Cherilyn Dance

Contact between Children Placed Away from Home and their Birth Parents: Research Issues and Evidence

The importance of maintaining contact between children temporarily or permanently looked after away from their birth parents is now believed to be so important to their psychosocial development as to be written into the Children Act. This position has been argued both on the basis of the rights of children and birth parents and on the claimed strength of the research evidence concerning the positive effects of contact and the negative consequences of its absence. The quality of the research evidence is reviewed. It is concluded that evidence on either the beneficial or adverse effects of contact is not strong and that the design and/or analysis of existing studies contain a number of weaknesses that preclude clear research-based guidance to practitioners.

Parenting Late-Placed Children: The Development of New Relationships and the Challenge of Behavioural Problems

This article reports on the development of new relationships and the presence of behavioural and emotional problems in a study of 61 five- to nine-year-old children placed from care with the intention of permanence in new, unrelated families during middle childhood. When interviewed, new parents reported that 73% of the children had formed an attached relationship with one or both parents by the end of their first year in placement. The children who were not regarded as attached showed more behavioural and emotional problems and overactive/restless behaviour, and were also more likely to have been actively rejected by their birth parents. More detailed aspects of possible difficulties in the new parent/child relationships were investigated by means of a parent-completed questionnaire which explored the children’s expression of feelings. The non-attached children had many more difficulties in communicating their feelings and in specific interactions with their new parents by the end of the first year of placement. The new parents of these children tended to find it difficult to relate to them in a warm, responsive manner early in the placement and this worsened by the end of the year. There was considerable overlap between behavioural and relationship problems, suggesting the need to promote the quality of the relationship between children and their new parents as well as to reduce the level of behavioural problems in the children. Implications for post-placement support and intervention are discussed.

Contact between Children Placed Away from Home and their Birth Parents: Ryburn’s ‘Reanalysis’ Analysed:

Ryburn has critically reviewed our article on the research issues in the study of contact between children placed away from home and their birth parents (Quinton, Rushton, Dance, & Mayes, 1997). We argue that Ryburn seriously misrepresented our position. He also presented a ‘reanalysis’ of the studies we discussed, supplemented with references to other studies that we did not quote, which aimed to show that our conclusions were wrong. In this article we respond to Ryburn’s critique and raise questions concerning his interpretation of data and methods of reviewing that suggest that his conclusions from the research are unreliable.

Findings from a UK Based Study of Late Permanent Placements

ABSTRACT This prospective, UK based adoption study examined the first year of placement of 61 boys and girls who joined permanent unrelated families during middle childhood. Most of the children had experienced abuse, neglect and discontinuity in their lives prior to this placement. The psycho-social functioning of the children and the development of family relationships were assessed by means of in-depth interviews with the new parents. High levels of behaviour problems were found in the children initially. About a third of the children showed a diminution of problems after placement, the remainder showed little change or a deterioration. At the end of the first year, 72% of the surviving placements were considered stable. An active rejection by birth parents stood out as a particular risk to placement stability, especially when accompanied by over active behaviour and where new parents had difficulty in maintaining warmth and sensitivity in their responses to the child in the early months of placement.

Joining a new family The views and experiences of young people placed with permanent families during middle childhood

Cherilyn Dance and Alan Rushton report on the views of a group of young people who had joined adoptive or foster families some six years previously when they were between five and 11 years old (the Maudsley Follow-Up Study). The report focuses on the experience of joining a new family, family relationships and feelings of belonging. It was striking that it could take some young people a considerable length of time to feel settled; however, by the follow-up stage the great majority felt very much a part of their family. Several described their placement as an opportunity for a ‘new start’. A small minority was less settled and expressed continued discomfort with their adoptive status. The authors discuss the direction of current practice and policy developments with reference to these findings.

Working with substance use: Levels and predictors of positive therapeutic attitudes across social care practitioners in England

Aims: To measure the attitudes of social care practitioners towards working with alcohol and other drug (AOD) use and to identify the factors which can be used to predict positive engagement. Methods: A cross-sectional online survey was completed by 646 front-line social care practitioners in 11 English Local Authorities. The survey included an adapted version of the Alcohol and Alcohol Problems Perceptions Questionnaire to measure overall therapeutic attitudes (OTAs). Using a principle component analysis, four attitudinal components were identified within the tool; role adequacy, role support, role legitimacy and role engagement. Findings: Analysis of 597 responses (sub-sample excluding specialists substance misuse workers) revealed an average OTA score of 4.68 (SD = 0.662; range: 1–7). The majority of scores (69%) fell in the middle range indicating that practitioners were neither positively nor negatively engaged with AOD-related work. Respondents reported more positive perceptions of role support and legitimacy (56% and 54%, respectively) than for role adequacy and role engagement (25% and 20%, respectively). A multiple regression model revealed that perceived preparedness by qualifying training, employing directorate, AOD-related practice experience and gender, were all predictors of OTAs. Conclusion: For these social care professionals, neither positive nor negative attitudes towards working with AOD dominated. However, this research identifies several factors important for converting the largely ambivalent attitudes of social care practitioners into positive engagement with AOD use.

