Adoption is changing in England. There is a focus on openness. Openness can mean having more information about your birth family, or having more opportunities to have a relationship with them, or being able to talk more about adoption at home. There are also new kinds of support available, including access to therapy.

The problem is, we do not know how these changes affect adoptees’ quality of life.

Researchers and social workers could use existing outcome measures to look at whether young people have difficulties with their behaviour, emotions or relationships. However, the meaning of these emotions, behaviours and relationships are not the same from one child to another. To understand them, we need to be able to put them in context.

We need to create a new tool to measure adoptee quality of life, based on what adoptees themselves think is important.

To do this, we'll talk to young people who were adopted. We'll ask them what makes a good life for them. We'll then create a survey based on their answers and ask a larger group of adopted young people to fill it in online. We’ll work with the regional adoption agencies in England to make sure that adopted young people can find out about the survey and fill it in.

This new tool will help social workers and researchers understand how different changes can impact the lives of adopted young people. It will also help us improve the support we offer them.

This doctoral project will be completed in August 2026.