1. Introduction

We have developed a survey to try to understand more about the health and well-being of adoptive parents and special guardians and consider the stress factors for these parents and carers in terms of accessing services and support. The survey was developed by Special Guardians and Adopters Together (previously Adopters Together), and piloted on the group before being launched. We recruited through word of mouth and social media.

2. What we mean by ethics

Adopters Together broadly define ethics as our concerns around ‘doing the right thing’. Our ethics also involves protecting the confidentiality and welfare of group members and study participants, and consideration of our core values and principles in conducting this peer led, independent, study.
Ethical considerations are integral to how we handle, process and analyse personal and sensitive data; how we disseminate and utilise the emergent information and knowledge; and ultimately the validity of the findings from the survey.

3. Data collection and storage

The data is being stored anonymously. The email addresses collected for the prize draw have been deleted from the survey. At the outset, Adopters Together agreed to share relevant anonymised data with the Parents of Traumatised Adopted Teenagers Organisation (POTATO).

4. Data analysis

The data will be interpreted and analysed by a research team made up members of Adopters Together.

Adopters Together are committed to the study being a highly reflective and empowering process. Given that we are analysing a survey that we have ourselves participated in we would like to respect the confidentiality of the research team. If resources allow, survey respondents may be invited to focus group events to reflect upon the initial findings and take the interpretation and analysis further.

5. Funding and collaboration

The survey is self funded and we rely entirely on donations to fund it. There are no external funding partners other than a pledge of £100 towards costs from POTATO.

We have sought collaboration with researchers in the field to assist us, as we are all under considerable pressure ourselves with family and work comittments. We have been really pleased to receive offers of support from a number of sources and will take these further after an initial period where we begin to consider and interpret the data. We hope to produce an interim report of findings at the end of February 2018, which will be published on our website.

The final decision about what is publised and disseminated from the research lies with the Adopters Together management committee

And finally, we welcome any donation no matter how small to cover the survey costs – we have set up a Just Giving page – please click here to access it.