Funded by the National Lottery Community Fund, Adoption UK’s TESSA-UK service seeks to promote wellbeing and positive relationships among adoptive families to enable children and families to thrive. This approach looks to help adoptive parents to understand and support a child with early childhood trauma and in turn improve their longer-term development and stability. It is offered as an early intervention tool with families within the first three years of adoption, where early childhood trauma has been identified as having the potential to cause issues. Through TESSA, adopters are paired with a Parent Partner, offering peer support on specific issues and goals. They are also given access to a clinical psychologist, a preventative approach which addresses the issue where often adoptive families are not able to access clinical support until crisis necessitates it. In addition, there is a reflective parenting group, which runs fortnightly for six sessions and is facilitated by an adopter and a clinical professional.
A pilot evaluation of the impact was conducted by the University of Strathclyde in anticipation of a larger evaluation that will run between 2021 and 2023. Among the pilot cohort, 85% of adopters said that the clinical consultation offered had improved their understanding of and their ability to articulate the needs of their child, with the production of a clinical consultation report which detailed the child’s strengths and needs and could be shared with professionals - 99% said the clinical consultation report was helpful. 85% of adopters also agreed that having a Parent Partner had been beneficial. According to SDQ measures, children’s total difficulty scores also decreased. Other reported benefits of engaging with TESSA were an improved confidence in dealing with challenges, and anticipating stressful triggers, as well as feeling better able to cope and less isolated. The findings indicate that a proactive approach to post-adoption support, which encompasses peer support, is important to helping adopters meet the needs of their children.