This book explores what a sense of belonging-its components and state-means for the adopted children and those in care. It contributes to reader's understanding of these children's emotional well-being, mental health, and potential for success in life through education and beyond.

When parents form families by reaching across social barriers to adopt children, where and how does race enter the adoption process? How do agencies, parents, and the adopted children themselves deal with issues of difference in adoption? This volume engages writers from both sides of the Atlantic to take a close look at these issues.

It is now over 20 years since 'open adoption' was first introduced, but it remains a controversial and contested part of social work practice. This innovative and far ranging book sets out to understand why the practice of keeping adopted children in touch with their kinship origins is still so questioned in contemporary adoption work. Written by an experienced practitioner in the field, this book applies, for the first time, Foucauldian methodology to analyze and understand adoption social work, making it essential reading for a wide audience in the social sciences.

Since the early 1990s, close to 250,000 children born abroad have been adopted into the United States. Nearly half of these children have come from China or Russia. "Culture Keeping: White Mothers, International Adoption, and the Negotiation of Family Difference" offers the first comparative analysis of these two popular adoption programs.

Heather Jacobson examines these adoptions by focusing on a relatively new social phenomenon, the practice by international adoptive parents, mothers in particular, of incorporating aspects of their children's cultures of origin into their families' lives. "Culture keeping" is now standard in the adoption world, though few adoptive parents, the majority of whom are white and native-born, have experience with the ethnic practices of their children's homelands prior to adopting.

Jacobson follows white adoptive mothers as they navigate culture keeping: from their motivations, to the pressures and constraints they face, to the content of their actual practices concerning names, food, toys, travel, cultural events, and communities of belonging. Through her interviews, she explores how women think about their children, their families, and themselves as mothers as they labor to construct or resist ethnic identities for their children, who may be perceived as birth children (because they are white) or who may be perceived as adopted (because of racial difference).

The choices these women make about culture, Jacobson argues, offer a window into dominant ideas of race and the "American Family," and into how social differences are conceived and negotiated in the United States.

Since the early 1990s, close to 250,000 children born abroad have been adopted into the United States. Nearly half of these children have come from China or Russia. "Culture Keeping: White Mothers, International Adoption, and the Negotiation of Family Difference" offers the first comparative analysis of these two popular adoption programs.

Heather Jacobson examines these adoptions by focusing on a relatively new social phenomenon, the practice by international adoptive parents, mothers in particular, of incorporating aspects of their children's cultures of origin into their families' lives. "Culture keeping" is now standard in the adoption world, though few adoptive parents, the majority of whom are white and native-born, have experience with the ethnic practices of their children's homelands prior to adopting.

Jacobson follows white adoptive mothers as they navigate culture keeping: from their motivations, to the pressures and constraints they face, to the content of their actual practices concerning names, food, toys, travel, cultural events, and communities of belonging. Through her interviews, she explores how women think about their children, their families, and themselves as mothers as they labor to construct or resist ethnic identities for their children, who may be perceived as birth children (because they are white) or who may be perceived as adopted (because of racial difference).

The choices these women make about culture, Jacobson argues, offer a window into dominant ideas of race and the "American Family," and into how social differences are conceived and negotiated in the United States.

This book, which updates and expands the third edition published by Springer in 2015, explains, compares and evaluates the social and legal functions of adoption within a range of selected jurisdictions and on an international basis. From the standpoint of the development of adoption in England & Wales, and the changes currently taking place there, it considers the process as it has evolved in other countries. It also identifies themes of commonality and difference in the experience of adoption in a common law context, comparing and contrasting this with the experience under civil law and in Islamic countries and with that of indigenous people. This book includes new chapters examining adoption in Russia, Korea and Romania. Further, it uses the international conventions and the associated ECtHR case law to benchmark developments in national law, policy and practice and to facilitate a cross-cultural comparative analysis.

