Our Resources

  • Assessing Adoptive Parents, Foster Carers and Kinship Carers

    Improving Analysis and Understanding of Parenting Capacity

    Edited by Joanne Alper and Dr David Howe (publication April 2015, Second Edition 2016)

    Assessing prospective adoptive and foster parents is an extremely complex task, and one that happens within a pressurised time frame.

    In this book, leading experts including Dan Hughes, Jonathan Baylin, Kim Golding and Julie Selwyn combine the latest findings from neuroscience with research on what makes good assessments. Together, they provide guidance and recommend tools for making thorough, analytical and effective assessments which will ensure the best possible chance of placement success.

    This book is an invaluable source of knowledge and guidance for social workers.

    £20.69

  • Facilitating Meaningful Contact in Adoption and Fostering

    A Trauma-Informed Approach to Planning, Assessing and Good Practice

    Elsie Price, Louis Sydney and Adoptionplus

    This book explores what attachment, neuroscience and trauma tell us about how contact affects children. The authors provide assessment frameworks and outline a model for managing and planning contact to make it more purposeful and increase its potential for therapeutic benefit.

    Brimming with practical advice and creative solutions, this is an indispensable tool for social workers, contact centre workers, and other professionals involved in contact arrangements or the therapeutic support of fostered and adopted children.

    Read this review from the Centre for Social Work Practice.

    £19.99

  • All About Mummies and Daddies

    By Joanne Alper

    This book is intended to help prepare children who are about to be placed for adoption, permanent fostering or special guardianship. It is a tool to help you have conversations with the child about some of their experiences at home and why they are unable to live with their birth parents. It also explores the many different types of forever families who care for children when their birth parents are unable to do so. It provides an opportunity for you to talk with the child about moving to live with a new family.
    Available as a pack of five. 

    £59.95

  • Preparing for Adoption

    Everything Adopting Parents Need to Know About Preparations, Introductions and the First Few Weeks

    Julia Davis and Adoptionplus

    The ideal first book for prospective adopters; it provides clear advice on how to prepare for your adoptive child and create a strong foundation for a healthy and loving relationship.

    Primarily for adopters, foster carers and professionals supporting adopters, this book offers ideas and strategies to help parents prepare a happy and settled home for children before their arrival and ways to parent them in the early days of becoming a family that addresses their attachment needs.

    £12.99

  • Billy Says - 'It's Not Your Fault'

    FREE AUDIO BOOK

    This story is aimed at helping children who think they are bad, and the problems with their birth families were their fault.

    Listen to this story for free:

  • Parenting Adopted Teens

    Rachel Staff

    How can adoptive parents and their teenagers navigate the challenges of the adolescent years? Full of valuable, grounded advice, this guide will help parents to understand the impact of early trauma on a child's development and the specific nature of the changes that occur during adolescence. With tips for coping with common problems, it combines first-hand accounts from professionals, parents and teenagers themselves. It also covers essential topics such as: family and peer relationships, developing healthy intimate relationships, emerging identity issues, and contacting birth family. Accessible and honest, Parenting Adopted Teenagers is an invaluable resource for adoptive parents as well as professionals working with them.

    £13.99

  • Supporting Birth Parents Whose Children Have Been Adopted

    Edited by Joanne Alper

    This book aims to share information about the experiences of birth parents and those currently working therapeutically with them.  Practical and compassionate, this book provides a deep understanding of birth parents and their support needs which will not only inform individual practice, but also encourage the development of more humane and effective support services.  

    £22.99

The Billy Says Series

Billy Books - Adoption Books for children

This series of six picture books guides children through a range of issues relating to fostering and adoption by focusing on the experiences of a five-year-old girl called Kirsty and her magic doll Billy. Billy talks to Kirsty, explains what is happening to her and explores Kirsty's feelings during her journey from an abusive home to a loving adoptive family.

In the series, Billy says... Book 1 'It's not your fault' explores children's feelings when they are living in neglectful families. Book 2 'You should be taken care of' covers fears around moving into foster care, and covers the importance of being looked after properly. Book 3 'Foster carers can help' explains what happens when children move into foster care. Book 4 'What you think matters' covers courts and the planning process. Book 5 'Waiting can be hard' focuses on waiting for an adoptive family and the feelings connected with this. It also covers life story books and adoption panels. Book 6 'Living as a new family takes practice' explores living with an adoptive family and the realities of having to work things out together.

This set is ideal for use by social workers, foster carers, adoptive parents and counsellors to help children aged 3-8 to understand the fostering and adoption process and to cope with the complex feelings that can arise.

"I enjoyed reading them and sharing them with my children and I would recommend them as a tool for talking to children... it allowed us all to talk about our feelings in a safe and non-threatening way". Review by adoptive mum of 4 children, Adoption Today, April 2004

£39 per set of six

"They're beautifully produced and very child friendly."

Dr Miriam Stoppard

"They are very moving and sensitively written."

Jacqueline Wilson

 

 

How to purchase Adoptionplus books

Any of the books featured on this page can be purchased from Adoptionplus. For further information on costs please email enquiries@adoptionplus.co.uk or call on 01908 218251.