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The article informs about the need for adoption support services and the legal obligation of adoption agencies to provide them. Topic include It discusses the importance of evidence-based assessments and multidisciplinary approaches in addressing the diverse needs of adopted children and families, highlighting a two-year funding program by the Department for Education to develop innovative support services.

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Working directly with children in the family-finding process presents an additional challenge to social workers where the child is disabled. In My Shoes, an interactive compute interview, has been demonstrated as an effective communication tool with children who have a wide range of special needs. Jennifer Cousins and John Simmonds report on a project exploring its use with disabled children for whom a permanent new family was being sought. Social workers observed children using In My Shoes and then a group of 16 from four local authorities were trained in its use. They were subsequently supported in its use during family-finding and feedback was gathered on their experience of doing so. A number of them reported enhanced knowledge of the children they worked with, which informed family-finding. However, identifying disabled children with permanence as a plan proved, unexpectedly, to be a significant problem. This raises important questions about whether permanence planning for disabled children follows the same trajectory as for not-disabled children. The project team also found that engaging agencies in this exploratory project was challenging. Incorporating even positive practice tools such as In My Shoes (particularly those involving technology) was often a step too far for a workforce already struggling with huge demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mental health of children in public care has received considerable attention in recent years. There are significant differences in the prevalence rates compared to children living at home and not in public care and these are added to by other adverse lifestyle issues. Considerable attention has been focused on the importance of stable and secure placements supported by access to a range of services including education, health and mental health. Identifying and classifying mental health needs proves to be challenging as the child’s genetic inheritance, pre- and post-birth experiences, including maltreatment, interact with the uncertainty and delays commonly associated with child protection processes, action in the legal system and the difficulty in establishing secure and permanent placements. Clinical need is also related to the age of the child and the reasons they came into care and the length of time they remain. A case illustrating many of these issues, publicly reported in the court’s judgement, is used as the basis for exploring the complexity for the identified child in understanding and making sense of their experiences as placement plans are made for them. These are used to explore the difficulties in establishing clinical protocols such as those recently published in the USA. Particular emphasis is given to the issues faced by children and their carers in establishing new family relationships which address the child’s inheritance from their family of origin especially where these are traumatic and conflicted in origin. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]