ABSTRACT
Children residing in statutory care are collectively referred to as looked after children in Britain and Ireland, and as children in out-of-home care in North America and Australasia. Neither term satisfactorily describes the status of children in long-term statutory care. Increasing numbers of such children exit statutory care to legally permanent placements with caregivers who are not their birth parents under various types of guardianship and adoption orders. These child populations are differentiated by their legal status but not their developmental histories. They have similar need for social and clinical support services. Yet because of their differing legal status, governments have not tended to view them collectively. This book purposely treats them as a single population defined by shared developmental and social histories, namely children and young people in alternative care – a collective term promoted by the United Nations (United Nations General Assembly, 2010). The United Nations employs the term alternative care to encompass all forms of non-parental care provided to children, including that which is legally sanctioned or not (informal care arrangements); that which is meant to be long-term or temporary; and that which is legally permanent or legally impermanent, except adoption. However, in this book the collective term ‘alternative care’ encompasses adoption from statutory care.
