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Background Positive family environments are crucial in promoting children's emotional and behavioural well-being, and may also buffer development of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). ADHD is highly heritable, but psychosocial factors in the family environment, particularly family cohesion and communication, may mediate genetic predispositions. The purpose of the current study is to examine the mediating influence of the adoptive family environment between pre-adoptive risk factors and youths' ADHD symptomatology at 14 years post adoption. Methods The data used in this study were obtained from the fourth wave of the California Long-Range Adoption Study (CLAS) (n = 449). Using structural equation modelling (SEM), family sense of coherence and family adaptability were tested as possible mediators between environmental and biological predictors and ADHD symptomatology. Predictors included birthweight, gender, age at adoption, adoption from foster care, transracial adoption status, ethnicity and having a previous diagnosis of ADHD. Results Results show that, while adoption from foster care is negatively associated with family functioning, higher family cohesion and adaptability mediate this influence on children's ADHD symptomatology. Older age of adoption directly predicts greater ADHD symptoms with no mediating influence of the family environment. Conclusions The mediating influence of the family environment between children's risk factors and ADHD symptoms suggests that family intervention strategies may be helpful in improving adopted children's outcomes. Once children are adopted, targeting family communication patterns and dynamics may be an additional part of developing an evidence-based, post-adoption services toolkit.

Increased attention is being paid to open adoption arrangements between birth parents and adopted children and families. This study examines openness and contact among 469 adoptions at 14 years postadoption from the fourth wave of the California Long-Range Adoption Study (CLAS) and 378 adoptions matched across all waves.Theproportionoffamilies reportingcontact declined from Wave 3 (1997) to Wave 4 (2003) although contacts increased within open adoptions.Positiveratingsofthecontact’seffect on the family increased the likelihood of contact between adoptive and birth families, although greater levels of overall satisfaction lowered the likelihood of openness over time. At any point in time, public agency adoptions were less likely to be open. Findings suggest that increased attention should be paid within agencies to how open arrangements are pursued for adoptive placements.

Researchers have long debated whether adopted youth manifest disproportionate levels of psychological dysfunction compared with non-adopted youth. Yet, missing from the debate has been a clear understanding of the specific subgroups of adopted youth who may develop behaviour problems and of the risk factors associated with various vulnerable populations. This longitudinal study examined one subpopulation of adopted youth – former foster children – in order to determine their immediate and long-term functioning, particularly in comparison with their adopted non-foster care peers. The central goal of this study was to ascertain the prevalence of behavioural problems in adopted foster youth compared with adopted non-foster youth and to chart the longitudinal course of their behavioural problems. Participants included adopted foster youth (n = 293) and adopted non-foster youth (n = 312) from a statewide sample of adopted youth, aged 2–18 years. Data were collected from the adoptive parents at approximately 2, 4 and 8 years after adoption. Adoptive parents rated youths’ functioning with the Behaviour Problems Inventory. According to parental report, a striking number of the foster youth displayed behaviour problems, although the non-foster care group of children also displayed noteworthy levels of problem behaviours. The rates of behaviour problems in both groups far exceed what is observed in the general population of children.

In spite of the need for pre- and post-adoption support, studies indicate low levels of services utilization among adoptive families, particularly those involving children with special needs. This study examines the relation- ship between utilization of adoptions services and adoptive child and family characteristics, pre-adoptive risk history, and provision of adoption preparation services. A longitudinal survey of 560 adoptive parents reveals significant but differential influences of pre-adoptive risk history and pre-adoptive preparation services on use of both general and clinical post-adoption services over time. Findings support the need for long-term post-adoption services for adop- tive families, especially for families who adopt a child with special needs. Implications for practice, policy, and future research are discussed.

