Is it that they won't do it, or is it that they can't? Executive functioning and children who have been fostered and adopted.
Adoption & Fostering › Vol. 31 Nbr. 2, June 2007
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Is it that they won't do it, or is it that they can't? Executive functioning and children who have been fostered and adopted.
Introduction
The Family Futures Consortium (established in 1997) provides an integrated, multi-disciplinary assessment and treatment service to children who have experienced early trauma, have been accommodated and are now living in adoptive families or with foster carers. Family Futures' annual appraisal of children and families shows that of the 260 children seen at the Consortium, they had the following factors in their background: substance abuse: 60 per cent physical abuse: 55 per cent emotional abuse: 48 per cent domestic violence: 47 per cent sexual abuse: 37 per cent Two-fifths had three or more risk factors in their background and 85 per cent of these children had been removed from their birth families before six years of age. These figures and the population seen at Family Futures are very similar to the Hadley Centre cohort of children for whom adoption best interest decisions were made (Selwyn et al, 2006). The children seen at Family Futures have all been referred by local authorities or health authorities for a multi-disciplinary assessment and our treatment programme because they are exhibiting attachment difficulties, problems with affect-regulation and difficulties in cognitive functioning. They fall into two main groups. Firstly, there are those for whom these factors are putting their existing family placements at risk of breakdown. The second group comprises those children who are about to be placed or have been placed in new families in situations where the placement agencies see disruption as a possibility. These statistics and problems highlight the fact that the majority of children seen at Family Futures have experienced significant trauma in the first years of their lives. We now recognise that they have what has been described as Developmental Trauma Disorder (Cook et al, 2005). Hence, the rationale for Family...See the full content of this document
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