How do social workers in adoption services in England conceptualise child and adolescent mental health?: A qualitative study
Seventeen adoption social workers in southern England were interviewed during 2023–2024. Thematic analysis examined how they understood adopted children’s mental health and recommended interventions. Recommendations reflected knowledge, provider experience, parent preferences, availability and funding; research evidence had a less prominent role in their accounts.
Limitations: Professional descriptions of decisions do not establish intervention effectiveness or represent children’s own views. The regional sample is small. Participants worked for local-authority or regional adoption services; this is an academic thesis, not evidence that those services commissioned it.
- Research type
- Doctoral thesis
- Source reviewed
- Abstract
- Peer reviewed
- No
- Age group
- Children / Adolescents
Study context and review
Age group as recorded: Children / adolescents
Adoption context: Mixed adoption pathways
Programme: Not recorded
Institutional context: No relationship identified in the material checked
No adoption-sector organisational relationship identified from metadata reviewed. Funding and conflicts were not comprehensively audited; this is not confirmation of institutional independence.
Bibliographic screening. Bibliographic relationships are not a bias or safety rating.
Topics: mental health, post-adoption support, professional perspectives, service access
Review scope: Source checked: Abstract. This does not imply full-text or independent human verification.
Country as recorded: England
- Funding
- Not yet checked for this entry
- Commissioner
- Not yet checked for this entry
- Funder role
- Not yet checked for this entry
- Declared conflicts
- Not yet checked for this entry
- Recruitment
- Not yet checked for this entry
- Adoptee involvement
- Not yet checked for this entry
Entry: study_409c39fb6e964a82