Elements of attachment theory have been embraced by practitioners endeavouring to assist foster and adopted children and their parents. Attachment theory articulates the potential risks of experiencing multiple caregivers; emphasizes the importance of close social rela- tionships to development; and recognizes that substitute parents may not always have close relationships with children who have experi- enced adversities before joining them. Attachment theory offers con- cerned parents what they believe to be a scientific explanation about their lack of the close, satisfying parent-child relationship they desire. Yet the scientific base of attachment theory is limited both in terms of its ability to predict future behaviours, and especially with regard to its use as the underpinning theory for therapeutic intervention with children experiencing conduct problems. There is a critical need to review the role of attachment theory in child and family services and to consider its place among other explanations for children's disturb- ing behaviour. An important step towards pursuing alternative approaches is for researchers and practitioners to understand the reasons the attachment paradigm appeals to so many adoptive and foster parents, given the apparent widespread prevalence of attach- ment-based interventions. Such understanding might assist in the development of adoption-sensitive uses of appropriate evidence- based treatment approaches.

The authors of "Foster Family Characteristics and Behavior and Emotional Problems of Foster Children" clearly understand the significant opportunity and public responsibility to provide assistance to abused and neglected children in foster care. They identify some likely outcomes of the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) of 1997, which shortens the time for making a decision about whether a child will return home or go on to another "permanent" placement. They surmise that children who remain in foster care will "become increasingly more challenging as a group." Although this prediction is not a major contention of their paper, because it is used to justify the review, it warrants some discussion. ASFA may have a greater impact on the size of the group of children in foster care than on the composition of the group, although available data make this difficult to predict. ASFA may not have much significance aside from shifting the locus of services for troubled children who have been abused and neglected from foster care to being at home and being adopted. Because it is foster parents who adopt most older children in foster care, many of these foster parents will need the same support as adoptive parents that they needed as foster parents. My skepticism about the authors' assumptions aside, there is still every reason to believe that children in foster care will continue to be a challenging population. The authors' dire prediction is not needed to justify the attention they give to the finding that our foster parents are often not adequately trained or supported to fulfill their roles in the ways that the public expects and that the children need. This review provides a thorough exposition of the limits of the foster family care research, although apparently no studies were excluded on the basis of any of these limitations. Thus reading the review required a constant struggle: to try to appreciate the possible lessons from the studies while keeping in mind that the small sample sizes and low response rates made the studies very hard to learn from. Most significantly, we still do not know whether the respondents were typical of foster parents or if they were more likely to be the least overburdened and most able, proud, committed, and flexible foster parents. The picture of foster home environments and their psychological and socioemotional characteristics may, then, be less favorable than the researchers and reviewers report-a bleak possibility, given the many comparisons that locate the foster parent population below that of the general public. This article may be the first that adequately integrates the burgeoning information about fathers' roles with the literature about foster and adoptive care. This is a critical issue in substitute care, as the proportion of foster and adoptive families headed by single parents has grown in recent years because of special recruiting initiatives for single parents of color and because of the expansion of kinship foster care. For example, single parent adoptions in California increased from 9% of all agency adoptions in 1976 to 22% in 1995 (Barth, Brooks, & Iyer, 1997). The high cost of housing and higher standards of living have resulted in household economies that increasingly rely on at least two jobs. Traditional foster care reimbursement rates are not a net financial gain for any but the poorest single-earner households. Treatment or specialized foster care has higher reimbursement rates for families and can help to substitute for a second earner (usually the mother), because the reimbursements are taxfree. Thus, a payment of $900 a month for each of two children results in an after-tax reimbursement of $21,600. This figure may be enough to keep potential wage earners at home. However, there is a potential downside to professionalizing foster care in this way. When the reimbursement rate rises to the level of a wage, there is apparently organizational pressure to preserve the source of that wage. …

