Adult Outcomes

Abstract

AbstractThe chapter focuses exclusively on the 60 adoptees aged over 18 who completed the follow-up survey. It draws on data collected through survey responses and interviews focusing on 24 adult adoptees. It explores their outcomes across a range of dimensions that together contribute to a composite measure of adult functionality. It presents the outcomes the adoptees achieved on each of these key domains and explores how they compared both with those of the normative Australian population and a contemporaneous cohort of care leavers. The adoptees showed more evidence of poor mental health than care leavers, but often did better in terms of education and employment. The presence of a committed adoptive parent appears to have acted as a powerful protective factor, and only extreme indicators of vulnerability at entry to the adoptive home correlated with poor adult outcomes.