What do adopted children say about their adoption?

[wasthatthatguy]

I think children removed from their bio-parents at birth or shortly after probably don't have any significant memory of them. But what about children who are eg more than about three years old when adopted. What do they say about their direct contact with their bio-parents having been terminated by adoption?

he also seems to ignore those posters who either would allow access to briht family if they asked or who do currently have access to birth family which is odd. You'd think he'd be focussing on those and asking about the pros and cons of it.

OP. For a Judge (Yes a judge in a real Courtroom with a real wig on as well!) to issue an Order that will permanently remove a child from his/her parents care he/she has to be satisfied that "Threshold" has been met. Threshold being that the child has suffered significant physical or emotional harm and is likely to suffer more in the future if the child remains in the "care" of birthparents.

So your "guess" that around 50% of children are removed even though they have not been significantly harmed in the past but merely IN CASE they suffer harm in the futre" is quite frankly bollocks!

I am truly shocked at the Op's past actions and shall ignore from now on.

Can he not work out how his views can be harmful for vulnerable folk and it may be better to keep his ill informed opinions to himself? That's a shame.

Kew - no, of course I'm not saying abusive parents should have access. That's a straw man. FWIW my Mother was adopted, very happily. Although in those days things were very different - she never knew she was adopted until 20 years after her parents died when she'd lost her short birth certificate and had to send off for a new one.

It's far better these days that children know the circumstances (and removal is no longer the punishment meted out for illegitimacy) although I'm sure that brings lots of other challenges to do with security and identity, let alone contact.

Who cares what he thinks. He clearly has no idea of the realities of adoption or what a child removed from its bps has endured. No sw I know of happily removes a child from its bps. The whole ethos is that a child's best interests are served when it remains within its birth family. That's a load of poo in my opinion and it's that ethos that has caused undue misery to one of my children. It's because of that ethos that we're now in the realms of therapy, psychiatry, PRUs .... not that OP cares. All he's interesting in is spouting a load of old tosh.

The other negative effect of wwtg/jh/melvin's presence is that it makes this a less comfortable space for us to discuss all kinds of issues. I'm as appalled as edam at miscarriages of justice - it's every parent's worst nightmare - and I would be very interested in discussing them more fully. I'd also be more interested in talking more widely about how the system works as a whole, how we get the balance right between trying to keep families together and protecting children, how much investment we as a society want to put in to trying to save families in crisis.

In practice, these issues are usually played out through the lives of the many children who are considered borderline: who are considered at risk but monitored, with some patchy and under-resourced interventions, over months or years. With adoption, I suspect that very few of us have come across adopted children where there was any real question whether they could stay with their parents. The children we considered were all taken into care at birth, which for the melvins is evidence that the harm is only 'potential' - but of course they had older siblings who were, without exception, shockingly damaged. The birth parents had themselves been so damaged for so long that it was hard to see that they could ever or would ever be able to be halfway decent parents. So far as I can see, the social workers may make terrible mistakes, but I've never come across a case of them just setting the threshold too low.

BUT we did consider a couple of children where I wondered about whether earlier intervention would have made a difference, whether loads of support would mean this woman would be able to keep her child. I would have quite liked to discuss that on here, but what's the point when I know we'd be besieged by melvins, making idiotic assertions and implying we're all like those military families in Argentina who took the children of the 'disappeared'.

I really value this space and the wonderful women who post on it. I don't want it to be negative and conflict-riven. I don't want to constantly justify my role in what has happened to my daughter, and I refuse to trot out the sad details of her family history to prove I'm not an adoptoraptor. I suspect at least one of our melvins may be gagging for us to do that, that he's fishing for gory detail to slake his misery lit thirst.

Bravo hester!

Point very well made.

just to throw another spanner in the works it seems that LA's these days have the unenviable task of allowing a new born baby to remain with their bio parents, even though their older siblings have been taken into care following neglect, abuse etc. It seems that Social Services cannot remove babies at birth anymore because there is no evidence that they will be abused as they have not been abused YET! There are exceptions to this rule (Usually by persuading the bio parent/s to voluntarily place their children into care whilst they are given enormous amounts of support to parent "Good enough") but in the main this is what is happening.

