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Our piece in The Guardian's Social Care Network blog on Tuesday 1 December generated some lively debate

4/12/2015

1 Comment

 
On Tuesday we wrote about our research for the Guardian's social care blog: gu.com/p/4ejkp/stw

Reading the lively set of responses we were struck, as always, by how emotive and complex this topic is, and how much passionate feeling it can provoke - strong agreement and equally strong disagreement. It is always humbling to hear from people who have direct personal experience, and to remember again and again that each case carries so many contradictions, complexities and individual personalities that there can never be a one size fits all solution.

The strong reactions to the piece also gave a snapshot of just some of the intense feelings we encountered in our research, as well as in our own experiences of adoptive moves. Intense feelings among and between the adults can become all-consuming when children are being moved into their adoptive homes. There is the inevitable anxiety and tensions between foster carers and adopters; it is very hard for one group not to feel undermined or under threat from the other, given the circumstances. Also the opposing and strongly held schools of thought about whether it is better to keep alive old attachments or to close them off when separation occurs.  

Adult adoptees express very different reactions to this, as seen in some of the responses - some are full of grief about painful losses not being recognised; others feeling they should be left to attach to adoptive parents without being forced to remember their past lives. The array of differing responses to this question are crucial to try to understand, they can only deepen our knowledge and understanding of the adoptive process and are invaluable in developing better guidelines in this area.

We are grateful to The Guardian for giving us a platform to share our research and help to keep alive this very important and complex debate.

Please continue to contact us with your own responses. We are keen to hear from people across the field who have some insight or experience to share with others.
1 Comment
Janna
5/12/2015 07:36:57 pm

Myself and my husband have placed twenty two children to adoptive parents some have kept in touch but more haven't when we have been going through into introductions we said you are the yp parents if you want to keep in touch you can if you don't want it that's ok too BUT you have to do what's right for all of you . For us we know the yp are not ours but have come for a holiday even if it's for two or three years then they go on to a different life .

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