ABSTRACT
The experiences of the Post-Adoption Centre in London provided vital insights for the ‘Lost’ parents research. The Post-Adoption Centre was established in 1986 to develop services for anyone involved in adoption. One of the primary groups the Centre was concerned to support was adoptive parents. One of the important findings at the Centre in the 1980s was that a child’s understanding of adoption changed with his or her stages of cognitive development. Reluctance to seek or contact parents may reflect their understanding of their obligations or fears of further rejection by carers or parents. The information parents had was ‘fossilized’, usually simplified, and gathered around the time of the adoption. Contact issues have arisen in adolescence as a result of ‘family crisis’ where attachment issues were to the fore and where in middle childhood the child had not resolved the adaptive grieving stage.
