AIBU to question adoption checks after this safeguarding failure?

YANBU to question what happened in this case. There needs to be, and I believe will be, an inquiry into how flags were missed.

YABU to jump to the conclusion that the perpetrators sexuality was a major/main issue here. We don't know that and need to wait for the inquiry.

Instances of children being killed by adoptive parents are incredibly rare, and I believe this is the first time it has ever happened with a gay male couple.

What those men did was truly awful & Preston and his family (biological and foster) deserved so much better.

However its awfulness doesn't justify generalising from one event.

I foster, and am heartbroken for that baby’s birth and foster families.

With regard to social workers missing red flags, I am surprised that the baby had had multiple hospital visits and a broken arm without the social workers being worried. I am fairly sure if that had happened to a baby in my care the baby would have been taken away from me or at the very least there would have been meetings and social workers telling me it wasn’t good enough and I had to be more careful.

I suspect that they were allowed to keep the baby after the hospital admissions because social workers didn’t want to admit they had made a mistake because that would lead to more paperwork, more meetings, finding foster parents with room, going through more adoption assessments etc. I expect they didn’t want the extra work. And in some ways that is understandable as lots of them are very overworked.

I once had concerns about a child that had been placed back with mum from foster care. I reported something that I had good reason to think had happened and would have resulted in that child being removed again. Social workers told me they asked mum and mum denied it happened so they believed her. And that was the end of the matter. I suspect it would have been too much work for social workers to admit they might have made a mistake placing child with mum and having to put her back into the care system.

Oh, love, I’m so sorry to read this. I had no idea! I tend not to visit the ‘other’ board, for a few personal reasons. Please, prioritise your health now and worry about returning to fostering later. You have given so much of yourself doing a wonderful job of raising your precious boy to adulthood. What he has achieved with your unfailing support is nothing short of remarkable.

@Iarthar
Thank you
Boy is now a strapping 22 year old who has just finished a degree in Computing. He is going on to do an MSc in AI
We are all incredibly proud of him

I know your name from the adoption board, @Ted27 (not an adopter, but dropped in aeons ago to absorb your collective wisdom when a friend had adopted her daughter) and I am beyond happy that Brenda has been stopped in her tracks. Best wishes to you and your son, who must be an adult now, incredibly!

@ThePieceHall

Im 'ok' I have secondary breast cancer so it is incurable and surgery not an option. So eventually it will get me.
But for now, whilst brutal the chemo had done it job and Brenda, as my primary tumour is known as, has been stopped in her tracks. Im on other therapies designed to stop her breaking out and setting up camp elsewhere.
So Im stable. It will take a long time to recover from the chemo and Im very unlikely to be able to return to full time fostering. I may just do emergency or respite so I can choose when I feel able to work.

There’s already a thread about how gay men/men in general/women shouldn’t adopt

www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5543578-aibu-men-should-not-be-allowed-to-adopt-or-foster-children-unless-theyre-with-a-woman-safeguarding-first?page=12&reply=152996406

Thing is, you can take a dislike to someone for whatever reason but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you knew what they were about.

Even Jimmy Saville. I always thought he was a bit creepy but more in a “I have no idea why people see him as this lovely chap” kind of way. But I don’t think that anyone could have had the slightest inkling as to the sheer depths of his depravity.

I had a teacher at school who loads of the kids liked, and loads didn’t, but because he was so strict, not because it turned out that he was a paedophile who abused young boys.

There’s a difference between not liking someone and actively having any idea as to who or what they are.

People see not having taken to someone as some kind of proof of their gut instincts. but the truth is that that says more about how they see the victims. After all, if this gut instinct is real then what about the victims? Not so much of the likes of Jimmy Saville, he wasn’t a charmer by all accounts, but those predators who actually are charming, lovely people, who build actual relationships with their victims and who it turns out are abusing them in the name of “love”.

Absolutely it’s important to understand that social workers have to properly consider and assess other firms of care before adoption. The assumption that kinship care is always better is pretty flawed in many ways. It can be a fantastic option in some cases, less so in others, each situation is so unique it’s hard to think of any response that will consistently be “best”.

