Progress After Placement

The chapter explores the progress made by the 93 adoptees in the core follow-up sample in terms of physical and mental health and education from the time they entered their adoptive homes until they were followed up, on average 18 years later. It draws on data collected through responses to an online survey concerning 93 adoptees (44% of the cohort) completed at follow-up, and interviews focusing on 24 adult adoptees. On entering their placements, 40% of adoptees were developmentally delayed; 13% had poor physical health; 38% were in poor mental health. Emotional and behavioural problems affected their academic progress; 76% required specialist help. After placement, 74% improved in physical health, 66% in mental health and 68% in academic performance. The challenges faced by adoptive parents provide a powerful case for careful preparation and long-term post-adoption support.

Post-adoption Contact and Relationships with Birth Family Members

The chapter draws on data collected through responses to an online survey concerning 93 adoptees (44% of the cohort), completed on average 18 years after placement, and interviews focusing on 24 adult adoptees. Face-to-face post-adoption contact was a legal requirement. After placement with adoptive families, 93% of adoptees had contact with birth family members; at follow-up, 56% still saw at least one member of their birth family; 69% of both adoptees and adoptive parents thought contact was ultimately beneficial. There was minimal evidence of contact with birth parents destabilising placements. However, it introduced a ‘painful transparency’ for all parties and could be problematic. Over time, contact supported children’s identity needs by incorporating knowledge of their antecedents and could mitigate their difficulties with attachment, separation and loss. It forced all parties to engage with one another and helped adoptees achieve closure.

Introduction: International Issues and Debates Concerning Adoption

A history of systemic injustices and a lack of transparency have influenced public perceptions of domestic adoption. This book aims to introduce more empirical evidence into the debate by exploring the value of open adoption, as practised in Australia, as a route to permanence for abused and neglected children in out-of-home care who cannot safely return to their birth families. International evidence about the outcomes of adoption and foster care is discussed. The chapter introduces the Barnardos Australia Find-a-Family programme which has been finding adoptive homes since 1986 for non-Aboriginal children in care who are identified as ‘hard to place’. Regular post-adoption face-to-face contact with birth family members is an integral part of the adoption plan. The methodology for evaluating the outcomes for 210 children placed through the programme included case and court file analysis, a follow-up survey and interviews with adoptive parents and adult adoptees.

Permanence

This chapter considers how far the Barnardos adoptees achieved legal, residential and emotional permanence after adoption. It draws on minimal follow-up data, available for 124 adoptees (59% of the original cohort); extensive data collected through responses to an online survey concerning 93 adoptees (44% of the cohort) 5–37 years after placement; and interviews focusing on 24 adult adoptees. Ages at follow-up ranged from 5 to 44. All adoptees had achieved legal permanence. Many had achieved residential permanence after numerous placements in care: 34% of those aged 18 or over were still living with their adoptive parents. Twelve (13%) placements had disrupted, but all except eight (9%) adoptees had achieved psychological permanence. Relationships between adoptees and adoptive parents were twice as likely to persist as those between care leavers and foster parents.

Adult Outcomes

The chapter focuses exclusively on the 60 adoptees aged over 18 who completed the follow-up survey. It draws on data collected through survey responses and interviews focusing on 24 adult adoptees. It explores their outcomes across a range of dimensions that together contribute to a composite measure of adult functionality. It presents the outcomes the adoptees achieved on each of these key domains and explores how they compared both with those of the normative Australian population and a contemporaneous cohort of care leavers. The adoptees showed more evidence of poor mental health than care leavers, but often did better in terms of education and employment. The presence of a committed adoptive parent appears to have acted as a powerful protective factor, and only extreme indicators of vulnerability at entry to the adoptive home correlated with poor adult outcomes.

Search and Communication About Origins in Internationally Adopted Young Adults in Spain: A Phenomenological Perspective

Adoption is considered a lifelong process for those involved in it. In this vein, adoptees’ lives seem to be impacted by their origins and every experience that occurred before their adoption. The aim of this study is to explore adult adoptees’ experience with respect to their adoptive condition, communication about origins, and search for their origins. In this study, 11 adult adoptees took part, 10 women and one man aged between 18 and 26 years. Interviews were conducted to examine participants’ experiences, which were subsequently analyzed following interpretative phenomenological analysis. Results showed that most of the participants experience an open communication about origins and adoption with their parents and their environment. However, participants pointed to the existence of some limits in such communication. Participants noted a similar experience with respect to search. Based on the results, future studies should focus on the study of adoption in different stages of adulthood.

Comparison of adoptees’ and nonadoptees’ experience of parenthood and mediating role of dyadic coping

As most adoption studies have focused on adopted children and their vulnerability, with scant research on adult adoptees’ outcomes, the aim of the present study was to compare adult adoptees and nonadoptees on their experiences as parents and to explore more deeply the question of the role among adoptees of the conjugal relationship in the context of parenthood. A total of 268 adoptees matched one to one with 268 nonadoptees responded to several standardized scales (attachment, mental health, resilience, motivations for parenthood, parental stress, dyadic coping, and coparenting). The groups did not differ on the experience of parenthood, thus contradicting most previous studies. They did, however, differ on attachment, mental health and dyadic coping, with adoptees achieving lower scores. Only in the case of adoptees was dyadic coping found to have a mediating role on the relations between psychological characteristics and parental stress. Thanks to our efforts to make our samples as representative as possible, this study sheds new light on adoptees’ experience of parenthood, especially after the birth of their first child. Moreover, it presents adoptees from the perspective of resilience and offers new insights into their functioning as parents. It opens up both theoretical and clinical perspectives.