This book considers the impact of digital media and technology on lived experience for young people in foster care. While the extent and intricacies of foster care-known as out-of-home care (OOHC) in Australia, where this study takes place-are not widely understood by the general public, youth in care might struggle to construct a personal identity that goes beyond reflecting the stereotypes and stigma by which they are often recognised. In today's digital environment, media can play a significant role in any individual's developing sense of self, identity, and belonging. Deitz and Sheridan Burns examine OOHC through the lens of networked media environments and investigate the conditions that encourage belonging and resilience in order to establish the role that digital technology can play in supporting those conditions for individuals, family networks, and the care sector.

Describes what being a foster mom is really like, the effects of foster care on the whole family, and how the foster care system fails severely abused children. Foster children are society's throwaway kids, the children no one wants-until someone finally does. Saving Michael provides an inside look Keri Vellis' struggle to secure the best possible services for two severely abused and traumatized siblings. Some doors opened, but too many closed during her ten-year journey as the voice for children in her care who have no voice of their own within the current system. Readers get a glimpse of Keri and her family's day-to-day life as she went from mother of three to adoptive mother of three more children and then the temporary caregiver of another seventeen. Saving Michael delves into issues bigger than one family's experiences and determination. Now an author and child advocate, Vellis provides a profoundly personal look into what it takes to get the best for each of the children she's had in her care. Her journey started from the first day of her first foster care situation and the urgent need for diagnoses and treatment. It continued despite the many obstacles thrown in her path to securing services for the vulnerable children in her family's care. Along the way, she details the many ups and downs, challenges and triumphs, her whole family experienced as part of the foster care system. All children deserve permanent, safe homes. The effort to obtain those for every child is a tremendous one not for the faint-hearted. But the rewards reverberate for everyone when it works. Follow Keri and her family on this heartfelt journey of love and persistence.

This book draws on archival, oral history and public policy sources to tell a history of foster care in Australia from the nineteenth century to the present day. It is, primarily, a social history which places the voices of people directly touched by foster care at the centre of the story, but also within the wider social and political debates which have shaped foster care across more than a century. The book confronts foster care's difficult past-death and abuse of foster children, family separation, and a general public apathy towards these issues-but it also acknowledges the resilience of people who have survived a childhood in foster care, and the challenges faced by those who have worked hard to provide good foster homes and to make child welfare systems better. These are themes which the book examines from an Australian perspective, but which often resonate with foster care globally.

Conversations about multiculturalism rarely consider the position of children, who are presumptively nested in families and communities. Yet providing care for children who are unanchored from their birth families raises questions central to multicultural concerns, as they frequently find themselves moved from communities of origin through adoption or foster care, which deeply affects marginalized communities. This book explores the debate over communal and cultural belonging in three distinct contexts: domestic transracial adoptions of non-American Indian children, the scope of tribal authority over American Indian children, and cultural and communal belonging for transnationally adopted children. Understanding how children belong to families and communities requires hard thinking about the extent to which cultural or communal belonging matters for children and communities, who should have authority to inculcate racial and cultural awareness and under what terms, and, finally, the degree to which children should be expected to adopt and carry forward racial or cultural identities."

The 'mixed race' classification is known to be a factor of disadvantage in children's social care and this fastest growing population is more likely than any other ethnic group to experience care admission. How does knowledge of 'mixedness' underpin policy and practice? How, when and why is the classification 'mixed' a disadvantage? Through narrative interviews with children currently in foster care, Fostering Mixed Race Children examines the impact of care processes on children's everyday experiences. Peters shows how the 'mixed race' classification affects care admission, including both short and long term fostering and care leaving, and shapes the experiences of children in often adverse ways. The book moves away from the psychologising of 'mixedness' towards a much-needed sociological analysis of 'mixedness' and 'mixing' at the intersection of foster care processes. This book will be of interest to academics and practitioners working with families and children. Peters presents a child-centred narrative focus and offers unique insights into a complex area.

