Adoption and fostering - the government would like to hear your views

[KatieMumsnet]

Following on from yesterday's webchat on adoption with Oona King and Jeffrey Coleman, we've been asked by No.10 to find out a bit more about your thoughts on adoption and fostering.

This isn't a formal consultation, but a 'national conversation' that will be used to gather views for the policy people at the Department for Education and is party of a wider programme of activities for the national Give a Child a Home campaign.

Please feel free to post your thoughts on any issue relating to adoption or fostering, but in particular we've been asked about the following questions:

• What more might be done to help speed up the adoption process for babies in the care system?

• How might potential adopters and foster carers be matched with children more quickly?

• How could support for foster carers better reflect and support the valuable work they do?

• How can we improve the quality of support provided in children's homes?

• How might foster or adoption placements be made more stable? For example, use of respite care.

• Leaving care can feel like a cliff edge for young people. What might a better package of support for care leavers look like?

Many thanks

MNHQ

Hello

I qualified as a foster carer last October and have looked after one girl for five months who was one year old.

What more might be done to help speed up the adoption process for babies in the care system?

Not be so specific about matching up ethnicity / less burecracy

• How might potential adopters and foster carers be matched with children more quickly?

Re-introduce the chance for adoptive parents to foster children who might potentially need adopting. Much less stress for the child involved and surely they have to be the priority

• How could support for foster carers better reflect and support the valuable work they do?

I had excellent support. But others have complained about lack of training, recognition and being able to contact relevant social workers

• How can we improve the quality of support provided in children's homes? ??

In general I know from my fostering agency (charity) that due to LA budget restraints that instead of placing the child in the best home possible, they have to place the child where it costs the less which is often in-house carers who might already have foster children.

The solution - stop it before it starts through better sex education and less benefits being offered to single mums, better education in general at school so young people see that they can have a career and a child. Drugs are a huge problem in my area (brighton and hove) and my foster child's mum was a dealer and had her daughter when she was 16 and has no formal qualifications - what chance did she or her daughter have.

Feel free to contact me for any further info.

kristina i answered your point earlier, saying i wasnt saying one was harder than another etc, that they all need more support!! but i am answering about the care homes as that is what i know, i have no experience or knowledge of fostering or the adoption process, so icant make a constructive comment on those areas :)

i will point out tho you say about annual leave, yes he gets it, but its a pita to get and arrange as they have to be careful with staffing levels, and during the school holidays they need more staff and this is when dp would like his holidays, we really struggled for him to be able to get one week of this summer holidya and public holidays?!! NOPE he works bakn holidays if he is on rota to do so and no extra pay, ditto xmas, easter, new years etc, the children are in the home all year round so are the staff!! last year for example we had a 2kw old newborn and 4 other children, he was at work on xmas day. thats fine its all part and parcel of his job, but the assumption that he gets public holidays off is wrong. and he doenst get any extra pay as you do in some jobs for working public holidays and bank holidays, these are just regular hours. if anything at xmas etc he works more as they arrange parties and stuff for the kids and ALL staff members attend these, even if they are NOT on shift. they try and make it like a family so staff go to events, meals parties, bdays even when not on shift, as thats what they do. they want these children to feel cared for and supported and loved, so often go in on days off to do these things with them, even if it means missing out on our childrens xmas, bdays, school events. and as it is a rota, that changes and the shifts can change at any time due o the behaviour of the children or staff issue etc it is really hard to try and organise our family life around that and the pay is not all that much tbh.

As a foster carer specializing in fostering newborns who generally go for adoption (social services rarely remove newborns unless it is a desperate situation) I would like to see sw's having to account for when they get it wrong, ie when a placement breaks down. On a few occasions when asked how I think its going I said I think it needs more time or these people aren't right, I'm told "well the decisions been made now"

I've pointed out how difficult sw's were making it for a couple, having them go here there and everywhere, to be told "we have what they want (the child) they'll walk over hot coals if we tell them to"

Many adoption sw's are lovely and care deeply but some see it as a power trip.
Accountability should exist in social work and I've never seen it in action.

4mad-im sorry i didnt make my pont clear. I agree tnat your dh does a very difficlut job and of cousre he shoudl get all the suport, training , leave etc that he does.

Im simply saying that there are also very VERY disturbed and troubled children still in families and as maryz commenst, they get virtually no support at all. This needs to be addressed as well.

