that adopted children need access to information about their origins in order to provide a satisfactory answer to the question ‘who am I?’. Such information is seen as vitally important to the formation of a clear and positive sense of identity in adulthood. This study examines the role that such information plays in the formation of personal identity and analyses accounts from 67 adopters of their children's requests for information about their families of origin. Comparisons are made between adopters whose children maintain contact with their families of origin and those whose children have no contact.

The issue o f whether there should be continuing contact between those who are adopted and /heir birth relalives is one of the most contentious issue.$ in current adoption practice (see for example DOH, 1.9,9.3; McWhinnie and Smith I994). The view traditionally taken is that adoption in England and Wales has been secret since its legal origins in 1926 and any moves to more,fully disclosed injirmation and indeed contact between the parties in adoption is a recent development (see f o r example DOH 1992) . This article considers the history of birth family contact and access to records in adoption from 1g.26 to the 1958 Adoption Act and examines thefactors that favoured the development of closed models o f practice where there was no contact between the parties and records became secrel. I n doing so it challenges the accepted view that adoption has always provided f o r secrecy in England and Wales and establishes that both the thinking of policy makers and the legislation itself until 1949 prouidedfor more open forms o f adoplion than we enjoy today. Secrecy, it is claimed, developed as a consequence of a collusion between professionals and the judiciary which disregarded the legal rights of birth parents and failed to respect their entitlement to a proper say in the decisions about the future of their children.