A family with a dark secret. A child who refuses to speak. Rosie must help her before it's too late. Nine-year-old Caitlin has a secret, but she cannot tell anyone about it. When her mother is sectioned under the Mental Health Act she and her three siblings have to go and live with her grandmother Julie and grandad Ryan. Caitlin finds her new living conditions challenging: cat poo on the carpet, rubbish everywhere and the constant stare of her grandad - she retreats more and more into herself. When foster carer Rosie Lewis meets Caitlin she knows something is deeply wrong with this little girl, who is withdrawn, afraid and refuses to speak. Rosie decides to take her in, but Caitlin's silence continues, and Rosie knows she must act. Why is Caitlin so afraid to speak? Could it be that the family has a dark secret? One that is so shocking it can no longer be hidden?

Representing an often overlooked population in social work literature, this book explores the experiences of LGBTQ youth as they navigate the child welfare system. Adam McCormick examines the entirety of a youth's experience, from referral into care and challenges to obtaining permanency to aging out or leaving care. Included throughout the book are stories from LGBTQ youth that address personal issues such as abuse, bullying and harassment, and double standards. Filled with resources to foster resilience and empower youth, this book is ideal for professionals who are hoping to create a more inclusive and affirming system of care for LGBTQ youth.

Currently, there are over 400,000 youth living in foster care in the United States, with over 20,000 aging out of the child welfare system each year. Foster youth are more prone to experience short- and long-term adverse developmental outcomes including diminished academic achievement and career opportunities, poor mental and overall health, financial struggles, homelessness, early sexual intercourse, and substance abuse, many of these outcomes are risk factors for involvement in the juvenile justice system. Despite their challenges, foster youth have numerous strengths and positive assets that carry them through their journeys, helping them to overcome obstacles and build resilience. The Handbook of Foster Youth brings together a prominent group of multidisciplinary experts to provide nuanced insights on the complex dynamics of the foster care system, its impact on youth's lives, and the roles of institutions and policies in the foster system. It discusses current gaps and future directions as well as recommendations to advance the field. This book provides an opportunity to reflect on the many challenges and strengths of foster youth and the child welfare system, and the combined efforts of caregivers, community volunteers, policy makers, and the professionals and researchers who work with them.

White Parents, Black Children looks at the difficult issue of race in transracial adoptions-particularly the adoption by white parents of children from different racial and ethnic groups. Despite the long history of troubled and fragile race relations in the United States, some people believe the United States may be entering a post-racial state where race no longer matters, citing evidence like the increasing number of transracial adoptions to make this point. However, White Parents, Black Children argues that racism remains a factor for many children of transracial adoptions. Black children raised in white homes are not exempt from racism, and white parents are often naive about the experiences their children encounter. This book aims to bring to light racial issues that are often difficult for families to talk about, focusing on the racial socialization white parents provide for their transracially adopted children about what it means to be black in contemporary American society. Blending the stories of adoptees and their parents with extensive research, the authors discuss trends in transracial adoptions, challenge the concept of 'colorblind' America, and offer suggestions to help adoptees develop a healthy sense of self.

Aged nine Joss came home from school to discover her father's suicide. She's never gotten over it. This is the true story of Joss, 13 who is angry and out of control. At the age of nine, Joss finds her father's dead body. He has committed suicide. Then her mother remarries and Joss bitterly resents her step-father who abuses her mentally and physically. Cathy takes Joss under her wing but will she ever be able to get through to the warm-hearted girl she sees glimpses of underneath the vehement outbreaks of anger that dominate the house, and will Cathy be able to build up Joss's trust so she can learn the full truth of the terrible situation?

