Abstract

Adoption is currently taking centre stage in family policy in the UK and USA, with new legislation that places emphasis on providing and maintaining permanent family homes for children separated from their families of origin. This book explores the challenges of adoption and how best to support families coping with these demands. Angie Hart and Barry Luckock draw together adoptive parents' experiences, professional practice and empirical research to provide an integrative account of adoption support services. Using three fictional families, they illustrate issues such as the adoption of older children, single, lesbian and gay adoptive parenting and the importance of openness in adoptive relationships. The authors bring sociological and anthropological perspectives to bear on current developmental psychology models of trauma and attachment and examine the effectiveness of various therapeutic interventions. Developing Adoption Support and Therapy will make current research and legislation on adoption support accessible to therapists, parents, social work practitioners and managers alike.
This is a much-needed book about the supports that are essential to adoptive families, especially those raising children who are placed at an older age out of the public systems... This book has good and clear directives for many of the people working with the family. It is a well thought-out approach, and covers a great deal of what is needed to provide the best services to the adoptive parents... Ms. Hart and Mr. Luckock have given us a gem of an instruction book for child welfare workers all over... The authors have presented us with a comprehensive, and sometimes hands-on book that will make a world of difference in the training of professionals who work with adoptive families and I would recommend that adoptive parents and families read this book as well to understand how the professionals are thinking about them, and what they are calculating as their needs.
Adoption Quarterly
Angie Hart is the adoptive parent of three children. She is a principal lecturer in the Faculty of Health at the University of Brighton and a therapist working in the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, Southdowns Health NHS Trust, Brighton. She is a tutor on professional courses for health practitioners, and undertakes research on health and social care. Barry Luckock is a qualified social worker and teacher who lectures in social work and social policy in the Department of Social Work and Social Care at the University of Sussex. He specialises in child welfare policy and practice.
The authors are not afraid to analyse or question the wisdom receiving from `adoption gurus' and they offer many examples of good practice to take into all aspects of family placement work. They remind us constantly that receiving support is not exactly the same as feeling supported.
Adoption and Fostering
This book offers excellent guidelines for professionals who are involved in developing a comprehensive adoption support service, including a helpful analysis of the role of the Adoption Support Services Advisor, with suggestions for different models. There is an explanatory section about what may be expected from different kinds of therapy, an outline of the legal and organisational frame- work, a stimulating discussion about open communication in `adoptive kinship' and timely examination of the real purpose, meaning and value of life-story work'.
Adoption and Fostering
A welcome breath of fresh air and common sense to the often complex issues surrounding the permanent placement of children in substitute families.
Family Futures
I feel this book provides food for thought for all those involved in developing adoption support services, and may be of particular use for practitioners involved in supporting adoptive parents in finding ways of helping their children to develop their full potential.
Child and Family Social Work
Hart and Luckock offer a committed, informed and expansive view of the opportunities which unfolding post-adoption services hold, while being realistic about the constraints which technical-rational social work casts over their future. As adoption support embraces more adoptive families and diverse practitioners, the book may find an audience which shares its passion and is eager to develop the `adoption competence' that it advocates as central to meeting adoptive families' needs.
British Journal of Social Work
I found this book extremely informative. In my view it takes the reader back to basics when considering the implications adoption has for a child.
CAFCASS
A well-argued, substantial, intelligent text, which will take thoughtful readers on in their appreciation of the complexity of adoption support. It deserves to be widely read.
BAAF