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This book explores how children’s rights are practised and weighed against birth and adoptive parents’ rights and examines how governments and professionals balance rights when it is decided that children cannot return to parental care.
From different socio-political and legal contexts in Europe and the United States, it provides an in-depth analysis of concepts of family, contact, the child’s best-interest principle and human rights when children are adopted from care.
Taking an international comparative approach to these issues, this book provides detailed information on adoption processes and shares learning from best practice and research across country boundaries to help improve outcomes for all children in care for whom adoption may be the placement of choice.
"This book takes the reader beyond national boundaries by analysing how adoption from care is conceived and practised in different Western countries. More importantly, the book helps to overcome mental boundaries around adoption, a child protection alternative that is as complex as it is necessary." Jesús Palacios, University of Seville
“The chapters are readable and relatively short but append lengthy lists of references for further reading. This book is excellent value for any practitioners, policy makers or researchers with an interest in adoption, especially as the editors have secured funding for a free, open access online version." Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law
Tarja Pösö is Professor of Social Work at Tampere University.
Marit Skivenes is Professor of Political Science, and Director of the Centre for Research on Discretion and Paternalism, at the University of Bergen
June Thoburn is Emeritus Professor of Social Work at the University of East Anglia.
Introducing the field of adoption from care ~ Tarja Pösö, Marit Skivenes and June Thoburn
Part I: Adoption from care in risk-oriented child protection systems
Adoption from care in England: learning from experience ~ June Thoburn
Overcoming the Soviet legacy? Adoption from care in Estonia ~ Katre Luhamaa and Judit Strömpl
Adoption of children from state care in Ireland: in whose best interests? ~ Kenneth Burns and Simone McCaughren
Adoption from care: policy and practice in the United States ~ Jill Duerr Berrick
Part II: Adoption from care in family service-oriented child protection systems
Adoption from care in Austria ~ Jenny Krutzinna and Katrin Križ
Adoption from care in Finland: currently an uncommon alternative to foster care ~ Pia Eriksson and Tarja Pösö
Adoption from care in Germany: inconclusive policy and poorly coordinated practice ~ Thomas Meysen and Ina Bovenschen
Adoption from care in Norway ~ Hege Stein Helland and Marit Skivenes
Adoption from care in Spain ~ Sagrario Segado, Ana Cristina Gomez Aparicio and Esther Abad Guerra
Part III: Human rights platform and ways of belonging
International human rights law governing national adoption from care ~ Katre Luhamaa and Conor O’Mahony
Creating ‘family’ in adoption from care ~ Jenny Krutzinna
Understanding attachment in decisions on adoption from care in Norway ~ Hege Stein Helland and Sveinung Hellesen Nygård
The adoptive kinship network: issues around birth family contact in adoption ~ June Thoburn
Making sense of adoption from care in very different contexts ~ Tarja Pösö, Marit Skivenes and June Thoburn