Agreed. But it is the position of the family courts. I think I just wanted to clarify to posters who are not adopters that social workers don’t just ‘steal’ babies to place them for adoption. And that Preston’s grandmother would have had to be assessed for her suitability. (It’s still a good speech to read, particularly for the moves from courts now to push for ongoing direct contact with birth families and maintaining lifelong links.)

The problem with options of last resort is that they leave children in uncertain, often harmful situations for far too long compounding the impact on the child and undermining their chances of recovery.

I can think of situations where, with an experienced eye, I could predict the end from the beginning but had to go through the endless process of evidencing mum just couldn’t consistently care for her child. By the time you’ve gone through all the options the child is 2 years older, has bounced round various services, carers and family members to then start permanence process.

We need to consider whose benefit we’re working for. Yes parents need support when they’re struggling, but kids can’t wait, they don’t get another childhood.

This is a really good speech from Sir Andrew McFarlane, president of the family division, on how adoption must always be treated by the courts as ‘the last resort’ ie once all other options, including extended family, have been exhausted.

https://www.judiciary.uk/speech-by-sir-andrew-mcfarlane-adapting-adoption-to-the-modern-world/

So sorry to read this. I hope you are recovering well? Take care of yourself.

Yes, to all the ridiculous nonsense spouted in the interests of ‘attachment’. Twenty-odd years ago, social workers spoke about children needing to ‘transfer’ attachment, because obviously when children move to adoptive homes, their brains and feelings are suddenly erased of the feelings they had towards previous care-givers, a bit like the film, The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Also, things got a bit obsessive with identifying the separate attachment ‘types’. Just why? Also, I think it would be more helpful if professionals accepted that some children are so harmed by their pre-natal and early life experiences that the reality is that they never attach healthily. I have one child, who came as a tiny baby, who isn’t really attached to me, after 18 years. I have learned to accept this as I know it’s a case of can’t not won’t on her part and we rub along really well now because our relationship is superficial and light. She can’t cope with big feelings. She is an academically able girl so she has learned how to demonstrate empathy but she admits that she just doesn’t feel it. Plus, I really wish that there was much more discussion about reactive attachment disorder; it’s massively well researched in the US and Canada but barely discussed over here.

1. You don't know why the grandmother was declined. There will have been a lot more nuance than 'she has cancer' and is therefore unsuitable. There will have been questions about how she would cope with two kids rather than one; there could have been factors about needs of either the child already in her care or the needs of Preston as time went on.
2. Serious illness is a legitimate factor to consider when deciding whether a child should be placed with biological family or should be adopted.
3. SWs are in my experience very keen to keep kids with biological family where possible - not only because it's often in the child's best interests but because the adoption matching process is long and arduous for an already overworked service.
4. There may well have been major failings post placement. The review is designed to identify those. But as I understand it, two A&E visits were due to fairly routine illness which would not raise particular red flags.
5. Are you really saying that if adoptive parents show up to A&E with a child who's running a fever, or even following an accident resulting in a fracture, the child should be automatically removed from their home?

@Larrythecatforpm

Speaking as a 61 year old foster carer who was diagnosed with breast cancer in February and who has just completed a brutal 12 cycles of chemo, there is no 'only' about it.
I cannot imagine being 66, recovering from chemo, possibly major surgery and on going treatment, and having the thought of a very young child to look after.
Social services are not keen to adopt out, they will usually do everything they can to keep a child within the birth family.
The decision to adopt was probably the right one, the tragedy lies in who adopted him.

Yep, it leaves new parents unsupported and reduces the ability for other people who know the parents to have a sense of whether they’re coping or not. But my god it was treated like the holy grail of attachment at one point.

Social services aren't keen to adopt out, and have to prove in court that the test 'of last resort' is met, if there are any viable routes for a child to stay within their family the judge will prioritise those.
A 66yr old with existing care commitments to another child and no guarantee of if and when they will be fully healthy is not likely to be the best option for a baby. IF they went on to have a healthy life and the cancer didn't return, they're caring for an 18yr old when they're 84.

Yes, funnelling is the biggest crock of shite perpetrated on adopters by ‘professionals’. It’s right up there with ‘fake it till you make it’.

