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Background: While studies of ex-orphanage care show adverse effects on development, the longer-term impact on mid-life psychosocial functioning and physical health has not been established. Methods: Orphanage records provided baseline data on a sample of 100 Hong Kong Chinese girls who were subsequently adopted into the UK. A mid-life follow-up using standardised questionnaires and face-to-face interviews assessed current circumstances, life satisfaction and mental and physical health outcomes. Comparisons were made with age-matched UK-born adopted and nonadopted women. Results: Half the group spent between 1 and 2 years in orphanages, average age at adoptive placement was 23 months and 72% participated in the follow-up. Despite this poor early start, mid-life outcomes were commensurate with the comparison groups in terms of mental and physical health measures. Serious psychiatric and social difficulties were largely absent. Although the timing and extent of exposure to orphanage care did not influence outcome, participants' reports of poorer quality adoptive family experience and a negative view of their adoption were significantly associated with poorer mental health outcomes (difference in means = 0.76, 95% CI 1.33-0.19, p = 0.01; difference in means = 1.2, 95% CI 0.68-1.73, p = 0.01, respectively). Conclusions: Moderately depriving orphanage care did not predict enduring adverse consequences in mid-life but subsequent poor adoption experience was associated with outcome.

Follow-up studies of adopted adults are very important in contributing to the development of policy and practice when placing children in families following early adversity. This article describes the development of a methodology for one such study due to be completed in 2012. The files of 100 ethnic Chinese girls adopted from Hong Kong into British families in the 1960s were made available and originally analysed in 2007. As the files recorded data on the children's pre-adoption experiences including orphanage care, this provided an opportunity to explore a well-established hypothesis that early orphanage experience has an enduring effect on later outcomes. However, given this group of women are now in their 40s and 50s, identifying these outcomes may offer a much longer term perspective to that usually available in research studies of this kind. This article reports the findings from an analysis of the information held on these files. It then discusses the benefits and challenges of developing a robust methodology for a follow-up study that compares this group of women with other adopted and non-adopted groups of a similar age and in particular explores how post-adoption experiences across the lifespan might moderate the effects of early adversity. Following up this group of women into their middle years and using data available about their early experiences provides a unique opportunity to test and challenge existing theories about the long-term consequences of international adoption. This will help to inform both policy and direct social work practice when children are being considered and placed through international adoption today. [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]

This paper focuses on policy implementation and, in particular, the workings of ‘street-level bureaucracy’ in a small, marginalised area of welfare provision, namely post-care adults seeking access to their care records. The work arises from research mapping UK service provision in this area, via questionnaires and interviews with key actors in local authorities and voluntary organisations. The study was prompted by widespread but largely anecdotal evidence that practices and service provision for those seeking to access their care records varied enormously. While post-care adults may seek access to records for reasons similar to those of adopted adults (curiosity, information on birth family, medical information, care histories and experiences, search and reunion), there is a lack of comparable legal framework and service provision, with reliance instead on the 1998 Data Protection Act (DPA). The intersection of data protection and (child) welfare gives rise to a number of important tensions that are explored, such as those surrounding ‘ownership’ of files and their content, between rights to information and (paternalistic) welfare considerations, and whether the handling of requests should constitute an administrative or a social work task. Finally, we consider the findings, their wider contexts and implications for legal reform and policy change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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 recent judgement by the European Court of Human Rights in the Odievre v France case has denied some adopted people the right to access identifying information about their family of origin. Yet, in the UK, adopted people have enjoyed the right to access identifying information for many years. The evidence from practice and research has demonstrated the positive benefits adopted people and their binh and adoptive relatives have gained from an open record policy. In this paper, the authors argue that denying some adopted people access to information that could enhance their personal identity creates an act of discrimination. [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.