When her father loses his job and Ellen's family must move from their comfortable suburban house into her grandmother's urban home, Ellen worries about fitting into her new junior high school and making new friends, and wonders if her life will ever be the same again.When her father loses his job and Ellen's family must move from their comfortable suburban house into her grandmother's urban home, Ellen worries about fitting into her new junior high school and making new friends, and wonders if her life will ever be the same again

Product Description: It is now over 20 years since 'open adoption' was first introduced, but it remains a controversial and contested part of social work practice. This innovative and far ranging book sets out to understand why the practice of keeping adopted children in touch with their kinship origins is still so questioned in contemporary adoption work...read more

Discusses open adoptions, preparing for the birth and placement, the child's experience in the first year and later, and other matters

So begins the saga: In the initial visit with my son, I witnessed a child who was bright, smiled, yelled, stomped his feet and screamed. It was not that he could not talk, he would not talk. He had his own language, created in his mind to get his needs satisfied as a result of them not being met prior. I was told that he could only say 7 words, all in Spanish. I went to a corner on this initial visit and sat there with a book and a stuffed bear and waited. Ever so slowly, he approached me, would touch me and run away and giggle. Eventually, he sat in my lap and looked at me for a while, with his social worker, the foster mother and my adoption worker looking on he put his hand on my face and said “daddy”. This was not one of the words that he knew and it was not in Spanish……so it began.