By Rebecca Mukasa, PACT Senior Social Worker
Assessing applicants who are open to adopting children from a range of ethnicities and backgrounds different to their own, is a positive. But do we explore far enough what that means for the applicant and for the child in the long term?
As a social worker, I did ask myself, what are we really doing as practitioners to ensure this isn’t a surface level notion or an afterthought considering how a parent can promote race and diversity, if they don’t have the lived experience. Have we been exploring this thoroughly enough, before we place children?
Those were the questions we had to answer, when I was first approached to join a large focus group headed by the University of Sussex to explore how we assess potential prospective adopters considering adopting a child of different ethnicity/ culture to them. Although I had some answers, there was nothing concrete being used to measure this.
Attending many collaborative working sessions with practitioners across England and the passionate drive of the founder of this tool Dr Tam Cane, these questions were turned into a sustainable and balanced toolkit, to help practitioners dig deeper when promoting and exploring this in adoption. This toolkit is called Anti-racist framework for decision-making and transitioning children from minoritised racial and ethnic groups into transracial adoptive families. Or for short AFDiT!
Identity is a massive spectrum including elements such as race, language, diet, heritage and so on. What this tool highlights for me as a social worker is how easily all these elements can become lost once a child enters into the care system and a care plan such as adoption is decided. It is so important to find, where possible, prospective adopters who are willing to go above and beyond to keep these elements alive throughout a child’s lifetime.
What I think this framework does is highlight how important it is to explore this concept during assessment and the willingness prospective adopters have to sustain this consciously and long-term ensuring the child’s best interests.
The tool itself is a large document, and since its publication, I have found the document and accompanying videos really helpful to unpick what it means to adopt transracially and/or transculturally with prospective applicants during their stage 2 assessment. It also helps me think more creatively as a social worker to determine if a prospective adopter can meet a child’s needs in this area. This has included simple tasks, such as having applicants view the cartoon narratives within the toolkit and share their views regarding the meanings behind these. Or watching one of the many videos which explore identity, racial trauma, microaggressions and the lived experiences of those who were transracially adopted.
Internally, the framework also makes you think about your own racial and cultural consciousness and race intentionality, something we realised was important to do as social workers, alongside exploring this with prospective adopters!
For me, this in turn has helped explore (and challenge) prospective adopters in how they can meet the needs of a child of a different culture, exploring themes such as colour-blindness, white saviourism, racial trauma and allowing more space to specifically explore how applicants would be racially conscious and intentional through the parenting they would need to provide. With the negative impact seen in social work through the shared lived experiences of adopted adults where these areas were not promoted as they grew up, this gives this framework such importance to ensure the needs of a child’s mental health and healthy well-being long term.
I really enjoyed being a part of a team providing my knowledge, feedback and experiences to help create this. I find this topic so important, with children of black heritage and dual heritage often waiting long periods in the care system due to a lack of diverse prospective adopters available to promote a racial match.
Through using this framework, the hope is that we are able to demonstrate better the capabilities people have to consider caring for these children, rather than them waiting needlessly in the care system. At PACT we are passionate that all children deserve a loving family home, and although there are complexities which need to be considered and demonstrated within an assessment, it is hoped that, as this framework is rolled out, it will help identify strong and capable applicants, who can meet the needs of these children waiting!
Find out more about AFDiT at transracialadoptionframework.uk
