Professor Fiona Tasker

Special Guardians Family and Support Research: An Online Interview Research Project

Academic project title: Grandparents Granted Special Guardianship: Investigating psychosocial effects on multi-generational family relationships through family mapping

Researchers: Fiona Tasker & Sinead Archer

Funder: Birkbeck Research Innovation Funding (BBK-RIF Award_105578-36) with thanks to support from Birkbeck Alumni and friends.

Rationale: Little is known about the psychosocial effects of kinship care (providing daily care for other people’s children) either for the children being cared for or for kinship carers themselves (see Harwin, J. Simmonds, J., Broadhurst, K. & Brown, R. [2019] Special guardianship: a review of the English research studies Nuffield Family Justice Observatory report https://mk0nuffieldfounpg9ee.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Nuffield-FJO_Special-guardianship_English-research-studies_final.pdf )

Kinship carers are often grandparents or a child’s other relatives, but a family friend or a former foster carer could also be providing all the daily care a parent usually is able to do. Our research project concentrates on grandparents who have been awarded a Special Guardianship Order (SGO) by a Family Court and seeks to explore how the SGO has changed family relationships and lives of grandparents, the child/ren who are cared for, and others in the extended family network. Our research project aims to: a) explore the advantages and disadvantages of Special Guardianship provision from grandparents’ perspectives and b) explore the effects of SGO provision on the child and the wider family support network.

Study design and method: The proposed study will collect interview data from special guardians on family relationships both for them and the children in their care. Our aim in this exploratory study is to conduct 10 online interviews with grandparents with SGOs for grandchildren who live with them. Recruitment will be conducted with the help of the external advisors to the study and via the community organizations and network of support groups. In addition to telling us about their experience, Interviewees will also be invited to complete the Family Map to visually depict the relationships between all the members of their household, extended family, and support network. Similar Family Map Interviews have been successfully used to examine family relationships and narratives in adoptive families (Tasker et al Family Mapping Exercises (FMEs) for Adults and Children in LGBTQ-Parented Families. Pp.246- 254 In Whitman, J, & Boyd, C 2020. Routledge; Costa et al 2021 Genealogy, 5(4) 85).

To find out more about the Special Guardians Family and Support Research Project please see our dedicated project website: sgofamilyresearch.wordpress.com

LGBTQ* UK COVID-19 Lockdown Researching Young Adult Experiences Vulnerability and Resilience Over Time

The main objectives of our programme are to assess the psychological health of LGBTQ* young adults during the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown and to understand the pathways underlying their psychological health, vulnerability and resilience. Given the current circumstances of health anxiety and social isolation, alongside intensifying pressure on household and family relationships, a rising rate of mental health problems among LGBTQ* young adults is widely anticipated but as yet under examined. Our first online survey (May-August 2020) collected data from young adults aged (aged 18- 35 years) (further details available at https://lgbtq1835c19lockdown.wordpress.com/ ).Our second online survey (aged 18- 60 years) is open between October – December 2020. A third online survey will be forthcoming. We have also launched a parallel inclusive general population survey for adults 18-60 years. Our surveys investigate the social support networks and psychological health among UK LGBTQ* people using both bespoke and standard measures. We also plan to collect qualitative data from an interviewed sub-sample to further explore experiences and pathways over time. The project develops understanding of UK LGBTQ* well-being experiences and additionally contributes internationally through comparison with equivalent data from Brazil, Chile, Italy, Israel, Mexico, Portugal and Sweden with academic colleagues in these countries.

The project is funded by the British Academy (BA: COV19\201169) to PI Dr. Fiona Tasker & Co-Investigator Dr. Jorge Gato. Research Assistant: Marie Houghton.

Adopted children’s understanding of family identity in lesbian, gay and heterosexual parented families.

Adoption poses a unique challenge to child and family well-being as adoptive
parents must create a new family network for their child by allowing connections
within their existing network to flourish while acknowledging a legacy of their birth
in another family and local authority care. The objectives of this study are: (1) To
explore thematic similarities and differences in the family relationships of adopted
children and relate this to their identity development in lesbian, gay and
heterosexual parented families, 2) to examine styles of post-adoption openness
and contact with birth family relatives in lesbian, gay and heterosexual parented
families to consider how variation in family type can best support adopted
children’s development. This research will enhance understanding of family
processes and children’s well-being, e.g. how families led by lesbian, gay or
heterosexual adoptive parents assist in forming nurturing family relationships to
promote the resilience of adopted children. Additionally, findings may inform
practice on advantageous adoption placement for children.

The project was funded by the British Academy (BA SG170811) to PI Dr Fiona Tasker & Co-Investigator Dr. Pedro A. Costa.

Adopted children’s understanding of family identity in lesbian, gay and heterosexual parented families.

Our study has explored how adoptive parents and children think and feel about birth family and their place in children’s lives. We have been able to do this both with adopted children and their adoptive parents in three types of family led by lesbian parents, gay parents, or heterosexual parents. In all three types of family we found that parents are keen to find the right balance between protecting their child from potential emotional hurt while enabling their child to keep up connection with and understand existing birth family connections and their adoptive family heritage. Parents wanted adopted children to be proud of who they are. Family connections therefore centred on a special family unit of core family members -- themselves as parents and their adopted children together with any birth children -- and then included other connections formed by current (and past) love and care for the children. We found that children talked about and drew equally close connections between themselves and their adoptive parent(s) in all three types of adoptive families. However, irrespective of adoptive family type there were differences between two different ways of asking children about family relationships. On the one hand, if children were asked to draw a picture of their family doing something, then children tended to include only core family. On the other hand, if they were asked to collage apples on to a family tree for anyone in their family, then they included a wider range of family members in their picture. We conclude that the different ways children are asked about family are important particularly for adopted children because these help in recognizing the varied family connections children have in their lives and help children understand the implications of these for family life and identity.

Over the past few years I have supervised a number of research projects (at Masters and BSc levels) at Birkbeck University of London connected with the self-identities of LGBTQ adults, using a social constructionist approach, family systems theory, and the life course theory perspective. Some of these are listed below in alphabetical order and you are welcome to request an update on these projects from Fiona Tasker over email f.tasker@bbk.ac.uk

• Lilli Erin Beese: Understandings and Experiences of Deaf Gay Men – An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis.
• Marie Delvoye: UK Bisexuality Parenting Project
• Jan-Ole Harald Gmelin & Elisabeth Englisch: The Social Construction of Sexual Identity in Young German Gay Men.
• Marie Houghton: Exploring lesbian and bisexual Catholic women’s narratives of religious and sexual identity formation and integration
• Tibor Markovics: Preserving a Strong Sense of Self: Identities of Young Gay Men in London
• Viv Smith: Beyond Prevalence and Risk: Understanding Chemsex Trends Amongst Gay Men Living in London
• Marc Svensson: Gay Identity Formation in Sweden 2015: Beyond Traditional Stage Models.

We’ve seen important changes in the UK over the last 30 years in equal rights legislation although there’s much more to do in terms of transgender rights. Successive national social attitude surveys in the U.K. have revealed a considerable shift in public attitudes toward a generally more tolerant view of personal relationships including same-gender relationships. In addition, more routes to parenthood are opening up. But LGBTQ parents and their children can still encounter hostility and ignorance, and in some places and contexts it is more difficult than in others. Fiona Tasker and Jorge Gato have set up focus groups with gender diverse and trans people without children to discuss the topic of parenthood and have an ongoing study of trans men and non-binary people becoming birth parents. These projects are ongoing so please contact Fiona Tasker (f.tasker@bbk.ac.uk) for further information.