Particular complications can occur if the child who has left the home is one of a sibling group, and their brother or sister remains. The breakdown of the placement also affects extended family - uncles, aunts, grandparents etc. may feel partly responsible for what has happened and reflect on whether they should have done more or supported the family differently when the child was with the adopters.

Relatives may be left feeling unsure about their ongoing role in the child's life, for example whether to send cards and gifts at birthdays and Christmas or keep in touch by visiting. Distancing of relatives in these circumstances can compound the child's sense of loss and isolation.

A crisis in the placement may be a cause for comment in the neighbourhood. Taking time off work to attend meetings and keep appointments may necessitate disclosure to managers and colleagues of the difficulties the family is experiencing.

Placement breakdown can involve scrutiny by a range of agencies including: Social Services Departments, Voluntary Adoption Agencies, Child and Family Guidance and Education Services at a time when the family feels at its most dysfunctional.

Conversely, if they are not in touch with the child the issue may arise of whether they should be approached and informed that the child has moved. Adoptive parents may be struggling with such decisions at an extremely stressful time and advice from professionals may not always be consistent.

Once the child is in care, adoption allowances (if paid) usually cease, and parents may be surprised to learn that they are likely to be assessed to contribute toward the care of their child by the Local Authority. Further complications can arise if adoptive parents lose wages by taking time off work to attend meetings, visit the child etc. People who are self employed may also lose income in these circumstances.

Whatever the dynamic between the parties, legally the adopters continue to be the legal parents unless, very exceptionally the child is re-adopted by another family. Invariably, parents are left pondering their rights, roles and responsibilities in the years ahead. Issues of kinship and inheritance can be especially difficult to deal with and parents may be uncertain who to turn to for advice and guidance.

Parents we interviewed spoke of some professionals as lacking an 'adoption dimension' in their experience. Some avoided services whose way of working with the child excluded them (for example certain types of therapeutic intervention) then they felt badly that having requested help, they then refused it when it was offered.

Parents' feelings of powerlessness in a disruption were further emphasised by the professionals perceived willingness to accept the child's version of events. Social workers' efforts to undertake direct work with the child were seen by fraught adopters as an opportunity for a manipulative youngster to influence a gullible professional. Parents worried that they would be accused of abusing the child and that this could hove dramatic consequences, not just for the adopted child in question, but for other children in the family.

In some circumstances however, they felt more akin to foster parents, and as such experienced a lack of status. This was particularly evident not only at times of decision making but also in respect of day to day information and consultation concerning the child's progress and wellbeing.

The second part of this section summarised the perspective of the professionals who took part in the study:

In situations where they were involved, it was often after the family had received input from area workers and had experienced a range of other services which lacked the specific adoption perspective so valued by those requesting help. The relationship between the Statutory and Voluntary Sectors was also highlighted.

A proportion of children requiring adoptive homes are placed on an inter-agency basis. As this has significant cost implications for the care authority, it is a strategy which is likely to be reserved for those children whose backgrounds are among the most complex, and whose needs are greatest. Roles, responsibilities and resource decisions at the placement stage are clearly defined [9].

This is not the case post-adoption. Although the Social Services are the only Agency with the statutory power to remove a child from his or her parents, families may have had considerable input from the voluntary agency originally responsible for their preparation and approval during the period leading up to the disruption.

Yet it was suggested to us that the investment and expertise that went into the placement by the voluntary agency was not always recognised by workers in the statutory sector. Indeed, they felt they had to begin again, thus subjecting service users to yet more delay and frustration as the process of information gathering, assessment, planning and resource identification was repeated.

For example, it is not unusual to find that the authority from which the child originated is paying an adoption allowance and facilitating continuing links between the child and the birth family, that the adoptive family sees their main allegiance and source of support as being the voluntary agency that approved them (despite the fact that these bodies usually have little or no funding for this work[10] and that decisions about the child and his or her care, wellbeing and future service needs, are the responsibility of the local authority in which the adopters live.

Further complexities can arise if work with birth family members is necessary and they aiso live at a distance. Hard pressed workers from child care teams may find it extremely difficult to allocate enough time to liaise effectively with other agencies, particularly if staff changes and agency reorganisation have occurred, and may not be given the resources or encouragement to piece together a full history of the child both pre and post-adoption.

Permission to travel to see files may require the approval of senior managers, or be prohibited if in excess of a specified distance. There is also the issue, even within an individual authority of where and how information is stored. Some will be in the adoption records but other relevant material could require a meticulous search through voluminous child care files.

Although issues pertaining to organisational structures and budgets and service delivery, were mainly highlighted during the session with the focus group, families were not unaware of the existence of these problems. Sadly, the exhaustion, guilt, anger and sorrow that many of them referred to when describing their relationship with the child left little energy to fight agencies.

In turn, the agencies often saw themselves as acting in the best interests of the child and were often doing their best in the face of a lack of resources and the complex dilemmas brought about by post-adoption disruption.

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