Building Effective Post-Adoption Services: What is the Empirical Foundation?* While adoptions in general are highly successful, families do experience disappointment and disruption, outcomes that may be reduced by provision of post-adoption services. Studies show that adoptive parents request a variety of services, yet few demonstration projects have been done to evaluate their effectiveness. In this paper, we recognize the predominance of attachment theory in post-adoptive services and identify alternative approaches that may have a better fit with the needs and preferences identified by families. We also identify service adaptations for adoptive families that may amplify the power of existing service programs. Key Words: adoption, disruption, dissolution, post-adoption services. In general adoptions are highly successful, at least as judged by their low disruption rates. Yet, even among adoptions that do not disrupt, some continue under difficult circumstances. Adopted children in these families may be experiencing significant functional impairments at home, in school, or in the community (Howard & Smith, 1995). Their families may draw on a variety of services, including special education, outpatient mental health services, hospitalization, and temporary residential placement (Barth & Berry, 1988; Groze, Young, & Corcran-- Rumppe, 1991). Although they may benefit from services designed with a specific sensitivity to adoption-related aspects of these problems, many families will not have access to post-adoption services, which are relatively new and rare. Whereas postadoption service users might also include persons who are searching for their biological parents or who are looking to provide anticipatory guidance to help their child with the adjustment to adoption (Brodzinsky, Smith, & Brodzinsky, 1998; Casey Family Services, 1998), this paper focuses on post-adoption services that are designed to help families with adopted children who are maladjusted or in high levels of conflict with their parents. Many children and their families undergo periods of difficulty-often associated with the ages of the children. Many of these difficulties are resolved without services. Adoptive families are not very different from families in general. Most have positive experiences, which vary somewhat with age, and do not use substantial amounts of services to achieve those good relationships (Brooks, Allen, & Barth, 2000). Barth and Brooks (1997) found that the proportion of parents who felt "somewhat to very" warm and close to their child hit a low of 59% during the years from 13-18, then rebounded to 80% for "children" older than 19. In a study comparing adoptions of children with prenatal drug exposure to those without, at eight years postadoption, about 95% of parents reported being somewhat to very satisfied with how affectionate or tender their child is and 97% reported feeling somewhat to very close to their child. Although only 66% indicated that they were very satisfied with the adoption, more than 90% indicated that if they had it to do over again, they would adopt again (Berry & Barth, 1989). The researchers found that, even among parents who experienced an adoption disruption, 86% stated that they would definitely or most likely adopt again and 50% indicated that they would adopt the same child (but with more awareness of what adoption required of them at different stages in the adoption). Thus, we make no assumptions that all difficulties in adoptive families will require post-adoption services, but only that some may and that the emerging field of post-adoption services requires better theoretical and empirical guidance if these families are to obtain the assistance they seek. Generally, adoptions have been quite stable and successful despite the lack of work done to develop post-adoption services. Relatively low adoption disruption rates reflect this success. …

