The Adoption and Attachment Study: Into Adolescence
This research project is a collaboration between the Coram Family Adoption Service and the Anna Freud Centre and UCL. The project is being funded by the Big Lottery Fund.
The project is the latest phase in a long-term study of the outcome of adoption for two groups of children. These are: (i) children between the ages of 4 and 7 years who had previously suffered maltreatment, and who had been considered 'hard to place', before being adopted into their new families; and (ii) a comparison group of children who were adopted before 12 months of age and who had suffered no previous maltreatment.
The first phase of the study involved the previously maltreated children being assessed at the ages of 4 to 8 years (i.e. as soon as possible after their adoption), and then followed up for two years. Click here to read more about this phase of the study.
The non-maltreated children in the comparison group, meanwhile, were assessed at the same age as the previously maltreated children and followed up in the same way. The findings of this earlier part of the study have been presented in a number of important papers and at conferences.
The children in both groups are now in early adolescence and the young people and parents who participated in the first stage are being invited to participate again in the current study.
As in the earlier phase of the study, this follow-up is informed by attachment theory, with a particular focus on the formation of internal working models of relationships (that is, on the development of relationship patterns that will be repeated in new relationships as these are formed), which are based on childhood experiences and the individual's evaluations of those experiences.
In this way, the study aims to assess the participants' current attachment relationships to family and peers, the latter becoming increasingly important in adolescence.
In addition, the study is investigating various aspects of how the adolescents behave, including ways in which they internalise and externalise behaviour problems, their self esteem, psychosocial functioning (that is, how and why they interact in social circumstances), cognitive skills, negotiation skills and their performance at school.
These aspects of the parent-adolescent relationship and the adolescents' functioning are assessed through observation of interaction and through interviews and questionnaires with both adolescents and parents.
The principal aim of the research is to provide information that will improve the lives of vulnerable young people by reducing the instances of unsuccessful adoption relationships, by reducing stress within adoptive families, and by improving the support available to young people and to their adoptive families.
Results from the project will lead to the enhancement of assessment techniques, as well as informing support services available to adopted children, foster carers and adoptive parents. The study will also further inform the debate about appropriate timescales for decision making and planning for children in the care system.