ABSTRACT
The author closes the book on a personal note and with a keen sense of responsibility to all those who have entrusted their adoption stories and experiences to her for inclusion in the book. Roy emphasizes that she does not want these personal and powerful communications about the adoption experience to get lost, watered down, or distorted, but she recognizes that she needs to allow room for the positives of the adoptive experience without denying the despair and anguish contained within the stories told within the book. She has learned over the years of specializing in adoption work that one of the biggest challenges is maintaining a sense of balance. She also reflects on the backdrop to the book in that she is tackling difficult themes about the value of relationship-based practice at a time of political and social change, when there is heightened anxiety and austerity. She fears that political leaders have “forgotten” that relationships matter and that getting it right from the beginning of a life is vital for the health of society and the economy.
To conclude, she challenges leaders and those who commission services to examine what she sees as a “driving obsession with quick fixes and performance management”, and she insists that what she has learned over the many years of working in mental health services is that investing in relationships is central to growing healthy families, organizations, and communities.