Anyone would think it was ridiculous to ask your dh to work 168 hours a week , 52 weeks a year with no breaks. And yet that is what is asked of many a parenst with violent and abusive children. And then there is much wringing of hands when between a third and a half of placement break down.

Ss KNOW what it takes go support these childrein residenatil care. They know the cost, the staffing levels, the training neeeds, etc etc. Yet parenst like maryz get patted on the head and told to go away. Or worse still, blamed for the problems.

Unless the issue of intensive therapeutic post plavement support for these children is addressed, it will become impossibel to place thme for adoption or long term fostering

I have read this thread with interest as a potential future adoptive parent. I have one birth child and have decided the risks to my health are to great to consider having any more. We both feel though that we have room an our hearts, lives and home to offer another child/children that need it. The time isn't right for us yet but we think it will be within the next 3 years.

There are lots of things are written here that concern me. Mostly the apparent lack of support for families after adoption has taken place. Also i would hope a SW would help us to be realistic in deciding what we are able to take on rather than trying to lead us into agreeing to something that is beyond us or hiding information about potentially suitable children. This has been a very eye opening and intersting thread for me.

I am a foster parent and am currently fostering four children age seven and under. We previously fostered very successfully but had to move area. We then had to undertake all the foster training again - depsite having glowing references from our previous social workers and even some of the birth families we had worked with. This is madness. A geographical move of 50 miles does not mean that I have suddenly morphed into a different person. It wastes six months that I could be fostering children, it wastes money (the skills to foster course and the assement costs thousands) and it belittles all I have acheived in my previous placements. It should be possible to transfer between areas/agencies.

The children I foster are of a different culture to me - I have been given not an iota of help or support in identifying ways to enhance their knowledge or self esteem in their own skins. And yet I am expected to 'promote' this area.

Have lots of other things but am supposed to be completing logs so best sign off :)

Children need love, stability and safety from as early an age as possible. Nothing else really matters. The age, race, size, appearance of the carer doesn't matter. Consistent love by one primary carer is all that is needed for a child to develop emotionally.

If natural birth parents were assessed before conceiving there would be very few children permitted to be born.

Screening should involve a one hour interview to ensure the parents have made a sensible decision, a criminal records check for all household occupants, a home safety check and parental medical records check (for terminal illness, severe mental illness, substance misuse) should be enough. Parents must be allowed to see the whole records of the child as it is highly unfair otherwise.

Moving children from one carer to another repeatedly is cruel and highly detrimental to their long-term ability to cope with life and parent their own children.

I disagree with some of what applegirl said (though not all).

The age, race, size, appearance of the carer does matter and love is not enough. But the degree to which those things matter vary by child and each should be assessed individually.

A one hour interview is not enough to assess a prospective parents suitability - I know some parts of america who do this and the quality of the adoptive paretns varies every bit as much as birth paretns as a result. Surely an assessment process is trying to weed out the people who indeed should not be a parent. We aren't allowed to apply similar processes for birth parents but there is a responsibility not to inflict a second set of parents on a child no better than the first!

I completely disagree with a lot of what applegirl said. As has been stated, you actually really do need months to prepare for something so life changing! 8-10 months homestudy should be about right for most people. Adopted children need love, but love is NOT enough for some/quite a lot of them to manage much emotional development. My DD's are loved so much, but they need and have needed consistant and good therapy to make strides in their emotional development. For children with severe RAD, love actually won't make much difference or any difference whatsoever sadly :( Support definitely would! Counselling for adoptive parents who need it - made such a difference for me, would for others too

I also agree with Kew. I am a member of an American adoption board, and something that is consistently flagged up by the international adopters is how little preparation they got. They weren't told about attachment or trauma, and they were at a loss when their children arrived home and showed their trauma. The paperwork itself takes a while, but they got very few interviews. I also think this lack of preparation is probably the reason so many they have had so many cases of foreign born adoptees being abused and murdered. Unsuitable parents can't be weeded out in a process that lasts only a few weeks - an hour long interview is ridiculous. The disruption rate would rocket upwards!