'The best piece of nature writing since H is for Hawk, and the most powerful work of biography I have read in years' Neil Gaiman 'Wonderful - I can't recommend it too highly' Helen Macdonald 'One of those rare, enchanted books' Isabella Tree 'Beautiful - it made me cry' Simon Amstell 'I was entranced' Cathy Rentzenbrink This is a story about birds and fathers. About the young magpie that fell from its nest in a Bermondsey junkyard into Charlie Gilmour's life - and swiftly changed it. Demanding worms around the clock, riffling through his wallet, sharing his baths and roosting in his hair... About the jackdaw kept at a Cornish stately home by Heathcote Williams, anarchist, poet, magician, stealer of Christmas, and Charlie's biological father who vanished from his life in the dead of night. It is a story about repetition across generations and birds that run in the blood; about a terror of repeating the sins of the father and a desire to build a nest of one's own. It is a story about change - from wild to tame; from sanity to madness; from life to death to birth; from freedom to captivity and back again, via an insane asylum, a prison and a magpie's nest. And ultimately, it is the story of a love affair between a man and a magpie.

This book examines the attainment gap between foster youth and their peers. Specifically focusing on post-secondary access and success for foster youth, Gross points out the challenges foster youth face in the primary and secondary school context, such as being less likely to complete high school. These barriers to former foster youth continue once enrolled in post-secondary education, and can manifest as lack of institutional support, financial barriers, and limited to no familial support. The author discusses what policy makers and practitioners need to know to better support the educational attainment of former foster youth.

This book looks at the simultaneous processes of making and un-making of families that are part of the adoption practice. Whereas most studies on transnational adoption concentrate on the adoptive family, the author identifies not only the happy occasion when a family gains a child, but also the sorrow and loss of the child to its family of origin. Situating transnational adoption in the context of the Global North-South divide, Hogbacka investigates the devastating effects of unequal life chances and asymmetrical power relations on the adoption process and on the mothers whose children are adopted. Based on unique primary material gathered in in-depth interviews with South African families of origin and Finnish adoptive families, the book investigates the decision-making processes of both sets of parents and the encounters between them. The first mothers' narratives are juxtaposed with those of the adopters and of the adoption social workers who act on the principles of the wider adoption system. Concluding with a critique of the Global Northism that exemplifies current practices, Hogbacka sketches the contours of a more just approach to transnational adoption that would shatter rather than perpetuate inequality. The book can also be read as an expose of the consequences of current inequalities for poor families. Global Families, Inequality and Transnational Adoption will be of interest to students and scholars of adoption studies, family and kinship, sociology, anthropology, social work and development.

Using a socio-legal framework, this book explores the experiences that birth mothers face in state sanctioned adoption proceedings in the UK. Featuring personal, in-depth interviews and conversations with 32 birth mothers, the book highlights perspectives and voices that are seldom the focus in leading discourses of professional practice in this area of law. The book also demands that the statutory rights, support and care of birth mothers are recognised and strengthened. This book delivers a comprehensive insight into many aspects and controversies of legal child adoption, including the development and reform of adoption law over history, giving the reader insight into the deep-rooted political and social tensions around the use of adoption. The uniqueness of birth mothers' subjective stories of adoption contrasts powerfully with the legal theory providing the reader with an intimate paradigm of adoption. The book includes discussion of obiter dicta and authoritative guidance on adoption practice from the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal in Re B (A Child) (Care Proceedings: Appeal) [2013] UKSC 33 and Re B-S (Children) (Adoption: Leave to Oppose) [2013] EWCA Civ 1146. It also considers Court of Appeal's recent ruling on post adoption contact in Re B (A Child) (Post-Adoption Contact) [2019] EWCA Civ 29, the first case to come before the court since section 9 of the Children and Families Act 2014 amended the Adoption and Children Act 2002, with the new insertion of section 51A and 51B providing for court ordered post adoption contact. This book is ideally suited to undergraduate students, as well as a more multi- disciplinary audience.

