Family Finding and Matching in Adoption: What Helps Make a Good Match?

Published by British Journal of Social Work, February 2015

SUMMARY

Matching a child to an adoptive family able to meet their needs is key to ensuring a successful placement but too much emphasis on a "perfect match" can lead to harmful delays. Professor Elaine Farmer and Dr Cherilyn Dance wanted to compare the effectiveness of different approaches to family finding and matching in the UK.

For their study - Family Finding and Matching in Adoption: What Helps to Make a Good Match? - the researchers surveyed 74 local authorities and 16 voluntary adoption agencies in England and Wales. They found attitudes to matching varied widely and so did practice. For 37 per cent of adoption managers placing a child with a family of the same ethnicity was an absolute priority, while two thirds said they would seek a placement that was not ethnically matched if a "same race" placement was not found within a reasonable period. Two thirds of adoption managers also thought the criteria for finding a family should be reconsidered if a child had been waiting more than six months but 34 per cent said they would wait for longer.