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John Triseliotis died on 29 September 2012, aged 83. He was a pioneering figure in the field of adoption and fostering whose work and policy influence will benefit social workers, researchers and others involved in adoption and child welfare for many years to come. In addition to his wider influence, John regularly reviewed books for this journal and was always very willing to comment on submissions, most recently a study of illegal practices in the Greek domestic adoption system (Nanou, 2011), a topic close to his heart. Following individual tributes from three of John's colleagues and friends, and to mark his contribution, we are reprinting extracts from his influential book In Search of Origins: The experiences of adopted people (1973). The study on which it is based led to the reforms made later that decade, giving adopted people the right to seek information about their backgrounds and the circumstances surrounding their adoption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the field of international adoption there has been a long-standing concern that transracially adopted people experience social dislocation from both their communities of origin and the communities in which they grew up. Alan Rushton, Margaret Grant, John Simmonds and Julia Feast of the British Chinese Adoption Study team explore this notion in relation to a sample of 72 ex-orphanage, Hong Kong-born women adopted into British families in the 1960s. The authors report on how the women choose to identify themselves in mid life. The article describes the development and use of specially devised questionnaires to explore community connectedness and self-regard among this group of women. Further analysis examines the relationship between community connectedness and psychological well-being. The findings are then positioned in the context of the narrative data from face-to-face interviews with the women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most research looking at the role of adopters in the adoption, search and reunion process has tended to focus on the experiences of either the adoptive mother or both adoptive parents as a unit. As a result, the role of the adoptive father has had a much lower profile in the literature and research available to practitioners and professionals. Julia Feast, Fiona Kyle and John Triseliotis seek to redress the balance by analysing data from a previous study by Triseliotis et al (2005) from adoptive fathers' point of view. That study examined the experiences of a large cohort of adoptive parents whose son or daughter had searched or been sought. Most adoptive parents expressed overall satisfaction with the outcome of contact, but there were inevitable strains. By exploring whether or not the anxieties, stress levels and experiences of adoptive fathers differ significantly from those of adoptive mothers, we hope to provide a greater understanding of how adoptive fathers manage the search and reunion process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the potential importance of care-file information for those formerly in care has long been recognised, little is known about requests for access to such records, whether in terms of scale or how requests are dealt with. The survey reported here by Jim Goddard, Julia Feast and Derek Kirton was carried out to address this gap. It was conducted in two stages during 2004 and 2005. The first stage comprised a postal questionnaire to local authorities in the UK (with 81 responses received) and a small number of voluntary organisations. This was followed by 40 telephone interviews with key local authority and voluntary sector personnel dealing with access to records requests. Areas of interest within the study included: policy and practice in relation to the retention, storage and retrieval of files; the handling of requests, including by whom; the provision of services (eg counselling and intermediary help); and the impact of the Data Protection Act 1998 on the handling of access requests. Two related themes emerged. First, policy, practice and service provision vary enormously between agencies, creating a 'post-code lottery' for post-care adults. Second, such provision is often poor in comparison with that offered to adopted adults, thereby raising the question of whether the current legal and policy framework for access to care records is adequate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which examined the access of adoptive parents on the care records of their adopted children under the Data Protection Act of 1998 in Great Britain. The study utilized self-administered postal questionnaires. One of the key findings of the study is that the average age of former care adults accessing files is approximately 35 years old.