The Adoption and Fostering Podcast

Hello and welcome to the A&F podcast

In this episode I speak to Nancy Mielle, we first chatted in 2023 when she shared her remarkable lived experience. Here we chat about the interplay of early adversity, trauma and neurodiversity. Nancy shares her own experience and we chat about the challenges of caring for complex children. 
Nancy also shares a poem, its written for those with power of decisions.

You can listen to Nancy’s first podcast here. 

As always if you’ve experience of adoption, fostering or special guardianship from any perspective personal or professional and would like share that on the podcast please get in touch through the Facebook page, BlueSky or email us at AandFpodcast@gmail.com

 

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Hello and welcome to this episode of conversations from the Fostering and Adoption podcast

In this episode I talk to Dr Claire Agius, she is an academic and adoptive parent who has researched the challenges faced by adoptive parents. We chat about her experience as an adoptive parent and how that led to her academic research. Claire’s hope is to affect change within the system and improvements in the service that families made through adoption receive. 

You can read Claire's research below. 

Co-creating the future of post-adoption parenting and mental health support: Exploring the parenting challenges faced by adopters who raise children with trauma histories: an adapted Experience-Based Co-Design approach

As always, if you’ve experience of adoption, fostering or special guardianship from any perspective personal or professional and would like share that on the podcast please get in touch through the Facebook page, BlueSky or email us at AandFpodcast@gmail.com

 

Listen/subscribe on iTunes here Spotify here

Hello and welcome to this conference report -  Reframing Professional Practice on Child to Parent Abuse. It was held on the 15th May in Central London and I was asked to share my perspective on dads' experiences as well as generally. It was a great day with some perspectives that were new to me and gave me food for thought on how other communities experience children's challenging behaviour. 

I was fortunate to catch up with Helen Bonnick of Holes in the Wall, assistant Professor Nikki Rutter from Durham University, Freda Quinlan a Principal Social Worker with the Irish Health Service Executive, Jane Griffiths of Capa First Response and Maria Duah who organised the conference and is the Director of Silenced CIC/PhD researcher at Durham University.

As always if you’ve experience of adoption, fostering or special guardianship from any perspective personal or professional and would like share that on the podcast please get in touch through the Facebook page, BlueSky or email us at AandFpodcast@gmail.com

Listen/subscribe on iTunes here Spotify here

I was aksed 

 

You can see Maria Duah's profile here

This month, we're talking about change and endings. Whether planned or unexpected, transitions such as leaving school, saying goodbye to trusted adults, or changes at home can have a big impact on children and young people.
As always you can connect with us through the following -

Website- www.bettermebetterus.co.uk

Instagram- BMBUltd

Facebook – Better Me Better Us

Email – info@bettermebetterus.co.uk

To be honest there was so much news that we missed over the last month or so we thought we should catch up. We unpack the significance of the Supreme Court judgement in the matter of matter of X and Y [2026] UKSC 13 (click here to see the Coram analysis). What does this mean for the future of adoption and while the Law remains constant are we all in a very different place. 

We also bandy around the issues of DfE communication and that promo! , Kinship changes, Scott's human trafficking and much much more. There may have been swearing! 

As always if you’ve experience of adoption, fostering or special guardianship from any perspective personal or professional and would like share that on the podcast please get in touch through the Facebook page, BlueSky or email us at AandFpodcast@gmail.com

Listen/subscribe on iTunes here Spotify here