| Renée Wolfs
This in-depth practical guide, written by an adoptive parent for adoptive parents, explores the questions adopted children are likely to ask, with suggestions for helpful explanations and answers. Looking at different age groups in turn, the author provides a wealth of suggestions for possible dialogue with adopted children and age-appropriate answers to common questions and fears.
| Edited by Barry Luckock and Michelle Lefevre
Direct work with children and young people lies at the heart of effective social work. But what counts as direct work? Is it the undertaking of certain tasks with a child, or building a relationship that matters most? Is it more about what is done with a child or about how it is done? This book explores the commitment and skill involved in listening to, understanding and being there on a regular basis that, time and again, is demanded by young people of all ages living in care. It tackles the professional skills and techniques needed to safeguard and promote the welfare of the child.
| Michelle Bell
Memories can be good and bad, happy and sad; those we want to keep alive and others we would rather forget. Looked after children may have more difficult memories that most, because of separation and loss and traumatic events that may have taken place. In this charming picture book, Elfa the elephant discovers that sharing her memories and remembering the good things that happened is more helpful than keeping them locked away.
| Joan Hunt, Suzette Waterhouse Eleanor Lutman
This study provides invaluable information on the benefits and challenges of kinship care and what is to be done to enable it to be used effectively. The study tracked 113 children in England, removed from their parents’ care because of child protection concerns and placed with kin through the courts. The placements were then assessed in terms of: whether they lasted as long as necessary and provided good quality and safe care; the quality of the relationship between the child and carer; and how well the child was functioning.
| Laurel Ashton
When Laurel and David decide the time is right to expand their family, things don’t go according to plan. Published as part of the Our Story series, this honest and heartfelt memoir narrates their struggle to become parents – coping with the discovery of their infertility, the emotional and physical demands of IVF, their experiments with alternative therapies, and their decision to adopt.
| Hedi Argent
The Ten Top Tips series considers some of the fundamental themes in child care practice in concise, practical guides ideal for busy practitioners. This book explores the different, often conflicting, principles involved in placing looked after brothers and sisters. Using a refreshingly child–centred approach it emphasises the importance of getting to know each individual child as well as considering the needs of the sibling group as a whole.
| Henrietta Bond
The Ten Top Tips series considers some of the fundamental themes in child care practice in concise, practical guides ideal for busy practitioners. Based on the views and experiences of young people themselves, this book delivers a strong message – believe in and expect the best for every young person you work with and support them to achieve it – and provides advice and guidance on how to make this a reality.
| Edited by Perlita Harris
What do adopted children and young people really feel about being adopted? How do they feel about being parted from birth parents and siblings and, for some, their country of birth? This unique and intensely moving collection of poetry, prose and artwork allows 80 contributors to tell it like it is.
| Robert Marsden
Published as part of the Our Story series, The family business is the true story of the adoption of William, a little boy with cerebral palsy, by a middle-aged couple with three birth children. It tells of the journey William and the other members of the family made to get to the point where they felt they were a whole family.
