Policy and Practice Implications from the English and Romanian Adoptees (ERA) Study: Forty Five Key Questions

Abstract

Policy and Practice Implications from the English and Romanian Adoptees (ERA) Study: Forty Five Key Questions By Michael, Rutter, Celia, Beckett, Jennifer, Castle, Jana, Kreppner, Suzanne, Stevens and Edmund, Sonuga-Barke London : British Association for Adoption and Fostering ISBN 9781905664757 , 48 pp., £6.95 (pb) In the years following the overthrow of Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989 the western media was full of horrific images of Romanian orphans tied up and dying in their cots. It is estimated that over 100,000 children were living in orphanages at that time, having been abandoned by parents who could not afford to keep them. Subsequently a number of these children were adopted into the UK. From the earliest days there was speculation about the likely outcomes of such adoptions, and in 1992 the UK Government initiated the English and Romanian Adoptees (ERA) Study, under the guidance of Michael Rutter. This short book constitutes the first attempt by the ERA team to bring together all the hard evidence they gathered in the intervening years. The Study originally drew from 324 children adopted in the early 1990s. The sample focused on 98 children who had been in institutional care beyond the age of 6 months. That group was compared to a smaller group who experienced institutional care for less than 6 months, and also to a ‘control’ group of English adoptees. The book is shaped around 45 key questions, and highlights some encouraging outcomes. There is strong evidence that the psychosocial and physical deprivation endured by these children need not have lasting damage, which confirms my own research in this area. The ERA Study has produced positive findings in terms of the children’s ability to ‘catch up’ in the first 2 years, and to make continuing improvements during the teenage years. Nevertheless there are continuing problems in a substantial minority of cases — around half of those who had experienced institutional care beyond the first 6 months. The team has found it difficult to identify clear causal factors. For example, they found no clear link between continuing problems and either levels of previous deprivation, stereotypically repetitive behaviour or the age of the adopter. However, it is clear the longer a child remained within one of these institutions the more likely it was to have a profoundly depriving effect. The team has identified four deprivation-specific issues — quasi-autism, disinhibited attachment, inattention/overactivity and cognitive impairment. On the other hand, it is important to remember that half of the group has NOT had extensive problems. It is this unpredictability that has made it difficult for the team to make many firm recommendations regarding policy and practice. In their concluding section they say ‘it has been challenging to note the large variations in outcome and the difficulty in identifying the precise mechanisms that underlie these complex patterns of resilience and adversity’. Maybe we should simply celebrate this evidence of the individuality of the human spirit. Rutter’s book makes a substantial contribution to the growing body of work around this subject, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in the issue of intercountry adoption.