ABSTRACT
When children have two parents it is possible and usual for them to combine their separate perspectives when thinking about current management or future planning in a complementary way. Liberal ideas about children’s rights to participate in decisions about themselves can, in some cases, be applied without discrimination as a way of avoiding adult responsibility. In acting also as consultant to a voluntary agency’s adoption project where skilled and experienced staff work with small caseloads of difficult-to-place children from all parts of the country, author’s experience of the problems in this field has been extended and deepened. Greek mythology offers numerous stories about primitive sources of justice, altruism and responsibility, as prompted by a chain of blood-guilt and expiation. The kind of alliance it is helpful to build with parents is all the more important in relation to the network which is concerned with children in care.
