Adoption and Foster Care

This chapter is an examination of the emotional journeys of children, birth parents, foster carers and adopters in family transition. It highlights the importance of supporting them in grieving for unrealized expectations of past relationships so they can bring an enhanced sense of self understanding and confidence to their futures and their future relationships. It is argued that children and adults are more able to manage their transitions and trust in their new relationships if they are supported in grieving for earlier losses. Moreover, new family relationships will be better aspected if practitioners are able to help adults and growing children recognize how their identity, security and ways of relating to people are necessarily bound up with their earlier relationships. It is the job of practitioners to help growing children and their parents or carers to come to a peace with their pasts so they can also come to a trust in their joint and separate futures.