ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the gaps between the hopes and expectations of adoption and the often painful realities of the experience, and how people have helped families to bridge them. This is because adoption is a complex process, and the hopes and expectations of each person involved in it are invariably different. Children placed for adoption suffer from poignant dilemmas and can carry a huge burden of guilt and responsibility. Social workers also face virtually impossible tasks working as they do within the constraints of targets and tight time frames. Some families reach people many years after children have been adopted, when there is a more acute sense of crisis and they feel they cannot continue together much longer. Indeed, the cost of their remaining together thus far soon becomes clear to people as they see how deeply traumatized they all are.
