Normally, our relationships with our brothers and sisters are the longest relationships in our lives, outlasting time with our parents, and most marriages today. The sibling relationship is emotionally powerful and critically important, giving us a sense of continuity throughout life. So what happens when a child loses contact not only with his or her parents, but with siblings too? That is what happens in thousands of cases each year inside the child welfare system. Children are surrendered by parents - or taken by the government - and placed in the foster care system. There, they are often separated and sent to different foster families, or adopted by different couples. In this work, a team of top experts details for us how this added separation futher traumatizes children. This stellar team of internationally known researchers - some of whom are themselves adoptees - shares with us hard, poignant, and personal insights, as well as ways we might act to solve this widespread problem.
Contributors address not only the importance of nurturing sibling bonds and mental health strategies to support those relationships, but also the legal rights of siblings to be together, as well as issues in international adoptions. Emerging and standing programs to encourage and facilitate adoptions that keep siblings together are featured, as are programs that at least enable them to stay in contact.

Deborah N. Silverstein is Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Vice President at the Kinship Center, an agency that develops and offers mental health programs for families and children. Silverstein is also a psychotherapist in private practice working with children and adults on family, individual, and marital issues.
Susan Livingston Smith is Professor Emerita of Social Work at Illinois State University and Program and Project Director at the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute. Also a contract social worker for Mandala Adoption Services, she is a professional trainer who has delivered more than 50 workshops to adoption professionals in several states. A member of the Post Adoption Support and Preservation Task Force of the National Association of Social Workers, she received the Angels in Adoption Award from the U.S. Congress in 2006. She is also a recipient of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Adoption Excellence Award.

Forward
Preface
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: All in the Family: Maintaining and Making Connections
Chapter 1: Full, Half, Step, Foster, Adoptive, and Other: The Complex Nature of Sibling Relationships
Chapter 2: Siblings in Foster Care and Adoption: What We Know from Research
Chapter 3: Sibling Connections: The Importance of Nurturing Sibling Bonds in the Foster Care System
Chapter 4: The Experience of Sibling Loss in the Adjustment of Foster and Adopted Children
Chapter 5: The Rights of Siblings in Foster Care and Adoption: A Legal Perspective
Chapter 6: Sibling Issues in Open Adoption Arrangements: Non-Biologically Related Adopted Siblings Experiences with Birthfamily Contact
Chapter 7: Keeping Sibling Connection Alive
Chapter 8: The Creation of a False Self: A Survival Strategy for Siblings of Wounded Adopted or Foster Children
Chapter 9: Suddenly Sisters! Sibling Adjustment in Reunion
Chapter 10: Practice Strategies to Preserve Sibling Relationships
Chapter 11: Mental Health Strategies to Support Sibling Relationships: Nonverbal Interventions to Process Trauma and Maintain the Sibling Bond
Chapter 12: Permanency for Siblings in Kinship Families
Conclusion: What Have We Learned? Where Do We Need To Go?
Appendix
Notes
Glossary
References
About the contributors