International media regularly features horrific stories about Chinese orphanages, especially when debating international adoption and human rights. Much of the popular information is dated and ill-informed about the experiences of most orphans in China today, Chinese government policy, and improvements evident in parts of China. Informal kinship care is the most common support for the orphaned children. The state supports orphans and abandoned children whose parents and relatives cannot be found or contacted. The book explores concrete examples about the changing experiences and future directions of Chinese child welfare policy. It is about the support to disadvantaged children, including abandoned children in the care of the state, most of whom have disabilities; HIV affected children; and orphans in kinship care. It identifies how many orphans are in China, how they are supported, the extent to which their rights are met, and what efforts are made to improve their rights and welfare provision. When our research about Chinese orphans started in 2001, these children were almost entirely voiceless. Since then, the Chinese government has committed to improving child welfare. We argue that a mixed welfare system, in which state provision supplements family and community care, is an effective direction to improve support for orphaned children. Government needs to take responsibility to guarantee orphans' rights as children, and support family networks to provide care so that children can grow up in their own communities. The book contributes to academic and policy understanding of the steps that have been taken and are still required to achieve the goal of a child welfare system in China that meets the rights of orphans to live and thrive with other children in a family.

Adopted Women and Biological Fathers offers a critical and deconstructive challenge to the dominant notions of adoptive identity. The author explores adoptive women's experiences of meeting their biological fathers and reflects on personal narratives to give an authoritative overview of both the field of adoption and the specific history of adoption reunion. This book takes as its focus the narratives of 14 adopted women, as well as the partly fictionalised story of the author and examines their experiences of birth father reunion in an attempt to dissect the ways in which we understand adoptive female subjectivity through a psychosocial lens. Opening a space for thinking about the role of the discursively neglected biological father, this book exposes the enigmatic dimensions of this figure and how telling the relational story of 'reconciliation' might be used to complicate wider categories of subjective completeness, belonging, and truth. This book attempts to subvert the culturally normative unifying system of the mother-child bond, and prompts the reader to think about what the biological father might represent and how his role in relation to adoptive female subjects may be understood. This book will be essential reading for those in critical psychology, gender studies, narrative work, sociology and psychosocial studies, as well as appealing to anyone interested in adoption issues and female subjectivity.

This book explores a deeply personal aspect of globalization: the adoption of Asian children by white Americans. It is based on dozens of interviews with adoptive mothers and adoption social workers, nearly two hundred letters and essays written by Korean birth mothers who put their children up for adoption, and field work at an adoption agency in South Korea. It also includes analyses and explanations of U.S. and South Korean governments' social characteristics and policies regarding adoptions and how relations between nations have affected international adoption. The book focuses on whether the commonly held notion that adoptions are to serve children's welfare and their best interests has tended to render gendered aspects of international adoptions invisible. Factors such as gender inequality, social control of women's reproductive power, patriarchic family structure, and social beliefs concerning womanhood and motherhood that affect international adoptions are revealed in this book. The multiple ways in which adoptive, birth, and foster mothers experience gender oppression from their different social positions of class, race, and nationality are explored and the interdependencies and inequalities of the motherhoods of these three groups of women are brought to light.

The practice of adoption has changed dramatically over the past half century, with profound implications for children and families. Perhaps the most remarkable and controversial transformation during this time has been the growing willingness of adoption professionals to place children with sexual-minority individuals and couples. Yet, despite considerable research showing that lesbians and gay men can make good parents, they continue to experience difficulties and barriers in many parts of the country in their efforts to adopt and raise children. Indeed, while progress in this area has been significant, it has been impeded by the homophobia and heterosexist attitudes of adoption professionals and the judiciary; by numerous stereotypes and misconceptions about parenting by lesbians and gay men, and by a lack of adequate guidelines and training for establishing best practice standards in working with this rapidly growing group of adoptive parents. Adoption by Lesbians and Gay Men explores the gamut of historical, legal, sociological, psychological, social casework, and personal issues related to adoption by sexual-minority individuals and couples. Leading experts in a variety of fields address-and often shatter-the controversies, myths, and misconceptions hindering efforts by these individuals to adopt and raise children. What makes this book all the more valuable is that it provides insights and specific recommendations for establishing empirically validated best practices for working with an important sector of our society, for treating all prospective and current parents fairly and equally, and, perhaps most importantly, for increasing a still largely untapped resource for providing families for children who need them.

