Paramountcy, Family Rights and Contested Adoption: Does Contact with Birth Relatives Balance the Scales?

Autor/inn/en	MacDonald, Mandi; McLoughlin, Priscilla
Titel	Paramountcy, Family Rights and Contested Adoption: Does Contact with Birth Relatives Balance the Scales?
Quelle	In: Child Care in Practice, 22 (2016) 4, S.401-407 (7 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1357-5279
DOI	10.1080/13575279.2016.1208147
Schlagwörter	Adoption; Family (Sociological Unit); Legal Responsibility; Parent Rights; Foreign Countries; Legislation; Child Welfare; Foster Care; Childrens Rights; Family Relationship; United Kingdom (Northern Ireland) + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Familie; Strafmündigkeit; Elternrecht; Ausland; Gesetzgebungslehre; Kindeswohl; Pflegehilfe; 'Children''s rights'; Kindesrecht
Abstract	This article combines practitioner insight and research evidence to chart how principles of partnership and paramountcy have led to birth family contact becoming the expected norm following contested adoption from care in Northern Ireland. The article highlights how practice has adapted to the delay in proposed reforms to adoption legislation resulting in the evolution of increasingly open adoption practices. Adoption represents an irrevocable transfer of parental responsibility from birth to adoptive parents and achieves permanence and legal security for children in care who cannot return to their birth family. Its enduring effect, however, makes public adoption a contentious field of child welfare practice, particularly when contested by birth parents. This article explores how post-adoption contact may be viewed as reconciling the uneasy interface between paramountcy principles and parental rights to respect for family life. The article highlights the complexity of adoptive kinship relationships following contested adoption from care, and how contact presents unique challenges that mitigate against meaningful and sustainable connections between the child and their birth relatives. In conclusion, a call is made for sensitive negotiation and support of contact arrangements, and the development of practice models that are informed by an understanding of the workings of adoptive kinship. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2020/1/01