Nurturing Adoptions: Creating Resilience after Neglect and Trauma

Abstract

Drawing on clinical experience as a social worker specialising in attachment and trauma in the USA, Deborah D. Gray has written Nurturing Adoptions as a manual to help parents and practitioners understand and meet the needs of children who have been adopted following early experiences of abuse or neglect. This is a timely and topical book for anyone involved in domestic or inter-country adoption. Current UK adoption policy is focused on the adoption of children in care, many of whom will have been exposed to significant harm in early childhood, and there is increasing recognition of the extent of their enduring emotional, social and behavioural difficulties (e.g. Rushton and Dance, 2004), and of the challenge this presents to adopters who are required to provide a specialised form of therapeutic parenting. The issues associated with caring for children who have experienced abuse and neglect are not, however, exclusive to adoption, and this book will therefore be of value to carers and practitioners involved in all forms of permanent care arrangements, including long-term foster-care, guardianship, and friends and family placements.