Moderately depriving orphanage care did not predict enduring adverse consequences in mid-life but subsequent poor adoption experience was associated with outcome.

As part of its work with adopters, adopted people and their birth relatives, the Children's Society Post-adoption and Care Counselling Research Project is engaged in a number of studies looking at adopted people's experiences of seeking background information and contact with birth relatives. Between 1988 and 1995, project workers provided advice and counselling beyond initial contact to 366 adopted people seeking information and possible reunion with a birth relative. In the following study, Julia Feast and David Howe analysed the agency's file records to determine the numbers and characteristics of adopted people who sought help from the project's counsellors. Findings are presented about the demographic characteristics of the adopted adults, their reasons for wanting the service, the type of contact established with a birth relative and the quality of relationship with their adoptive parents.

In the field of international adoption there has been a long-standing concern that transracially adopted people experience social dislocation from both their communities of origin and the communities in which they grew up. Alan Rushton, Margaret Grant, John Simmonds and Julia Feast of the British Chinese Adoption Study team explore this notion in relation to a sample of 72 ex-orphanage, Hong Kong-born women adopted into British families in the 1960s. The authors report on how the women choose to identify themselves in mid life. The article describes the development and use of specially devised questionnaires to explore community connectedness and self-regard among this group of women. Further analysis examines the relationship between community connectedness and psychological well-being. The findings are then positioned in the context of the narrative data from face-to-face interviews with the women.

Older age at placement has long been recognized as a risk factor in successful adoption outcomes. The findings of the present study emerged as part of a larger study that looked at the adoption experiences and reunion outcomes of 472 adults who had either searched for or been sought by one or more of their birth relatives. As part of the investigation, adopted adults were asked to evaluate their adoption experience. Age at placement was used as a key variable in examining whether or not adopted people felt different to their adoptive family, felt they belonged in their adoptive family, and felt loved by their adoptive parents while growing up. Respondents were also asked to evaluate their overall experience of being adopted. Older age at placement significantly increased the risk of adopted people viewing major aspects of their adoption experience with either mixed or negative feelings.

Derek Kirton, Julia Feast and David Howe Report on findings from qualitative interviews with transracially adopted adults, carried out as part of a research project by The Children's Society. Findings show that those adopted transracially shared many experiences with other adopted people, including almost invariably feeling that they have gained from searching and/or reunion. For many transracially adopted people, issues of racial and ethnic identity figured prominently within motivation for searching, but their needs and aspirations in this regard often went unmet. Finally, the implications of the research for family placement work and post-adoption services are considered.