Negative parental treatment of the singled-out child : Responses to the problem by health visitors, social services departments and child and adolescent mental health services

The focus of this three-part study was on the recognition of, and service response to, families in which negative or rejecting behaviour is shown towards one of the children, whereas the siblings are accepted. Part 1 was an interview-based survey of health visitors’ views. They were able to identify families with such problems but were seldom in a position to intervene constructively and referrals to specialist services were not easily achieved. Part 2 was a case file study based on referrals of alleged emotional abuse to social services offices. The nature of the risk-assessment process undertaken by social workers was explored and it was shown that, beyond the initial stage of seeing the families, a lack of capacity was evident to provide structured assessments of the child, formal assessment of parenting and observation of the parent-child relationship. One-third of the emotional abuse cases were subject to child protection registration but only a minority received substantial social work intervention. Although it was found that singly rather than jointly referred children were given less priority and had less-thorough assessments, this could have been related to other characteristics of these children. Part 3 explored how child mental health professionals conceptualized the families’ difficulties, devised therapeutic interventions, considered obstacles to engaging the families and assessed the benefit of psychological help. It was acknowledged that some of these families can present a considerable challenge to any child welfare system because of denial of the problem or difficulties in engaging with existing services. More attention needs to be paid in these cases to maternal mental health problems, especially depression. Recommendations are made for developing more accessible preventive services while ensuring the protection and effective treatment of the singled-out child.

Quality Protects: A Commentary on the Government's Agenda and the Evidence Base

Quality Protects was introduced in 1998 as the governments main initiative to improve childrens social services. This review considers the aims, origins and intended effects of the policy. While applauding the attempt to improve services, attention is drawn to four areas on which progress will depend: better performance indicators; the extent and quality of research based evidence; the expansion of professional social work training and user feedback and involvement. The first of the Quality Protects objectives on promoting secure attachment is highlighted and the evidence for the current emphasis on adoption is considered. The article concludes that the extent of progress that is being made to help children and families in difficulty will need to be assessed by systematic research as well as by routine service performance indicators.

Preferential Rejection: Research Findings and Practice Implications:

Background Several studies of family placements have indicated poorer outcomes for singly placed children (eg Groze, 1996; Holloway, 1997). In an effort to understand why this may be so, we recently reported on a new analysis of factors associated with one-year outcomes for a group of 63 children, each placed singly during middle childhood (Dance, Rushton and Quinton, 2002). All of the children joined families new to them when they were between five and 11 years old and the intention of each placement was permanence, either though adoption or long-term fostering.

Disabled Children in Long-Term Fostering and Adoption

Background The BAAF Disability Project (funded for three years by the Lloyds TSB Foundation for England and Wales) has undertaken research on the placement for permanency of disabled children through fostering and adoption. Research in this area is extremely sparse. A re-analysis of the OPCS (Office of Population and Census Statistics) disability surveys between 1985 and 1988 has been published in Disabled Children in Britain (Gordon et al, 2000). Although the Children Act 1989 identified disabled children as ‘children in need’, there have been minimal data collected from local authorities and voluntary agencies since then on the numbers of disabled children, whether they are ‘looked after’, in adoption or fostering, or have come within child protection procedures. Morris (1998), in Still Missing, found that local authorities did not routinely and comprehensively collect data on how many disabled children were ‘looked after’, nor how many were in long-term placements. Nor could they determine what proportion of all children looked after were disabled, nor how long disabled children wait for family placements. Generally, ‘there is a dearth of information about disabled children in long-term placements’ (p 93). BAAF undertook a questionnaire survey of local authorities in order to develop a more complete profile of disabled children and their placement needs. As this was the first study of its kind, additional data were sought including information about ethnicity and matching, the specific impairments of the children and young people, how the families were identified, reasons for delay and details about siblings. The survey Definitions The definition of disability in the questionnaire was based on the social model of disability. This states that people with impairments are ‘disabled’ by society, and by the way society is organised to exclude them. The term impairment was used to refer to ‘the functional limitation within an individual caused by a physical, mental or sensory condition’. The definition differs from that used by the Department of Health, which includes children who have behavioural and emotional difficulties but who do not have an impairment. As it turned out, there were very few enquiries about the definition, with only one authority including their own. The questionnaire used tick boxes to identify whether the child had a physical or sensory impairment, or a learning difficulty, and there was a question asking for any known diagnoses.