Searching to be Found: Understanding and Helping Adopted and Looked After Children with Attention Difficulties

"How to better understand and help adopted and foster children with attention disorders and behavioral difficulties." (Smith Alumni Quarterly 2009-01-01)

"Searching to Be Found is essential reading for the adults involved with adopted/looked after children. This book offers the context for parents’ and teachers’ decision-making. It focuses on coping with the process of caring for these children over time, noting the predictable nature of set-backs and crises. Dr Comfort does not sugar-coat the difficulties. She helps the carer see that despite setbacks in the short term, they and their children can achieve balance in the long term.” (Judith Silver, Ph.d., Director, Starting Young Program)

“Children who are fostered or adopted often face severe difficulties at school. Their attainment usually falls far below their ability and their behaviour can be baffling and frustrating to teachers and carers, but few of the books about attachment problems and attention deficit disorders are of much help to those who come into daily contact with these children and whose task is to care for and educate them. Dr Randy Comfort is uniquely qualified to provide both theoretical understanding and practical strategies from her long experience as a psychologist and director of "Our Place", the pioneering centre in Bristol for families who foster or adopt. She writes about real children, interpreting their behaviour from their own point of view and showing how they have been helped. Foster carers, adoptive parents and teachers who struggle to understand and cope with children whose unhappiness takes the form of hyperactivity and inability to focus on learning will find this book an invaluable resource.” (Professor Sonia Jackson, OBE)

”Living and working with children and young people who find it difficult to self-regulate is a great challenge to parents and professionals. Dr Comfort draws from her extensive knowledge and her many years experience of supporting adoptive and foster families to produce a book that will help anyone facing these challenges. She offers explanations and addresses key issues in living and working with the children. This book will provide support, guidance and hope to parents who often feel exhausted and despairing under the relentless pressure of life with a child with difficulties of attention and arousal. And it will inform and enhance the work of the professionals who support children and families, including social workers, foster carers, teachers and health professionals.” (Kate Cairns, social worker and carer)

Randy Lee Comfort obtained a Doctorate in Educational Psychology from the University of Denver. She has worked for over 35 years in the fields of family counselling, learning disorders, and adoption and fostering and is the mother of both biological and adopted children. She moved to Bristol, England, where, in 1998, she opened Our Place: a Centre for Families who Foster and Adopt. In addition to running Our Place, she continues to lecture internationally on the topics of learning disorders and adoption/fostering. She is the author of The Unconventional Child, Teaching the Unconventional Child, The Child Care Catalog, numerous journal articles, and chapters in edited books. Since the late 1980s, she has taught teachers and social workers about attention deficit disorders, adoption/fostering issues, and social dysfunctions.