ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the complexity of establishing continuity in the context of discontinuity within the changing professional and social discourses that influence policy, practice, and family life. It describes adoption and other placements emerging from a perspective where they were thought of as a new beginning for the child unencumbered by whatever had preceded it. In most situations, trust develops through experience repeated over time. Subjectively, children need to experience their own minds as a reasonably safe place that they can trust in steering them through the world, using opportunity, experiencing the challenge of learning, managing risk and threat, adapting to new circumstances, and facing transition and loss. In turn, their own experience and development will set them on a path to being able to relate to the minds of others. Family placement across the board finds itself embroiled in complex issues of survival, threat, adaptability, and co-operation.