One of my favourite responses on MN was to someone who claimed to have been picked up hitch-hiking by Fred West but got 'bad vibes' so got out.

A common statement/lie seen so often on SM including MN that journalistic articles were written about it as it was such a phenomenon.

The MN poster said 'another one? The amount of people Fred allegedly picked up you'd think he was a bus-driver not a builder'.

FWIW I actually know someone who had a wall built by Fred West. After he was arrested and she mentioned it, people were clamouring to hear how creepy he was, all the red flags and the gut feelings and all she had to say was he turned up on time, cleaned up after himself and was cheap.

It took longer than I expected for the entirely predictable 'gays are using their kids' line.

I think this is why I feel passionately about some of the extra things suggested.

Sometimes adopters are seen as these super humans who can jump through higher and higher hoops, or should tolerate different things for their children rather than just normal people

In one of the other threads there was a suggestion that Preston should have been subject to intimate checks at a +e.

It automatically put me back in those pre order days, where i was terrified of every little bump that our new arrival got. I had all the fears of a brand new parent combined with a dare devil kid that liked jumping off stuff, combined with having to keep an accident log that was checked by social services. I remember one incident where dc had hurt themselves and I took them off of to a+e, the dr said something like "and you've only had them how long?!".They entered fine but I was a new parent trying to play by the book, I was terrified of the resulting social work visit and all the reporting i had to do. Social work felt so close behind us that any minor slip was going to whip him away. The insecurity of that early period has never left me and I cant imagine how much more terrified I would have been if I knew that any visit would result in my child being intimately checked.

The idea of in that period where you are tunnelling (sw encourage you to see very few people, not allow anyone to do any childcare tasks etc to begin with) i felt really alone and the idea that a social worker would have been able to read my phone, the only connection I had to the outside world. All those random googles to figure out whats normal, every photo, how long is too long to record a child in the bath? All being scrutinised.

Within our circle we had an adopter who clearly needed help, they had an existing adopted child and a second under foster to adopt. She was so worried about derailing the process she was clearly beginning to crack. She didn't want to see her gp because she knew it would be reported back, didnt want to ask for help or cahms support for the older because she knew it would impact the younger.

In the end I became worried about those kids need being met, so I raised it but the fact she was trying to not do anything like go to a+e etc really really put those kids in harms way.

I think about her a lot.

Homosexual couples obviously adopt at a higher rate than heterosexual couples because they cannot have children naturally - not because they are automatically paedophiles who are more likely to be looking for vulnerable infants to abuse.

All adoption placements are put through vigorous checks and in this case it very sadly failed. There are lessons to be learnt of course and the social worker in charge must feel dreadful but ultimately if someone has never been caught then there will be no evidence that they aren’t an appropriate placement. It’s just very sad.

You’re probably right, although I don’t follow those sorts of accounts so don’t really see it. I can only imagine how tough it is.

It is possible Varley had a burner phone. It’s also possible he didn’t.

The school he / I worked at was in an extremely deprived part of Blackpool (I am not sure any part of Blackpool isn’t extremely deprived, tbf) lots of extremely challenging behaviour. Sexual abuse is prevalent there. I’m rambling, sorry.

Many things that point to a lack of parenting capacity aren’t crimes, and honestly sexual abuse is only one of a raft of harms done to children but often considered the most abhorrent.

Adoption is really, really tough, it makes huge demands on adoptive parents, a lack of maturity really isn’t good enough. By the time they reached the point of placement they should have had some idea of what they were taking on. The reality of early placement is a huge shock, but not forcing a baby to stay awake is pretty basic.

I think part of the problem is Insta-culture portraying adoption as a lifestyle choice, an easy way to create a family, where everything is hearts and flowers. People see the doting parents, the family says out in matching outfits and think it’s a walk in the park. No mention of trying to parent a traumatised child, the reality of very dysregulated infants, the lack of sleep, the constant crying etc. It’s really one of the toughest things that can be asked of someone. But social media is full of smiles and baby cuddles. It results in an immature, idealistic view of adoption and by the time folk realise how hard it is it’s too late because they have a child to care for.