Kinship foster care involves placing children who cannot live at home in foster care with other members of their family or close network. This book sheds light on different aspects of kinship care development and practice. Using a 20-year longitudinal research study from Norway, this book shows the historical development of kinship care in Norway, research on kinship care, and how family life and relations are negotiated and lived in the span between private and public sphere. It includes the perspectives of the children, their parents and their relatives who have functioned as foster parents. Recognising that kinship care is complex, and needs to be understood and studied from different perspectives, the book describes, analyses and discusses a number of subjects: kinship care in a child welfare historical context, families who are part of kinship care and their perspectives, the formal frameworks around kinship care, and research approaches which have dominated research into kinship care. This book will be of interest to all scholars, students and professionals working in social work and child welfare more broadly, both in the Nordic countries and in a wider international context.

This practice-focused guide introduces The SmartStart Toolbox as a remedial program to help mental health professionals and adoptive parents promote the educational and social development of internationally adopted children aged 4-8. Recognizing the cultural, emotional, and cognitive needs of children who have experienced a fundamental change in their social situation of development following international adoption, The SmartStart Toolbox provides a range of family-based remedial activities which stimulate children's thinking and learning while creating scaffolded attachment opportunities during early interactions with their adoptive families. The volume details the notions of "psychological tools" (Vygotsky) and "mediated learning experience" (Feuerstein) which form the theoretical foundations for The SmartStart Toolbox and offers step-by-step guidance on conducting activities and adapting them to the individual child. The SmartStart methodology can also be used by professionals for diagnostic purposes. This text will benefit researchers in child psychology, as well as clinicians, family therapists, social workers, and educators with an interest in child development, cognitive and language enhancement, and adoption and fostering more broadly. Adoptive parents will also benefit from this book and its focus on themes of attachment, parenting, and the development of social cognition.

Responsible decisions are continually being made in social work. In particular the decision to place a child in a foster home can have far-reaching consequences for their welfare and it is vital that we make the best possible choice on their behalf. Although in the 1960s thousands of children were boarded out every year no systematic attempt had yet been made to summarize this experience as a guide for practice. Thus important decisions lacked the help which past experience could provide. Originally published in 1966, this study assembled the past experience of foster care in one area, analysed it and presented it in such a way that predictions could be made of the outcome of a potential placement. At the time it offered an important contribution to the task of providing the best possible care for children separated from their own families. Today it can be read in its historical context.

Can adoptive homes be found for non-white children? Will the children and their new families be happy together though of different race? Will they feel like a family? Originally published in 1970, this book is an account of a four-year project in which International Social Service of Great Britain joined with Bedford College, London University, to provide a first-class adoption service for babies born in Britain of diverse racial origins, and to study the outcome of the adoptions. In addition, a survey sought to determine the number of these children needing adoption homes, and a nationwide Adoption Resource Exchange was established to co-ordinate the efforts of the numerous agencies seeking parents for them. The author examines the project's experience of interracial adoption and relates it to all good adoption practice. This title was a welcome addition to the literature on adoption at the time. It would have been indispensable to social work practitioners and to students and lecturers on social work courses, but it was more than a handbook for those professionally involved. The book is well-informed and written with style and compassion: many readers will be fascinated by the way in which children of Asian, African, West-Indian and mixed parentage became integrated into English families in spite of racial differences. It is a success story. Today it can be read in its historical context. This book is a re-issue originally published in 1970. The language used is a reflection of its era and no offence is meant by the Publishers to any reader by this re-publication.

