Developing Adoption Support and Therapy: New Approaches for Practice

Barry Luckock · Angie Hart

Jul 2004 · Jessica Kingsley Publishers

About this ebook

Adoption is currently taking centre stage in family policy in the UK and USA, with new legislation that places emphasis on providing and maintaining permanent family homes for children separated from their families of origin. This book explores the challenges of adoption and how best to support families coping with these demands. Angie Hart and Barry Luckock draw together adoptive parents' experiences, professional practice and empirical research to provide an integrative account of adoption support services. Using three fictional families, they illustrate issues such as the adoption of older children, single, lesbian and gay adoptive parenting and the importance of openness in adoptive relationships. The authors bring sociological and anthropological perspectives to bear on current developmental psychology models of trauma and attachment and examine the effectiveness of various therapeutic interventions. Developing Adoption Support and Therapy will make current research and legislation on adoption support accessible to therapists, parents, social work practitioners and managers alike.

About the author

Angie Hart is the adoptive parent of three children. She is a principal lecturer in the Faculty of Health at the University of Brighton and a therapist working in the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, Southdowns Health NHS Trust, Brighton. She is a tutor on professional courses for health practitioners, and undertakes research on health and social care. Barry Luckock is a qualified social worker and teacher who lectures in social work and social policy in the Department of Social Work and Social Care at the University of Sussex. He specialises in child welfare policy and practice.