Service use by families with children adopted from Romania

Service use between six and 11 years of age is reported for children adopted from Romania into UK families, and compared with that for children adopted within the UK before six months of age. Between six and 11, there had been only one adoption breakdown, and about one in ten couples experienced a marital breakdown. Apart from continuing concerns over hepatitis B carrier status in a small number of children, physical health problems were not a prominent feature. By contrast, nearly one-third of the children from Romania placed in UK families after the age of six months received mental health services provision - a rate far higher than the 11 to 15% in the groups adopted before the age of six months. Such provision was strongly related to research assessments of mental health problems and largely concerned syndromes that were relatively specific to institutional deprivation (quasi-autism, disinhibited attachment and inattention/overactivity). There were similar differences between the UK adoptees and the adoptees from Romania entering the UK after six months of age in major special educational provision and, again, the findings showed that the provision was in accord with research assessments of scholastic achievement. The between group differences for lesser special educational provision were much smaller and there was some tendency for the early adopted groups to receive such provision for lesser degrees of scholastic problems than the children adopted from Romania who entered the UK after six months of age. The policy and practice implications of the findings are briefly discussed.