Serving-Up the ACE: Understanding Adverse Childhood Experiences (“ACE”) in Dependency Adoption Through the Lens of Social Science

Almost certainly, every child who enters the foster care system has endured some sort of trauma. It is unrefuted that childhood trauma correlates with mental, physical, and behavioral problems well into adulthood. In 1998, one of the first major studies of the relationship between certain forms of childhood trauma and adult behavior and disease was reported. Collectively, these traumas are called “Adverse Childhood Experiences” (ACE). Today ACE refers to ten common forms of trauma that individuals may have experienced as children. To put this issue in perspective, it is currently estimated that 34.8 million children in the United States are affected by ACE, two out of three adults have one or more ACE, and one out of eight adults have four or more ACE. Since the original study, several studies have been published linking ACE to detrimental lifelong effects relating to mental health, chronic health, and behavior patterns. Despite this, the consideration of ACE in family law and child welfare-related cases is a relatively new concept in courts across the country. This Article summarizes the research on ACE and how this research has become integrated into the courtroom, using the Florida court system as an example. In addition, in a novel approach, this article will articulate how ACE research and findings can be utilized in foster care adoption.

Children Looked After in England – Reflections on the Past, Present and Future

This paper explores the debates surrounding out-of-home care for children who are unable to live with their birth parents and become looked after by the state in England. The historical context for the provision of out-of-home care is considered. Themes, including the use of residential care, foster care, adoption and placements of children from Black and minority ethnic children, are identified. These themes are re-examined in light of the current political and policy context, including the impact of globalisation. The paper concludes some reflections on future trends.

Forensic Social Work

Forensic social work is a practice specialty that involves interaction with the courts. It has emerged as an important field in the past several decades. Forensic social workers often are involved in making recommendations regarding competency, involuntary commitment, risk of violence, and alternative sentencing. They conduct forensic interviews and psychosocial assessments, and testify as expert witnesses. They also provide treatment to court-ordered offenders. Their influence is felt in cases of domestic violence, child maltreatment, custody, mental health, immigration, elder abuse, divorce, visitation, foster care, adoption, criminal and juvenile justice, substance abuse, and probation and parole.

Adoption: Overview

Adoption of children from foster care and international adoptions have accelerated since 1987. Federal policy changes have markedly increased the termination of parental rights and adoption of children in foster care. Adoption by relatives and single parents has also grown markedly. Open adoption is increasingly normative. Adoption outcomes are generally positive although there is substantial call for post-adoption support for children adopted from foster care. These services are emerging but their efficacy is still untested. More work is needed on post-adoption services because there are now more former foster children in post-adoption status than there are children in foster care.

The confluence of adverse early experience and puberty on the cortisol awakening response

Associations between early deprivation/neglect in the form of institutional care with the cortisol awakening response (CAR) were examined as a function of pubertal status among 12- and 13-year-old postinstitutionalized youth. CARs indexed hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical reactivity. Postinstitutionalized youth were compared to youth adopted internationally from foster care (adoption control) and to nonadopted youth reared in families comparable in parental education and income to the adoptive families. Postinstitutionalized youth exhibited a blunted CAR if they were at earlier, but not if they were at later, stages of puberty. Similarly, for both groups of internationally adopted youth combined, earlier but not later stages of puberty were associated with more blunted CARs at higher but not lower levels of parent-reported preadoption physical and social neglect.

Permanence Planning in Northern Ireland: A Development Project

Greg Kelly, Priscilla Haslett, Jacqueline O'Hare and Karen McDowell discuss a permanence planning project in a Northern Ireland Health and Social Services Trust. The project recruited and trained dual (foster care/adoption) approved carers and placed children with them before the children were freed for adoption. The carers who were recruited in the first year of the project (1999) are described, as are the early outcomes of the placements. All the children (n = 52) placed with the carers were subsequently adopted and no placements have disrupted in the three to six years since. The children were placed with their permanent carers earlier than in conventional practice. The carers, for the most part, thought the reward of having their child placed earlier and younger compensated for the anxiety and uncertainty generated by the legal proceedings to free the children for adoption. They were essentially people who wanted to adopt (three-quarters were childless couples) and the project provides positive evidence of the capacity of this population to offer ‘modern’ adoption placements to looked after children.