Glossary

Adoption Allowance:

Regular payments by an adoption agency to an adoptive family, either to help financially with caring for a child who has expensive special needs (enhanced adoption allowance), or to help a family adopt who would otherwise not be able to afford to do so. They can be applied for at any time, including after the adoption order has been made. See also Section 23 payments.

Adoption Panel or The Panel:

A statutory group which every adoption agency has to have. Its duty is to consider all applications to become foster or adoptive parents and all recommended matches between children and new families, and to advise the agency whether to approve or reject the application or proposed placement.

Attachment Disorder (AD):

A mental condition when a child is unable to form normal bonds with others, in this context, with his new adoptive parents.

Attention Deficit Disorders or Hyperactivity (ADD and ADHD):

A set of neurological (sometimes allergic reaction) problems which badly a child’s behaviour.

Boarding-Out Allowance:

The basic, regular payments made to a foster family to cover the expenses of raising the child. It is not intended to be a salary. The basic boarding-out allowance can be supplemented by other payments to cover extra expenses for some children.

Care Order:

A court order which places a child who is not being properly parented or is in danger under the care of the local authority. It severely restricts the rights of the child’s parents to decide questions about the child’s welfare.

Care Plan:

A plan drawn up the social services specifying the kind of care a child is supposed to receive, such as reunification with the birth family, foster care, care in a children’s home or adoption.

Case Conference:

A meeting where a social work client’s case is discussed by the professionals involved, sometimes including the client, and decisions made about what action to take.

Children’s Home:

A place for children to live with professional staff, instead of in a foster or adoptive family. They have replaced orphanages. Most children’s homes are being closed down as more and more children are placed in foster families.

Conduct Disorder (CD):

A severe neurological condition which seriously affects a child’s behaviour.

Contact Order:

A court order which specifies the kind of contact a child must have with another person.

Contested Adoption:

An adoption which is opposed in the courts by someone with parental responsibility.

Disclose:

Tell another person about having been abused (usually sexual abuse).

Disrupt / Disruption:

An adoption or foster placement disrupts when it breaks down and the child goes back into care.

Donor Country:

A country which provides children for adoption by citizens of other countries. Some major donor countries are South Korea, Romania, Russia, China and Guatemala.

Family Visiting Centre:

A neutral place where children can have contact with non-custodial or birth parents under supervision.

Foster Care / Fostering:

When a child lives with a new family without being adopted, usually for a limited time.

Freeing Order:

A court order which removes the right or duty of persons with parental responsibility to consent or object to an adoption.

Honeymoon Period:

In adoption, the period after the child comes to live in a new family when he is on his best behaviour, before feeling confident enough to be normally naughty or start testing out his new parents.

Introduction Period:

The period after matching and before the child comes to live with a new family, during which the child and family gradually get to know each other.

Looked After:

The new jargon term meaning more or less the same thing as “in care”.

Maternal Deprivation:

When a child is separated from his mother or mother-figure.

Non-Custodial Parent:

The parent who does not have legal custody of a child, usually after a separation or divorce. A non-custodial parent may or may not be able to exercise his parental responsibility for the child, and almost invariably lives apart.

Open adoption:

An adoption where there is some contact between the adoptee or adoptive parents and the birth family. There are many degrees of open adoption, and the contact may be with any significant person from the birth family, not necessarily the birth parents.

Parental Leave:

Paid or unpaid leave from your job in order to look after your children.

Parental Responsibility:

The rights and duties of a parent.

Placement:

The day a child moves in with a new family to be fostered or adopted. Also the situation itself where a child lives with a new family.

Post-Adoption Services:

Counselling services which specialise in the problems of adopted people, adoptive families and birth families.

Rehabilitation:

The return of a child to his birth family after a period in care. It implies prior unsatisfactory parenting. The child should only be returned after the parents have been retrained and it is decided they are now competent to look after him.

Residence Order:

A court order which specifies where and with whom a child is to live.

Respite Care or Respite Fostering:

Very short-term (from a few hours to a couple of weeks) care by specialist foster families of very handicapped or difficult children, to give the regular carers a break.

Scapegoating:

The singling out of one person in a family who is blamed for everything which goes wrong, no matter who or what is really at fault.

Section 23 payments:

Payments made under section 23 of the Children Act 1989. These are different from adoption allowances, although the purpose of both is to give financial help to families to enable them to adopt children with special needs. Section 23 payments are short-term or lump-sum payments to help with things like travel expenses during the introductions to a child, major items of equipment, home mobility adaptations, etc. In the case of a family adopting a large sibling group Section 23 payments can even cover such things as a large car or a substantial extension to a house.

Stranger:

Someone who adopts a child to whom he is not related.

Tracing:

The process of finding, and possibly contacting, someone related to an adoptee by birth. Tracing is usually done either by an adoptee, but it can also be done by an adoptive parent or by a birth relative. A tracing registry is an index of people who want to be found, used to match them up, although it can also include people saying they do not want to be contacted.

Trigger:

Something which sets off a conditioned response in a child, especially one which causes negative or dysfunctional behaviour.

Next: Author Biography

back to Table of Contents