ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on adopted children’s developmental needs. Chapter 6 looks at adoptive parenting capacity and Chapter 7 explores family and environmental factors that can affect adopted children’s developmental needs and adoptive parenting capacity. In each chapter, the identification and assessment of needs or difficulties in each domain is often accompanied by an analysis of how they may relate to relevant dimensions in other domains. This is in order to illustrate common patterns of influence across the different domains of the child’s developmental needs, parenting capacity and family and environmental factors in adoption and their relationship to possible plans for intervention or support. It should be borne in mind that, in practice, it is important to assess the three domains separately before analysing the connections, rather than jumping to conclusions about the patterns that may apply.
