The Contextual Adoption Framework (CAF)
A holistic lens for understanding adoption by examining both the micro-level experiences and the macro-level forces that shape adoption across the lifespan.
"The Contextual Adoption Framework is designed to offer an accessible way to understand adoption as a cultural and legal construct, beyond the personal act. It helps individuals, families, practitioners, and organisations develop a clearer, more informed perspective on how wider forces might shape adoption experiences.
​
As an adoptee, it represents the map I once wished I had, a research tool born from years of interdisciplinary research, reflection, and learning. It brings together insights from psychology, sociology, history, child protection, and lived experience to offer a more nuanced and compassionate understanding of adoption in its wider context."
Dounya Chennah
About The Framework
​The Contextual Adoption Framework (CAF) is a conceptual analysis tool designed to examine adoption as an experience shaped not only by individual factors but by multiple interconnected contextual forces. Developed through interdisciplinary research grounded in psychology, sociology, history, child protection, anthropology, and lived experience.
The model positions the individual adoption experience at its centre and identifies six surrounding contextual domains : Family, Social & Community, Cultural, Historical, Legal & Policy, and Ethical. These contexts act as interpretive frames that influence how adoption is lived, understood, and integrated over time. By incorporating a lifespan perspective, CAF recognises that the significance of each context changes across developmental stages, affecting identity, wellbeing, meaning-making, and mental health.
CAF is intended as a heuristic device rather than a diagnostic instrument. Its purpose is to support more nuanced, context-aware reflection in research, practice, and public understanding. The framework moves beyond generalised or binary narratives about adoption by shifting the focus from “What is wrong with the adoptee?” to “What were the contextual conditions that shaped this experience, and how can these be better understood or improved?”
While CAF offers a systematic lens, it does not claim to be exhaustive and should be used alongside professional judgement, lived experience, and local knowledge. It is one interpretive tool among many, designed to foster deeper understanding, compassionate engagement, and more informed decision-making in adoption-related contexts.
CAF Seven Factors
Individual Context
The personal and developmental dimension of adoption.This includes the adoptee’s unique adoption story, the known circumstances of their early life, and the experiences lived before, during, and after adoption. It recognises that adoption is a lifelong process shaped by the different stages of human development, and influenced continuously by the surrounding contexts.
Family Context
The family context includes the emotional environment, relationships, and day-to-day dynamics that shape a child’s sense of safety, connection, and belonging. It also encompasses the wider constellation of families involved in adoption birth, adoptive, and blended and the ways their stories, histories, and relationships intersect across the lifespan.
Social & Community Context
The environments in which adoptees and families live, learn, and grow. Schools, peers, community attitudes, available support networks, experiences of stigma or inclusion, and the everyday social settings that shape how adoption is understood and integrated into life.
Cultural Context
The cultural components that influence identity, meaning, and belonging. This includes language, traditions, heritage, religion, race, ethnicity and the cultural narratives that shape how families form and how adoption is perceived and lived.
Legal & Policy Context
The systems, laws, and institutional frameworks surrounding adoption.
Child protection systems, adoption laws, welfare policies, access to records, citizenship and identity rights, legal processes, and the institutional practices that either support or hinder the wellbeing of the adoption triad.
Historical Context
The historical forces that shape today’s adoption practices and narratives. Legacies of institutionalisation, political transitions, migration patterns, colonial histories and past policies that inform the systems, stories, and identities experienced by today’s adoptees and families.
Ethical Context
The moral and rights-based considerations that shape adoption practices. This includes international adoption ethics, informed consent, transparency, coercion, trafficking risks, economic inequalities, power dynamics, and the child’s right to family, identity, and protection. It evaluates whether systems and practices align with human rights and child protection standards.