Jane Hall Fitz-Gibbon and Andrew Fitz-Gibbon have cared for more than 100 children in a foster care career spanning more than three decades. They developed a method, "loving nonviolent re-parenting," to best care for foster children. "Re-parenting" represents the complex task of caring for children who have been parented already, often inadequately, and mostly involving physical, emotional, and/or systemic violence. Welcoming Strangers analyses the violence foster children suffer and raises ethical questions-why violence is morally problematic, what philosophers have said about human nature and violence, and what moral good should be pursued in childcare. Drawing on an ancient form of ethics, sometimes known as "virtue ethics," this book focuses on the traits required to become a loving, nonviolent re-parent. The Fitz-Gibbons tell of their journey in the foster care system with candour, humour, and grace. Covering subjects as diverse as teens, sex, discipline, and the carer's own well-being, they describe the difficulties of foster care and the sometimes impossible task of restoring dignity and joy to young lives deeply damaged by violence. This book will be of immense help to foster carers, adopters, caseworkers, case managers, policymakers, and any parent who wants to integrate nonviolent practices into the way they care for children.

Jane Hall Fitz-Gibbon and Andrew Fitz-Gibbon have cared for more than 100 children in a foster care career spanning more than three decades. They developed a method, "loving nonviolent re-parenting," to best care for foster children. "Re-parenting" represents the complex task of caring for children who have been parented already, often inadequately, and mostly involving physical, emotional, and/or systemic violence. Welcoming Strangers analyses the violence foster children suffer and raises ethical questions-why violence is morally problematic, what philosophers have said about human nature and violence, and what moral good should be pursued in childcare. Drawing on an ancient form of ethics, sometimes known as "virtue ethics," this book focuses on the traits required to become a loving, nonviolent re-parent. The Fitz-Gibbons tell of their journey in the foster care system with candour, humour, and grace. Covering subjects as diverse as teens, sex, discipline, and the carer's own well-being, they describe the difficulties of foster care and the sometimes impossible task of restoring dignity and joy to young lives deeply damaged by violence. This book will be of immense help to foster carers, adopters, caseworkers, case managers, policymakers, and any parent who wants to integrate nonviolent practices into the way they care for children.

This exploration of the experiences of adopting parents and children offers unusual insight into adoption's complexity and its profound impact on family life. Based on the author's research in Germany, where she lived and taught, The Adopted Child has a great deal to say about child rearing and identity, as well as offering insights into similarities and differences in family life and adoption in Germany and the United States. Hoffmann-Reim takes the reader through the decision to adopt, the adoption placement procedure, and the transition from "applicant" to "mother and father." She explores differences between emotions experienced in adopting a baby, a toddler, and an older child, and how these emotions can affect relations with the world outside the nuclear family. A central concern is secrecy and disclosure with regard to the adopted child's origins. Based on case studies and extensive interviews, The Adopted Child has fascinated American readers as it did those in Germany. Professionals as well as those interested in adoption and family life in general will find it significant. Sociologists will find it solidly grounded in concepts and traditions from a diversity of related disciplines. And anyone interested in Germans and German society will find the materials revealing, and the author's interpretation insightful and wise.

In her latest paperback, the Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author of Damaged tells the story of the Dawn, a sweet and seemingly well-balanced girl whose outward appearance masks a traumatic childhood of suffering at the hands of the very people who should have cared for her.

Dawn was the first girl Cathy Glass ever fostered. Sweet and seemingly well balanced girl, Dawn s outward appearance masked a traumatic childhood so awful, that even she could not remember it.

During the first night, Cathy awoke to see Dawn looming above Cathy s baby s cot, her eyes staring and blank. She sleepwalks which Cathy learns is often a manifestation in disturbed children. It becomes a regular and frightening occurrence, and Cathy is horrified to find Dawn lighting a match whilst mumbling it s not my fault in her sleep one night.

Cathy discovers Dawn is playing truant from school, and struggling to make friends. More worryingly she finds her room empty one night, and her pillow covered in blood. Dawn has been self-harming in order to release the pain of her past.

When Dawn attempts suicide, Cathy realises that she needs more help than she can give. Dawn s mother eventually confides in her that Dawn was sent away to live with relatives in Ireland between the ages of 5 and 9, and Cathy soon realises that the horrors Dawn was exposed to during this time have left her a very disturbed little girl."

