Adoption for looked after children: messages from research

1 Adoption for looked after children : messages from research An overview of the Adoption research Initiative Caroline Thomas Adoption for looked after children : messages from research An overview of the Adoption research Initiative Caroline Thomas Published by British Association for Adoption & Fostering (BAAF). Saffron House 6 10 Kirby Street London EC1N 8TS. Charity registration 275689 (England and Wales) and SC039337 (Scotland). Caroline Thomas, 2013. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 907585 68 5.

2 Project management by Shaila Shah, Publisher, BAAF. Designed by Helen Joubert Design Printed in Great Britain by The Lavenham Press All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publishers. The moral right of the author has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

3 BAAF is the leading UK-wide membership organisation for all those concerned with Adoption , fostering and child care issues. Contents Foreword by David Holmes 1 Background 1. 2 Permanence 15. 3 Finding a family 34. 4 Support 51. 5 Support for contact 66. 6 Summary and conclusion 80. References 89. Appendices 1 Projects summaries 93. 2 An example practice model 108. 3 Practice tool to support adoptive parenting 109. 4 Practice tool for planning and supporting post- Adoption contact 110. 5 Child Development Chart 111. 6 Members of the Commissioning Group 112. 7 Members of the Advisory Group 114.

4 8 Members of the Dissemination and Implementation Advisory Group 116. Index 118. Note about the author Caroline Thomas co-ordinated the Adoption research Initiative in her role as Academic Adviser to the Department for Education. Caroline is an Honorary Senior research Fellow at the University of Stirling and a Principal Associate at The Colebrooke Centre for Evidence and Implementation. Acknowledgements Many people have been involved in the Adoption research Initiative (ARI) and contributed to the development of this overview of its findings. The Initiative would not have been possible without the contributions of those who use and provide Adoption and other related services.

5 Thank you therefore to all the children and their families, and professionals who generously participated in the various studies. Thank you also to the members of the seven highly-skilled research teams who conducted the Initiative's studies. (Team members are noted on pp. 8 10.) I have particularly appreciated their ongoing commitment to the dissemination and implementation of this body of work. I can only hope that the overview does justice to their research . The studies themselves benefited greatly from the guidance of their individual Advisory Groups. They were also informed by the deliberations of an overall Advisory Group for the Initiative which met annually while the studies were ongoing.

6 (A list of members is given in Appendix 7.) The Advisory Group helped the research teams to overcome the ARI's many methodological and ethical challenges. It also made a significant contribution to the identification of the Initiative's central and unifying themes. The drafting of this overview and development of a dissemination and implementation strategy for the Initiative have been guided by another advisory group. Members of the Dissemination and Implementation Advisory Group are listed in Appendix 8. They scrutinised the research reports and informed the development of the implications of the research for policy and practice.

7 They also provided detailed comments on each draft of the overview report. I am grateful to them all for their commitment to, and investment in, this project. I am grateful also to Isabella Craig and Richard Bartholomew, and their colleagues in the Department for Education's (DfE) research Division, and Mary Lucking and her colleagues in the DfE's Adoption Policy Team. They have supported the ARi within government for more than a decade and skilfully steered it through three sets of changes in the machinery of government. At the start of the dissemination and implementation phase of the ARI I had the pleasure and privilege of working alongside Mary Beek.

8 She was a Professional Adviser to the DfE's Adoption policy team on secondment from Norfolk County Council's Adoption Team. The dissemination materials benefited greatly from Mary's deep understanding of the practice issues in planning for permanence. The process of dissemination was significantly enhanced by her sensitive communication of differences of perspective between policy makers, practitioners and researchers in children 's services. I also had the pleasure and privilege of working closely with David Holmes throughout the project, initially when he was the policy lead for Adoption working within government, then a Deputy Director of children 's Services and, more recently, as Chief Executive of BAAF.

9 I am indebted to him for his unfailing support and his wise counsel. I have appreciated the extreme patience of Shaila Shah, Jo Francis and their colleagues in working with me on the preparation of the manuscript. Finally, I would like to thank my husband, Martin Howard, who has always encouraged and inspired me in my working life, and generously supported me through all the challenges of this particular Initiative. Foreword As someone who has been involved with the Adoption research Initiative since the need for such an evidence base was first identified some 10 years ago, I am delighted to see the publication of this overview .

10 It marks the conclusions from a vast amount of work by a large number of people in the intervening years. I commend to you the cogent way in which Caroline Thomas has distilled the key messages from this important body of research . Her analysis, taken together with the original research studies, adds significantly to our understanding of the range, impact and effectiveness of much contemporary practice in Adoption and other routes to permanence. The ARI was developed to explore the impact of a major reform programme in Adoption initiated by a previous Government that included major legislative change the Adoption and children Act 2002.