Collaborators

Adoption UK

SOCiAL benefits from collaboration with Adoption UK, a national membership organisation for prospective adopters and adoptive parents.
Adoption UK's objectives are: 

• To ensure that prospective adopters, adoptive parents and foster carers are as fully informed and supported as possible in the challenging, but rewarding, task of parenting or caring for children from the public care system
• To increase the number of successful adoptive placements through the provision of appropriate support services. 

It aims to achieve these objectives by providing information, advice, support and training to prospective adopters, adoptive parents, long-term foster carers and special guardians. Its information and services are rooted in the personal experiences of adopters, so that as an organisation it is at the centre of a self-help network of peer support. This network helps parents to explore the unique social, emotional and developmental needs of adopted children and young people and their families, and promotes effective parenting practice based on the organisation’s experiences, integrating these with current theories of trauma, attachment and child development.

Adoption UK works with practitioners involved in adoption to promote the concerns and interests of adoptive families, and those involved in the parenting/care of traumatised children, and to develop appropriate support services in partnership with them.

SOCiAL aims to engage directly with adoptive families (both those specifically involved in the research, but also more widely), as part of designing and implementing the detail of this study as well as in planning future research. 

The National Academy for Parenting Research

The NAPR is an internationally recognised research programme aiming to improve the way practitioners and parents work together to improve the lives of children.  The research aims to identify which parenting programmes are effective, cost effective, how services should be delivered and the parenting styles that should be taught to meet children's' and families needs.  The programme is run under the direction of Professor Stephen Scott, has been funded for 5 years by the Department for Children Schools and Families and is based at the Department of Child and Adolescent Mental Health at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College, London.  One of the main strengths of the programme is the potential for the dissemination of findings to ensure that they have a direct impact on everyday practice through a partnership with the Childrens Workforce Development Council (CWDC).

Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care MTFC

MTFC was a national pilot project funded by the Department for Children School and Families (DCSF) from 2002. A team from the Institute of Psychiatry, London and two NHS Hospital Trusts – Central Manchester and Manchester University Children's Trust (CMMC) and South London & Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLAM) implemented the programme within participating local authorities, consulting regularly with the developers of the MTFC approach at the Oregon Social Learning Center (OSLC); who have developed the programme and its evidence base over the course of 30 years.

MTFC-A is for young people 11-16 yrs experiencing several placement disruptions or high levels of need, and provides an enhanced foster care placement within a wrap-around service including skills workers, education workers and an individual/birth family therapist. MTFC-P Programme is for children aged 3-6 years. It is designed to help young children develop their social relationships, emotional regulation and to give them skills for school.  Foster carers with this age group are trained to help children to regulate their emotions, encourage their positive behaviour and celebrate their achievements. Children attend a playgroup where they are encouraged to learn and practice skills successfully via child-focused activities. They also receive individual coaching to further develop their skills. MTFC-C Programme is for children aged 7-11 years. It is designed to help children develop skills in relationships, increase pro-social behaviours and get on well in school.  When children leave MTFC-C or P and move to a permanent placement, the team works with this family to enable them to continue building on the skills the child has developed.