Service use by families with children adopted from Romania
| Pages | 5-15 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/17466660200600002 |
| Date | 01 April 2006 |
| Published date | 01 April 2006 |
| Author | Jenny Castle,Michael Rutter,Celia Beckett,Emma Colvert,Christine Groothues,Amanda Hawkins,Jana Kreppner,Thomas O'Connor,Suzanne Stevens,Edmund Sonuga‐Barke |
| Subject Matter | Education,Health & social care,Sociology |
5
Journal of Children’s Services
Volume 1 Issue 1 April 2006
©Pavilion Publishing (Brighton) Ltd
Abstract
Service use between six and 11 years of age is reported for children adopted from Romania into UK
families, and compared with that for children adopted within the UK before six months of age. Between
six and 11, therehad been only one adoption breakdown, and about one in ten couples experienced a
marital breakdown. Apart from continuing concerns over hepatitis B carrier status in a small number of
children, physical health problems were not a prominent feature. By contrast, nearly one-third of the
children from Romania placed in UK families after the age of six months received mental health services
provision – a rate far higher than the 11 to 15% in the groups adopted before the age of six months. Such
provision was strongly related to research assessments of mental health problems and largely concerned
syndromes that were relatively specific to institutional deprivation (quasi-autism, disinhibited attachment
and inattention/overactivity). There were similar differences between the UK adoptees and the adoptees
from Romania entering the UK after six months of age in major special educational provision and, again,
the findings showed that the provision was in accordwith research assessments of scholastic
achievement. The between group differences for lesser special educational provision were much smaller
and therewas some tendency for the early adopted groups to receive such provision for lesser degrees of
scholastic problems than the children adopted from Romania who entered the UKafter six months of age.
The policy and practice implications of the findings arebriefly discussed.
Key words
inter-country adoption; physical health; mental health provision; special educational provision
1MRC Social, Genetic
and Developmental
Psychiatry Centre,
Institute of
Psychiatry,
King’s College
London
2Department of
Psychiatry,
University of
Rochester, USA
3King’sCollege
London and
Developmental
Brain-Behaviour
Unit, School of
Psychology,
University of
Southampton
Introduction
In the early 1990s, following the fall of the Ceau¸sescu
regime in Romania, media pictures had alerted the
world to the plight of children suffering profound
deprivation in residential institutions. As a
consequence, altruism (as well as infertility) led to
the adoption of several hundred such children by
families in the UK. Research in the UK (like that in
Canada – Ames, 1997; Fisher et al,1997; Marcovitch
et al,1997) quickly showed that over half the children
were seriously malnourished, over half were
functioning developmentally in the retarded range
and many suffered from a variety of medical problems
(Beckett et al,2003) and behavioural difficulties
(Beckett et al,2002) at the time of entry to the UK.
At that time, neither systematic research nor clinical
experience provided much guidance as to what to
expect about developmental progress and service
requirements. There were considerable challenges in
the shortterm, but probably most people assumed
that, following adoption into well-functioning homes,
there would be a rapid catch-up in the first few
months, with relatively little further change after that.
The implication was that it was likely that there
would be few long-term sequelae and few long-term
service needs. Our study was set up to determine
whether these expectations would be borne out.
Jenny Castle1,Michael Rutter1,Celia Beckett1,Emma Colvert1,Christine Groothues1,
Amanda Hawkins1,Jana Kreppner1,Thomas G O’Connor2,Suzanne E Stevens1, 3 and
Edmund Sonuga-Barke1, 3
Service use by families with
children adopted from Romania
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