A moving collection of 6 short stories - Helpless, A Small Boy's Cry, Two More Sleeps, Unexpected, Just a Boy and At Risk - previously available as individual e-shorts. A collection of inspiring and emotive real-life short stories from foster carers Casey Watson and Rosie Lewis. Sarah, a baby born to a crack-addicted mother on a freezing cold night in December. Charlie, who fell from the second-floor window of his tower block home while his mother is busy shooting up in their dirty council flat. Angell, left barely clothed beneath a park bench on a freezing cold day in winter. Hope, abandoned as a new-born by a young woman traumatised by a dark secret. Cameron, a sweet boy with a great sense of humour, who disappears after a disastrous and embarrassing family trip. Adam, a fragile and anxious child, whose relationship with his mother starts to unravel.

Through careful ethnography and rich in-depth interviews at a non-profit foster family agency, this book takes a look behind the scenes of our troubled foster care system.

Seeking Solace is Chani Barlow's story of following God's plan despite a series of unforeseen obstacles, in order to find true meaning and peace. Though Chani Barlow grew up going to church on Sundays, she never really knew if God was real or just a name mentioned over the pulpit. As a teenager, she jaywalked across a busy highway and found Him waiting for her in the recovery room. God gifted her powerful dreams, snapshots of a little boy and girl meant to join her family. But the search wasn't easy. Infertility, financial setbacks, mental illness, and rejection led her to wonder if God had forgotten her-but was she really paying attention? Seeking Solace tells the story of REAL miracles. It puts an arm around the reader's shoulder and points out how their coincidences might not just be coincidences.

Her biological clock ticking louder each day, Sharon Simon felt her heart sink as yet another "Mr. Wonderful" turned out to be a frog---not the prince she was waiting for. But when the right man did come along, their journey toward parenthood seemed more like a machete trail through a jungle than the smooth path of her dreams. Enduring multiple failed IVFs and the loss of their unborn twins, Sharon and her husband decided to adopt---taking a whirlwind trip to Russia and navigating the rough waters of international adoption red tape. Their journey ended, or rather began, when two baby boys were placed in their arms for the long trip home.
Part love story, part adoption memoir, and all heart, "Mom at Last "is the story of one woman's fierce determination to become a mother. Full of setbacks and emotionally devastating pitfalls, ultimately the journey leads her to true love and pure joy. "Mom at Last" will inspire women who find themselves on that sometimes difficult journey to motherhood, giving hope that motherhood is possible and encouraging women to never give up on their dreams. While every journey to motherhood is different, "Mom at Last" lets women know they are not alone in the struggle toward motherhood.

The Sunday Times and New York Times Bestseller. Although Jodie is only eight years old, she is violent, aggressive, and has already been through numerous foster families. Her last hope is Cathy Glass

Cathy, an experienced foster carer, is pressured into taking Jodie as a new placement. Jodie's challenging behaviour has seen off five carers in four months but Cathy decides to take her on to protect her from being placed in an institution.

Jodie arrives, and her first act is to soil herself, and then wipe it on her face, grinning wickedly. Jodie meets Cathy's teenage children, and greets them with a sharp kick to the shins. That night, Cathy finds Jodie covered in blood, having cut her own wrist, and smeared the blood over her face.

As Jodie begins to trust Cathy her behaviour improves. Over time, with childish honesty, she reveals details of her abuse at the hands of her parents and others. It becomes clear that Jodie's parents were involved in a sickening paedophile ring, with neighbours and Social Services not seeing what should have been obvious signs.

It s clear that Josie needs psychiatric therapy, but instead Social Services take Jodie away from her, and place her in a residential unit. Although the paedophile ring is investigated and brought to justice, Jodie s future is still up in the air. Cathy promises that she will stand by her no matter what her love for the abandoned Jodie is unbreakable."

The true story of 2 year-old Anna, abandoned by her natural parents, left alone in a neglected orphanage. Elaine and Ian had travelled half way round the world to adopt little Anna. She couldn't have been more wanted, loved and cherished. So why was she now in foster care and living with me? It didn't make sense. Until I learned what had happened. ... Dressed only in nappies and ragged T-shirts the children were incarcerated in their cots. Their large eyes stared out blankly from emaciated faces. Some were obviously disabled, others not, but all were badly undernourished. Flies circled around the broken ceiling fans and buzzed against the grids covering the windows. The only toys were a few balls and a handful of building bricks, but no child played with them. The silence was deafening and unnatural. Not one of the thirty or so infants cried, let alone spoke.

