A paediatrician has called for more NHS funding to help provide post adoption support to families.

Mary Mather, consultant community paediatrician and chair of medical group for the British Agencies for Adoption and Fostering says adoption is an "important but neglected issue" in the medical profession.

Writing in this week's British Medical Journal, she says: "A doctor can write 'adopted' on a patient's record without realising the meaning of this for the patient."

Many fail to realise that a child's separation from a birth family can result in a range of chronic psychosomatic illnesses, she says.

While doctors who counsel infertile couples "need to appreciate that few will succeed in adopting the baby they desperately want and the magnitude of the task involved for couples adopting older children".

She calls for a review of the practice of potential adopters having to pay privately for an adoption medical saying: "Society urgently needs substitute parents from all classes and cultures."

She adds: "If adoption is to become a real option for a group of very damaged children the health service must match increased social resources with knowledgeable and sensitive general practitioners, paediatricians, and child psychiatrists to provide post-adoption support to children and their families.

"Adopters require not only personal reserves of tolerance and understanding but the unflagging interest and support of post-adoption services. Health and educational provision for these disadvantaged children may make or break an adoption placement.

"The ability to give a child a second chance is rare within medicine. It is vital to assure the quality and continued resourcing of this small but important service within the NHS."