Towards belonging: negotiating new relationships for adopted children and those in care

This is the third book that Andrew Briggs has edited and he clearly has a talent for this kind of work. Briggs has set his contributors a challenge to explain ‘belonging’ and has held them closely to the task throughout. How does a child taken away from his or her family of origin get to feel a sense of belonging elsewhere? Evidence of his drive towards editorial coherence can be seen in the fact that eight of the nine chapter titles have the word ‘belonging’ in them. All of the authors have unique perspectives on the subject but link back to the editor’s focus. Not only is this book based around a very identifiable theme, but Briggs has linked clinicians from child psychotherapy, family therapy and social work in an intriguing way. Although psychoanalytically oriented, the book is both a multi-theoretical and multi-disciplinary look at the nature of relationships of children in substitute care.

Briggs rightly points out that it is generally accepted that emotional well-being is dependent on a sense of belonging. Given this, he finds it curious that so little has been written about this concept. I suspect that this book has been long in gestation and Briggs hopes that it will lead to research in the area and the development of the teaching of the concept of belonging in training and continued professional development. He puts it succinctly,

What the contributors to this book present us with is a range of ways children attempt to keep themselves emotionally safe in the circumstances after being removed from their biological families. For some, there is an attempt to attach to their new settings as helpful; for others, there is not. Within this latter group there are those who seem to find a sense of belonging only to themselves. For all, belonging is best understood as an achievement

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arrived at through a process towards which the sense of belonging is either reached or not. (p. xxi)

Briggs carefully points out that his wish to have a sense of belonging in the foregro