Abstract
A witty newspaper correspondent who had visited East Anglia noted that as many market towns contained attractive residences with names like ‘The Old Rectory’, ‘The Old Forge’ and ‘The Old Mill’, will visitors two centuries hence be passing ‘The Old IT Centre’, ‘The Old Burger Bar’ or even ‘The Old Social Services Office’?
A scrutiny of child care history raises a similar question as past policies and practices, even those within living memory, can seem quaint and incomprehensible. As a colleague remarked, ‘It’s like a glimpse at a Sunday School prize.’ Some things seem so strange that one cannot imagine how people ever believed in and pursued them with vigour. Dozens of examples spring to mind: the shipment of children to the colonies, the institutional care of infants, the terms used for disabilities, the public flogging of miscreants, etc. At the time, these practices seemed so ‘normal’ that critics could be dismissed as woolly-minded liberals.
Part of the problem was that there was hardly any robust research available on the effects of what was being done and children’s voices were unheard, so evidence could be conjured up to support almost anything. People could ‘believe’ in things irrespective of their relevance or context, just as my grandmother didn’t ‘believe’ in Christmas cards for reasons I never understood.
Separating children from their families inevitably engenders strong emotions and this ‘believe in’ perspective has affected many policies in a way that is less apparent in more science-based disciplines, such as medicine. No one ‘believes’ in surgery; it saves your life if you’ve got peritonitis, is irrelevant for dermatitis and is a possible option for a broken wrist.
Adoption has been especially vulnerable to this type of debate, which is hardly surprising as it is the most radical action – apart from execution – that can be taken about a child. But recent years have seen something new: the emergence of a body of knowledge developed from a set of independent studies all indicating similar results. There have been reports on disruption, concurrent planning, long-term outcomes for abused and neglected infants and an overview of a major research programme, as well as studies of particular groups of adoptees and those from other countries. Never before has there been so much information. This can only be a good thing. But is it enough?
Most of the new evidence is empirical in that it focuses on establishing facts rather than offering theoretical explanations or comparisons of contexts and alternatives. Julie Selwyn and colleagues, for example, answer the perennial question ‘How many adoptions from care disrupt?’ and conclude that the rate is low – between two and nine percent (Selwyn, Wijedasa and Meakings, 2014: 275). This is good news since it suggests that ‘adoption works’ despite all the challenges and heartbreak some parents face. But is this result sufficient for us to ‘believe’ in it and act with confidence?
There are serious limitations in relying too heavily on descriptive facts. Further analysis is always required as even the most unequivocal results have themselves to be evaluated. How do we interpret a nine percent disruption rate? Should we cheer or cry, act or hesitate? Empirical detail, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, is not ‘the beginning of the end but may be the end of the beginning’. So while the results of recent research resolve some questions, they do not answer others. Why, for example, do some of the background factors explored produce risk and protection while others do not? This is something we need to know before leaping into action.
If it is the case that naked empirical evidence is vulnerable to selective interpretation, this journal has a responsibility to caution interpretations and undue extrapolation. So what stance should be taken with regard to a proposition that more children in care should be adopted? Certainly, this may or may not be true, but it cannot be concluded from the studies described because it would require a needs assessment of every looked after child and the application of the best evidence to decide when the arrangement called adoption meets particular needs. No child ‘needs’ adoption or foster care, but they do have needs that are best met by it.
Adoption is an unlikely outcome for the majority of looked after children; just over half of those in care at any one time in England are over the age of nine, nearly a third are there under voluntary arrangements and one in six live with relatives. Thus, the debate needs to be focused: it is not about whether we should be ‘for’ or ‘against’ adoption – that is silly – or whether ‘adoption works’ – we now know that it meets the needs of certain children well – or whether we need more or less adoption – impossible to say without looking at the needs of candidates. It is more about reviewing the criteria for making decisions and the accompanying administrative processes to get the right interventions to the right children. Furthermore, once the role of adoption within the spectrum of services is agreed, there is a subsidiary consideration of the different arrangements possible under the heading, something usually missing in broad ‘for’ and ‘against’ arguments. The issue, therefore, is not about policies for all looked after children but about the needs of a relatively small group of mostly young children and the boundaries between adoption and other options – a specific but nevertheless very important issue.
It would help if the empirical datasets currently available could be used for more than providing authoritative facts. The uncritical acceptance of empirical evidence as eternal truths is potentially dangerous, whereas constant questioning of sound evidence is not. In my experience, the fashioning of effective policy and practice best starts with children’s needs, followed by a consideration of the aims we want to achieve; then comes discussion of the services that will best achieve these goals, with final attention paid to the administration and support necessary to make them work. Discussions of empirical evidence in isolation usually start the other way round, describing and refining services and then fitting the children into them. In this respect, Voltaire was helpful when he advised, ‘Judge a man [sic] by his questions rather than his answers.’