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Okay. Auk - I contemplated saying nothing about this request but on balance I don't feel I can ignore it. Frankly I think it's inappropriate and irresponsible. A press and editorial student who wants to bring up the difficult issues a family has faced? Is she also a psychology student, a therapist? Does she have any idea of what those difficulties may be or the trauma that may be triggered? A beautiful narrative? Now I understand that there is still a misconception about modern day adoption among uneducated members of society - but really AUK? How can this request in any way be considered appropriate? Surely there has to be some commonsense applied before these requests are posted? I'm sorry but I really think this is completely irresponsible.

:-D :-D Sorry, reading this post just made me laugh, 'bring up any issues or difficulties the family has faced', yeah that's a neat plan. I agree with Donatella, who has agreed to this request? not someone who has an older adopted child...............

I think that Ms Zhuang needs to be properly educated about modern day adoption before asking us to allow her to peek into the reality of our lives to capture those beautiful moments. Where will these lovely photos and the accompanying written scripts be displayed? How will Ms Zhuang deal with the fallout from her peeking into adoptive families' lives? But my main anger is directed towards AUK, who read the request and made the decision to put it on here. You and your staff have plenty of dealings with families in crisis. There's no excuse for you to be ignorant on this matter. Shame on you, AUK.

As an ex art student, I can see where she's coming from, wanting to use images to tell a story. It's what creatives do and I don't think that adoption should be out of bounds. But I don't think it's been put very well from her side at all! From an artists point of view, I think working up to photos like these is not a short process, but needs time and as others have suggested, something that needs great care, empathy and sensitivity. But I'm not sure the world of journalism works in the same way (although being a student may be different?). She is essentially creating illustrations and in some ways it would be great to be able to show the world how things are for us in more ways than just words. I like the idea, in principle, that images could show it. However, privacy issues are the thing that really springs to my mind - I know it's just a project - possibly a portfolio piece or to be displayed at uni, but this may be one project where it's about researching the issues and using models to create images that tell the story?

I think anyone with a good news story would love this - and the rest us wonder why on earth this was allowed to be posted...facebook, twitter perhaps but AUK? If she was interviewing rather than photographing the ethics panel would have said it was too much - it is too much!

I was livid reading A. Zhuang's request and am going to write to her via email to explain that what she is requesting is inappropriate, insensitive and naive for a number of reasons. I'm not going to come down hard on her but hope to educate her as she is not doing herself any favours.

And in the mean time, Aduk............ stay silent, as usual. No explanation, no nothing.

I'm afraid, Pluto, that this lack of response from AUK's senior team is quite typical of the organisation in recent years. Never any acknowledgement that they were in the wrong and usually defensive of their actions.