Professor Brid Featherstone explores social workers’ considerations about the ethics of adoption.
There are numerous ethical implications of adoption. On the one hand, for example, evidence suggests that outcomes are better for some children than in other long-term care arrangements, but there are concerns about ‘social engineering’ in the UK Government push for adoption, as adoptive parents are typically wealthier than birth parents. On the other hand, the ethics of balancing the needs of children, birth parents and adoptive parents present complex ethical issues for practitioners to work through.
The British Association of Social Work commissioned an Enquiry to explore the role of the social worker in the adoption process. This episode features a conversation with Brid Featherstone who worked with colleagues to explore social workers’ views about the ethics of adoption within the Enquiry.
Brid Featherstone is a Professor of Social Work at the University of Huddersfield and has researched in the areas of gender relations, fathers and families’ experiences of child protection and family support services.
The full paper can be accessed here:
During the episode, Brid refers to some of her work on domestic abuse and child protection. This can be found here.
Podnotes
Some templates for your podnotes to assist your learning and reflections from episodes of the Social Work Research Podcast can be found here.
Credit: ‘Positive Energy’ by Scott Holmes Music is licensed under a Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International License.