I know Social Workers who have had nervous breakdowns or simply quit their jobs as they went into Socal Work thinking they were going to make a difference to children's lives. Unfortunately the Law as it stands appears to be putting parents wishes before childrens needs.

I absolutely agree there are miscarriages of justice - it is not easy to understand Social Services policies and procedures. There have been cases where children are taken into care unneccesarily. The parents have managed to get their children returned home because they have fought for their children and worked with the "proffessionals" to prove their innocence. What they have not done is seek attention on an internet forum and be hell bent on spouting rubbish, based on guesses or hearsay, which strikes the fear of God into normal parents.

Edam I'm not having a go at you. there is nothing in your post I fundamentally disagree with. But have you read WTTG/Melvins other posts on other threads, do you understand that he is suggesting on this thread that around 50% of children should having contact with their birth parents, can you understand why we all seem to think this is a ludicrous position to take?

Yes adoption in the UK is significantly different to how it was in your mothers day and whilst some practices are infinitely better -preparation of paretns for example the other big change is that reliquishment of children (whether truly of for societal reasons) is extremely rare - almost all adoptions now follow as a result of abuse or neglect of one or more siblings. The days of a perfectly competent parent giving up their child because they are single/having an affair and actually would in all other situations be a perfectly competant parent are long gone. Child are removed in the vast majority of cases because they are abused or neglected often linked to drug and alcohol abuse, mental health problems or poor upbringing of the paretns themselves. Some/all of which may not be the paretns "fault" but can cause immense damage to the child. To suggest that contact in 50% of these cases is in the best interests of the child is ridiculous.

There are some professionals who refuse to accept that miscarriages of justice happen but its rare that adoptive parents take the same view. we are all just as horrified by the idea of someone taking our children, who we all love very much, away as any other parent and all hope and pray that it never happens to us. But we are all sick of being lectured about it by wttg as if its the most likely reason our childrne are with us - that they have been snatched from the bosom of a loving family when we all know that nothing could be further from the truth.

I too Hester am feeling that the adoption boards doesn't feel like a safe place anymore and its noticeable that the "chat" has distinctly subsided.

I suppose I would ask again wttg - what do you want us to say?

That's a lot nicer than what he's saying actually kew:
I am not aware of any statistics which specify the percentage of cases where there was no significant harm in the past, only predicted significant harm in the future. My guess would be about 50% of all cases, maybe more, due to the children generally being removed before any significant harm occurs.

So 50% of adopted children are removed before any abuse occurs. That's absolute bollocks.

And edam - you are absolutely right, miscarriages of justice do occur but wttg is actually undermining those few cases by making his outrageous claims. If we were confident that most adoptions happened when there was due cause and bio-parents were well aware of the reasons why their children had been taken into care, then I would hope that a lot more attention would be paid to the miscarriages of justice (although I hope the recent legislative changes on the use of expert witnesses will go some way to addressing the issue). By throwing around random and completely meaningless stats, the OP is only serving to muddy the waters, doing no one any favours.

Oops - apologies for the overdone bolding there!

Here is a non-lawyer's summary of the law relating to adoption :-

The "threshold" isn't actually the reason why a child is adopted, it is just some event or events which (allegedly) justify the State interfering in the private life of the family, to protect and promote the welfare of the child.

If a care order has been issued, a placement order, for the placement of the child with prospective adopters, can be more or less rubber-stamped on the basis of the care order, and an adoption order can be more or less rubber-stamped on the basis of the placement order.

So the key step is the issuing of the care order. The conditions for doing so are in section 31(2) of the Childrten Act 1989, as in the web link below. The most relevant words being :- A court may only make a care order .... if it is satisfied ... that the child concerned is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm, and ...that the harm, or likelihood of harm, is attributable to ... the care given to the child, or likely to be given to him if the order were not made, not being what it would be reasonable to expect a parent to give to him

A key point to note about the above being that it doesn't say "is suffering and is likely to suffer", it says "is suffering or is likely to suffer".