Openness and Contact in Foster Care Adoptions: An Eight-Year Follow-Up* This study examines openness and contact in 231 foster care adoptions from the California Long-Range Adoption Study (CLAS), an eight-year prospective longitudinal study. Data were collected using three waves of mailed questionnaires completed by the adoptive parent. Findings indicate that while the practice of openness continues to evolve for most families, there is remarkable stability in levels of contact and communication with the child's biological family, especially in the last four years of the study. Key Words: adoption, adoptive parents, contact, foster care, longitudinal, open adoption. While the practice of placing children in open adoptions is still relatively new in the United States, it has become standard in some agencies (Etter, 1993). Despite the increase in open adoptions over the last thirty years, little data exist about openness among families involved in adoptions, particularly families who adopt former foster children (Berry, Dylla, Barth, & Needell, 1998). Open adoption typically refers to the maintenance of contact between adoptive and biological families following placement of adopted children. Contact can differ in terms of who initiates and is involved in the contact, including the adopted child, adoptive parents, biological parents, or other adoptive and biological relatives. Contact can also differ in form (e.g., information, pictures, gifts, letters, phone calls, face-to-face visits), frequency, and duration (Curtis, 1986). In short, open adoptions are unlike traditional, closed adoptions in that the latter generally involve the termination of all contact between adoptive and biological families and the former do not. Growing concern among mental health and child welfare professionals about the impact of closed adoption on adopted children has been a major contributor to the recent shift from closed to open adoptions. Advocates for openness often maintain that children in closed adoptions are likely to experience identity problems as a result of having no contact with or information about their biological families (Pannor & Baran, 1984; Baran & Pannor, 1993). An increase in the number of couples seeking to adopt and a decrease in the number of infants available for adoption (as a result of greater accessibility to abortion and less stigma of illegitimate birth and single parenting), also have contributed to the shift toward open adoption among mothers who place their children for adoption. The supply and demand in the adoption market, then, is more favorable to the biological mother who is able to wait for families agreeing to an open adoption, if that is her desire (Churchman, 1986; Bachrach, Adams, Sambrano, & London, 1990). These factors have contributed to a growth in openness among adoptions facilitated by a child welfare or adoption agency as well as adoptions in which children are placed in adoptive homes independent of agencies. National child welfare legislation (e.g., PL. 96-272, PL. 105-89) that encourages and supports adoptions of children by their foster parents also has furthered the shift toward openness. An emphasis on helping children to maintain "family continuity" as a principle aim of child welfare services (Downs, Costin, & McFadden, 1996) has led to the search for more ways to reduce the disruption children experience after placement in foster care or when their biological ties are severed. Open adoption is one such strategy. Indeed, adoptions of children from foster care are growing at a substantial rate and in pace with President Clinton's Adoption 2002 goal of doubling adoptions by that year. With the rapid increase in open adoptions has come a slowly growing literature on the effects of the practice on adopted children, adoptive parents, and biological parents (Belbas, 1986; Berry, 1991; Berry et al., 1998; Etter, 1993; Gross, 1993; Grotevant, McRoy, Elde, & Fravel, 1994; Kraft, Palombo, Woods, Mitchell, & Schmidt, 1985a, 1985b; McRoy, Grotevant, & White, 1988). …

Many of the concerns about recent changes in child welfare services practice in Australia have also been raised in the USA. Although it certainly may be the case that mandatory reporting is causing a broadening of child welfare services in Australia, close data-informed scrutiny suggests that this is not the case in the USA. Further, there are positive alternatives to overly intrusive child welfare service interventions that are arising in the USA. There is reasonable evidence to suggest that too little protection rather than too much intrusion remains the more significant problem in the USA; this may also be true elsewhere. The quality and range of services certainly determines whether intrusion is helpful to children and families. In some cases, for example life-threatening health problems that parents will not or cannot treat, engaging the assistance of child welfare services should not be ruled out for ideological reasons.

Child welfare services have multiple goals, including child protection, family continuity, and achievement of legal permanency so children can end their involvement with child welfare services and have a lifetime family. These goals are not all achievable to the same extent in all cases. American child welfare policy has, in the last few years, become more definitive about the priority of child protection above family preservation. Now, situations which involve safety risks that are too great do not require any efforts at reunifying children to their biological homes. Less clear in American child welfare policy and practice is the value to be placed on other factors – particularly when a child cannot return home and will need an alternative adoptive family. Practitioners often emphasize family continuity– that is, the opportunity to maintain contact with the biological parent and extended family members – as a key decision making consideration. Yet, family continuity does not necessarily predict a successful transition to adulthood that is healthy for children or provides social benefits to the community. This paper explores the rationale for expanding child welfare decision making criteria by adding longer-term outcomes and the likelihood that children will eventually generate social benefits.

The child welfare systems in Sweden and the United States were dramatically reformed beginning in the early 1980s. After 10 years, the different results of these reforms are quite striking. These child welfare systems have different methods for preserving families in crisis; different assumptions about the roles of birth parents, foster parents, and adoptive parents; and different goals for children who will not go home. Each of these areas is explored and recommendations made for re-examining child welfare services in both countries.

This study tests the direct and indirect contributions of molecular social skills, global social skill, residence, age, race, and participation in a steady relationship to the social support of young mothers (N = 109). The average age of respondents was 16.8 years, and 67% were non-White. Participants completed role-play measures of skill in conflict resolution and written measures of social support. A correlational analysis supports the hypothesis that molecular social skills increase overall social skill and that these, together, contribute significantly to better social support.