Adoptive family life and adoption support: policy ambivalence and the development of effective services

Abstract

Adoption policy and practice in England is being 'modernized' in order to increase the number of permanent placements for children in public care. Success depends on improving adoption services as well as reforming the adoption process itself. To this end the Adoption and Children Act 2002 places new duties on local authorities to ensure greater consistency and quality of service in adoption support as well as in care planning.\ud Questions now arise locally about what priority and focus to give to adoption support. Yet service development is inhibited by the ambivalence of New Labour about exactly what it is that adoption support is supposed to be supporting and how. Funds are limited and service re-organization is always difficult to achieve. However, mixed policy messages result largely from the ambiguous social role and expectations of adoptive family life and kinship. In law adoption replicates the autonomous normative birth family whilst in policy it provides reparative parenting for particularly vulnerable children. A lack of clarity about the claims for support of those affected by adoption results.\ud \ud This paper argues a fresh case for the distinctive claims of adoptive family life for support. It suggests how new thinking about adoptive family life and kinship might stimulate local service collaboration and effective adoption support

Open Adoption: Adoptive Parents' Experiences of Birth Family Contact and Talking to Their Child about Adoption

“…Whether reluctant adoptive parents should be constrained to maintain birth family contact for the benefit of the child is the subject of ongoing debate (Luckock and Hart, 2005). However, it is more likely to succeed if adopters perceive it as valuable (Neil, 2009) and can communicate their approval to the child (Lowe et al, 1999).…”

Intercountry adoption and nursing care

“…The Norwegian government's duty is foremost to ensure a good future for the adopted child in its new family (26). According to Luckock and Hart (27), adoption represents a distinctive type of family life and an exceptional way of ‘doing’ family and kinship. As such, adoption support should be prioritized and proper attention given to its particular demands.…”

La famille d’accueil à vocation adoptive : enjeux et réflexions autour du modèle québécois

“…Parallèlement à ces nouvelles règles, le Royaume-Uni décidait, lui aussi, d'avoir recours au concurrent planning pour les jeunes enfants dont le retour dans le milieu familial est peu probable. Le modèle britannique de planification concurrente s'appuie sur les mêmes fondements et principes que le modèle américain, mise à part quelques variantes en ce qui concerne les délais de mobilisation et les services de support à l'adoption (Selwyn et Sturgess, 2002 ;Sargent 2003 ;Luckock et Hart, 2005). En effet, même si les deux pays reconnaissent la possibilité de se tourner vers un projet d'adoption malgré le refus de consentement des parents, Selwyn et Sturgess (2002) notent que la législation américaine insiste davantage sur le respect des délais, alors que la législation britannique est moins prescriptive à cet égard et laisse davantage de latitude au jugement professionnel des intervenants.…”

“…Le soutien apporté aux familles d'accueil à vocation adoptive permet de réduire le risque de déplacement de l'enfant (Luckock et Hart, 2005), de préparer les parents d'accueil à l'arrivée de l'enfant en les informant sur les réalités de leur rôle et sur les complexités des contacts avec la famille biologique (Kelly et al, 2007) de façon à éviter qu'elles hésitent ou refusent de compléter le processus d'adoption, préférant s'en tenir au statut de famille d'accueil (Selwyn et Quinton, 2004).…”