Practice tools
Child Development Chart
The Significant Harm of Infants study revealed that child development had only been a small part of some social workers’ qualifying training and was often quickly forgotten. One of the study’s key messages was that continuing professional development for all those working in permanency planning needs to cover child development. Mary Beek, who was the Professional Advisor to the Department for Education’s Adoption Policy Team, developed this ‘Child Development Chart’ as a resource for such training. Click here to download.
Parenting programme for new adopters
A manual that provides the detailed content of a ten-session parenting-programme specifically designed for professionals to use with struggling new adopters has been published by BAAF. The manual builds on the ARi’s study Enhancing adoptive parenting which evaluated parenting-support programmes using a randomised controlled trial. The research and the subsequent development of the programme has been lead by Professor Alan Rushton. The manual is available from BAAF.
Birth parent voices
This is a series of audio clips of Ian, Becky, Bernadette and Nina - four birth parents of children who have been adopted. These birth parents were all part of the group of service-user consultants who contributed to the Helping birth families and Supporting direct contact after adoption studies (Study 5). In these clips, the birth parents talk about their experiences of having a child placed for adoption. Their stories are unique but the range of issues they raise and feelings that they describe were also present in many of the research interviews.
The clips will be of interest to a wide range of professionals in adoption services as well as to adoptive parents and birth parents. They could be used for individual professional development, to support training or practice development sessions, in social work teaching, in adoption support or preparation groups, or in birth parent support groups.
The clips are divided into five sections, each section lasting about 5 minutes.
Parting with a child for adoption
Ian, Becky, Bernadette and Nina talk about the range of feelings and reactions that they experienced when they became aware that their child was going to be placed for adoption.
Click here to download a transcript of the clip
Click here to download the audio file of the clip
The adoption process
Becky, Nina and Ian talk about how they found the adoption process and the emotions that they experienced at different stages in the process.
Click here to download a transcript of the clip
Click here to download the audio file of the clip
Living with the adoption in the longer term
In this section, the birth parents reflect on their experiences of living with the knowledge that their child is adopted, and of managing letter box contact.
Click here to download a transcript of the clip
Click here to download the audio file of the clip
Finding it hard to obtain support
Nina and Bernadette talk about their difficulties in obtaining adequate support for themselves after the adoption and the reactions of other people to the adoption.
Click here to download a transcript of the clip
Click here to download the audio file of the clip
The benefits of support
Becky, Nina and Ian, talk about the different types of support that they have found helpful.
Click here to download a transcript of the clip
Click here to download the audio file of the clip