It is sufficient that the child "is (allegedly) likely to suffer significant harm" in the future, if left in the care of the parent(s).

Essentially all that is required to get a child forcibly adopted here in England is a report from eg an "in private practice (in the pocket of the LA) psychologist" along the lines that the child is likely to suffer significant (whatever that means) harm in the future, if left in the care of the parent(s). The psychologist may typically interview the child and or the parent(s) for a couple of hours each.

Section 31(2) of the Children Act 1989 is here :- www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1989/41/section/31

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I think my guesstimate, of 50% of forced adoption cases being based on predicted future significant harm, as opposed to actual current or past significant harm, is quite reasonable.

"is suffering or is likely to suffer"

so situation of older sibling being thrown agains a wall (aged 2) videod by concerned neighbours and hosptialised and discovery of sexual abuse and neglect additionally. Sibling just born has to stay until similar harm is done before being removed?

"I think my guesstimate is quite reasonable" - I don't. Who wins?

actually you win because I'm hiding this thread now.

Has anyone reported the OP? I think it might be worth it if you feel that he is ruining your safe place. Plus linking threads to an anti-adoption site. Shouldn't that be a bannable offence?

He starts threads and doesn't actually engage with debate - just posts the same thing over and over again, making baseless statements, designed to cause upset. That's trolling isn't it?

Yes that guy. Social Workers (who do not have the time to adequately support the cases they already have) barge into the homes of loving families where children are protected at all costs by their parents. Then the SW removes the children and places them in foster care for no good reason (At a great cost to already financially struggling LA's). Then Social Services secretly apply to the Court, again costing thousands of pounds, which they have not got,generating a great deal of paperwork for the already overworked SW.

Parents are not given chance to attend meetings about their children and have their say. They are given no support at all. They are not allowed contact with their children throughout the Court proceedings. They are not allowed to seek a solicitor to attend Court to represent them, so that they may oppose the LA Care PLan.

The Court requires evidence as to why it would be in the childs best interest to be removed from bio family and placed in loving forever homes. Then the Judge disregards the evidence that the child is loved and protected within his birth family and issues an Adoption Order anyway. This would be just to screw up the lives of the children and birth family right??

Before we know it the child has been adopted - primarily to meet LA's adoption targets -Not because the child was at risk of course!

Take your head from out of your backside! You would be better off concentrating on getting your children back rather than scaremongering on network support forums.

I think we should all just totally ignore thisguyorthatguy or whoever he is. He clearly has no idesa whatsoever what he is talking about and I wonder if he has ever actually seen a child, let alone an abused/neglected one. If we ignore him completely, then maybe he will go away. I think by responding to his nonsense just gives him the opportunity to post more rubbish. Men like this don't usually post on the adoption boards - I find it rather creepy. I will report him too because I think he is making this an unsafe place to share their experiences about adoption.

here,here nana.if we all ignore him he will hopefully go away.

"that the child concerned is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm"

errr...yesss? and what would the alternative be? to leave a child where they are likely to suffer significant harm? does anyone think that is a good idea?

and what would you think afterwards of SWs who quite calmly explained that "oh yes, we had good reason to think was likely to suffer significant harm, but you wouldn't expect us to act on a flimsy little reason like that, would you?"

cory I don't think there will be many forcibly adopted children who may have ended up dead or seriously injured if social workers hadn't intervened in their private family lives. There are a few, but not many, notable exceptions where the SWs clearly got it wrong. Those cases would have been best dealt with by the police, as would any serious child abuse case.

Just go away thatguy - am now positive you are John Hemming MP. Exact same style, ill informed, talking nonsense and not responding to posts but making odd random comments and yes JH had a huge thing about the concept of "likely to suffer serious harm" and could not grasp what this really meant, although several explanations have been given (good one by Cory on 23.04.) Just do us all a favour and go away.