Adoption in the Digital Age explores the transformation of adoption due to social and digital media technologies. The most prolific of these changes can be seen within contact arrangements, particularly those that are not managed by an intermediary, between adopted minors and their biological kin. Within this shift, it becomes clear that this often-breached contact arrangement lends itself towards discussions about further openness within adoption. At the same time these technologies continue to document the way adopted individuals and their biological kin feel about themselves and each other. It is for these reasons that the Internet remains both a promise and threat. Samuels explores this in detail, highlighting that what it means to be adopted continues to evolve in the context of networked media cultures. Combining both theoretical discussions with the human experience of adoption, Adoption in the Digital Age will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including sociology, social work and cultural studies, as well as practitioners working with adoptive families and other members of the adoption triad connected and disconnected by adoption.

Examines the impact of adoptees on their birth country and birth families A great mobilization began in South Korea in the 1990s: adult transnational adoptees began to return to their birth country and meet for the first time with their birth parents-sometimes in televised encounters which garnered high ratings. What makes the case of South Korea remarkable is the sheer scale of the activity that has taken place around the adult adoptees' return, and by extension the national significance that has been accorded to these family meetings. Informed by the author's own experience as an adoptee and two years of ethnographic research in Seoul, as well as an analysis of the popular television program "I Want to See This Person Again," which reunites families, Meeting Once More sheds light on an understudied aspect of transnational adoption: the impact of adoptees on their birth country, and especially on their birth families. The volume offers a complex and fascinating contribution to the study of new kinship models, migration, and the anthropology of media, as well as to the study of South Korea.

Native American Transracial Adoptees Tell Their Stories presents twenty interviews with Native American adoptees raised in non-Native homes. Through the in-depth interviews they conduct with each participant, the authors explore complex questions of cultural identity formation. The participants of the study represent a range of positive and negative experiences of transracial adoption. Regardless of their personal experiences, however, all twenty respondents indicate that they are supporters of the Indian Child Welfare Act and that they believe that Native children should be raised in Native households whenever possible. However, eighteen of the twenty respondents concede that non-Native families can raise Native children to be happy, healthy, well-adjusted adults. Through the interviews, Simon and Hernandez allow readers to better understand the different experiences of Native American adoptees.

Native American Transracial Adoptees Tell Their Stories presents twenty interviews with Native American adoptees raised in non-Native homes. Through the in-depth interviews they conduct with each participant, the authors explore complex questions of cultural identity formation. The participants of the study represent a range of positive and negative experiences of transracial adoption. Regardless of their personal experiences, however, all twenty respondents indicate that they are supporters of the Indian Child Welfare Act and that they believe that Native children should be raised in Native households whenever possible. However, eighteen of the twenty respondents concede that non-Native families can raise Native children to be happy, healthy, well-adjusted adults. Through the interviews, Simon and Hernandez allow readers to better understand the different experiences of Native American adoptees.

From the Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author comes the poignant and shocking memoir of Cathy s recent relationship with Tayo, a young boy she fosters whose good behaviour and polite manners hide a terrible past.

Tayo arrives at Cathy s with only the clothes he stands up in. He has been brought to her by the police, but he is calm, polite, and very well spoken, and not at all like the children she normally fosters. The social worker gives Cathy the forms which should contain Tayo s history, but apart from his name and age, it is blank. Tayo has no past.

Tayo is an 'invisible' child, kidnapped from his loving father in Nigeria and brought illegally to the UK by his drink and drugs dependent prostitute mother, where he is put to work in a sweat shop in Central London. When he sustains an injury and is no longer earning, he is cast out.

When Cathy takes Tayo to school he points out a dozen different addresses where he has stayed in the last six months, often being left alone. Tayo lies, and manipulates situations to his own advantage and Cathy has to be continually on guard. Tayo s social worker searches all computer databases but there is no record of Tayo he has only attended school for 3 terms and has never seen a doctor. He and his mother have been evading the authorities by living underground .

With his mother recently released from prison, Tayo is desperate to live with his father in Nigeria, but no one can track him down or even prove that he exists."