Narrative and Dramatic Approaches to Children's Life Story with Foster, Adoptive and Kinship Families outlines narrative and dramatic approaches to improve vulnerable family relationships. It provides a model which offers new ways for parents to practise communicating with their children and develop positive relationships. The book focuses on the Theatre of Attachment model - a highly innovative approach which draws from a strong theoretical base to demonstrate the importance of narrative and dramatic play for sharing the children's life history in the family home with their adoptive, foster or kinship parents. An emphasis is on having fun ways to work through complex feelings and divided loyalties, so as to secure attachment. This practice model aims to raise children's self-esteem and communication skills and to combat the profound effects of abuse, neglect on trauma on children's development. This book will be of great interest for academics, post-graduate students, universities and Training bodies, service providers and practitioners involved in social work and creative therapies, child psychologists, child psychotherapists and public and private adoption and foster care agencies.

Based on field studies and in-depth interviews across rural and urban China, this book presents a socio-legal analysis of non-state organised care for some of China's most vulnerable children. The first full-length book to examine non-state organised care of modern China's 'lonely children' (gu'er), this book describes the context in which abandonment occurs and the care provided to children unlikely to be adopted because of their disability. It also explores the various faith groups and humanitarian workers providing this care in private orphanages and foster homes in response to perceived deficiencies in the state orphanage system, in the context of a broader societal shift from 'welfare statism' to 'welfare pluralism'. Formal law and policy has not always kept pace with this shift. This study demonstrates that, in practice, state regulation of these unauthorised care providers has mostly centred on local-level negotiations, hidden rules, and discretion, with mixed outcomes for children. However there has also been a recent shift towards tighter state control and clearer laws, policies, and standards. This timely research sheds light on the life paths and stories of today's 'lonely children' and the changing terrain of civil society, humanitarianism, policy-making, and state power in modern China. As such, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Asian and Chinese studies, law and society, NGOs, and comparative social and child welfare.

For anyone considering or going through Fostering for Adoption, this book gives you a detailed, personal account of the process which takes you through all the stages and prepares you to cope with the highs and lows. Fostering for Adoption is a relatively recent initiative (Children and Families Act, 2014) in the adoption legal landscape, seeking early permanence for babies and young children where adoption is most likely to be the plan for the child. This is often cited as a route to be in the best interests of the child, enabling secure attachments and stability. However, for adopters it is inherently risky, it is the adopters who take on the risk in this situation, accept the placement on a fostering basis and hope that the final outcome will be adoption. There is currently a knowledge gap on experiences of Fostering for Adoption which this book tackles. Written from an adopters' perspective of the risks and challenges, as well as the benefits that it brings, it is perfect for those who are considering the process as well as their friends and family. A book on Fostering for Adoption can't just focus on one story and one outcome so we've included case studies which cover the key experiences adopters may face when agreeing to accept a baby on a Foster to Adopt placement such as: Caring for a baby a few days after birth The paperwork, rules and fostering process The uncertainty and risk Meeting with birth parents Contact Looking after a withdrawing baby A termination of placement Written in an engaging and friendly style, this book is perfect reading for anyone looking to adopt a child and for adoption professionals seeking to understand the experience of the adopter more profoundly. Praise for Fostering for Adoption "As someone who has been through a similar journey this book resonated with me. It is honest about the ups and downs and is a great, informative book for anybody thinking of taking this route or who have family or friends that are. I can say that this book will help anyone at the beginning of their journey, to help them through the process and - start the lifetime of learning about how we can support our children." Lisa Faulkner, Author, Meant to be "Alice's book will be a great companion to anyone considering or starting on the foster to adopt process. It is well-researched and written and doesn't shy away from the many complexities and the considerations that adults must make in the best interests of children." Sally Donovan, Author of No Matter What, and Editor of Adoption Today "I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, I found myself laughing and getting emotional throughout. As someone who has themselves been adopted, but who is also a social worker who has now adopted a child, this book is brilliant from every angle. A must read for anyone considering Fostering for Adoption." Jo, Social Worker, Midlands "This book gives a balanced and honest view of the whole Fostering for Adoption journey. It gets to the emotions and seriousness of decisions being made about children's lives. This is an important read for any potential adopter and will be on our book lists for sure" Angi, Social Worker, Adoption Tees Valley