Children are not waitimg in care because assessments take too long. They are waitimg becase of

Delays in care and legal procedings
Mismatch between the types of children availabel and those families want
Unrealistic, uninformed, arrogant, inexperinced and poorly trained sws
Cumbersome bureaucracy that does not prioritise the needs of the child

kristina i think comparing the role of an adoptive parent with someone who works in a home is pretty pointless :) i think there needs to be more support for all involved in this area of work!

can i ask are children who are adopted not entitled to the usual help that a child 'acting out, with bad behaviour issues' etc would normally get, i am thinking cahms type and other youth servies support, age appropriate etc, of course the issue ther eis trying to get a referral is like getting blood out of a stone with the cuts being made! but parents with difficult children/teens can get help, althought its hard to get, are adoptive parents not allowed to use this as well? obviously they need MORE ON TOP OF THIS,but can they not use these services?

and whilst my dp doesnt work all day everyday, he does have his own family of 5 kids to look after. he does also go away on holiday with the children in the care home, they take them away at least twice a year once for camping nad another time for a week somewhere and then he is on duty 24hrs a day for the whole time they are away! and the care homes have their own problems dealing with the SW/SS as well, trying to arrange meetings, talk to them and the LEA about educational needs, i think the SS/SW are overstretched and so are not able to meet the need of parents, be they foster parents, adoptive parents, but equally they are not workign well with the care homes that they are meant to either. there is a shortage of staff on all sides i think?

well yes that is what i had heard also that they are bad and hard to get, but i just wondered if you were entitled to them. its seems that childrens services across the board are failing those that need them the most :(

The one bit of support I really could have benefited from was some intensive preparation for settling in a newly adopted child. You get some stuff at prep, but for many of us that is two years or more before matching and placement.

I think that somewhere between linking and introductions there should be a session - maybe a small group, hey even individual if necessary, it's worth it - to help us plan how to welcome and settle a new child. Then regular sessions in the first year, maybe two or three.

As it stands, I did of course do my own research, but it was such a frantically busy time, and most of the information was hard to apply to our situation (with another small child in the house, starting school just two weeks after placement). I found prep really useful and don't understand why there isn't a similar input at the point of matching.

That is a good idea maryz and hester. Seriously, so there is nothing like this in existence already? Crazy, as it would be cheap as chips to run, certainly compared to other interventions. I am imagining it working a bit like the NHS Expert Patients (Expert Parents?) courses, with volunteer trained facilitators and people just working out any problems together.

Mary and Hester - that would be a great idea! I would definitely go along if such a group were running in my area. LA's could send along prospectives to ask questions from the whole group as well, because I don't think they get to speak to enough adopters currently. It would be great if the group could set their own topics for conversation instead of being talked at, and adopters who needed support could just turn up and talk and know people will understand :)

And even better, this isn't something you need the gov to do. We could just approach the LA ourselves surely? They don't cost much to run. My own LA does organize a few things per year for families but nothing ongoing

What more might be done to help speed up the adoption process for babies in the care system?

1. There is currently a fundamental lack of funding and local authorities and agencies alike are slowed by the limited number of social workers they have available to allocate to both children and prospective parents.

2. Too many children of non-white ethnic backgrounds are being left to languish in care while social workers look for the perfect match. Despite the PM's rhetoric, I have been informed by people working in children's services that things will not change as the children's social workers ultimately make the choice on who will be considered and they allow their own subjectivity about potential parents get in the way. Social workers are using the Children Act and will continue to do so to justify their reticence at matching parents and children of different ethnic backgrounds. New national legislation, not just guidance, is needed to ensure that children are moved through the system and matched as quickly as possible. A National Adoption Agency would set national standards and help stop the local authority adoption lottery.

3. More people need to be recruited and retained in the adoption process to ensure that there is a greater pool of prospectve parents available for children:

There needs to be a national programme to recruit more prospective people to adopt, from all ethnic backgrounds.

There should be more financial support for people adopting as there are costs involved such as medicals, health and safety improvements to the home, and such costs surely put some people off applying to be parents. The government should pledge to not cut child benefits for adoptive parents, no matter what the major wage earner's income is.

The adoption process is complicated and is geared to people who are able to express their ideas well, both verbally and in writing. Again this is wrong and could put many less articulate people off applying in the first place.

The adoption process is very stressful and seems to be designed as a test in itself for prospective adopters. Many prospective adopters feel that they are made out to be guilty, of what they don't know, and can only adopt if they prove themselves to be innocent. The process is actually quite depressing and scaremongering without any joy encouraged about the wonderful family that the prospective parents have ahead of them. All that is talked about in training and home sessions is the negative side and difficulties in adopting children, never the joy and happiness they can bring. Many people are put off by these attitudes and withdraw from the process.

How might potential adopters and foster carers be matched with children more quickly?

The whole process is far too long and unneccessarily intrusive. Applicants could be assessed to be potentially good parents much more quickly than currently. Too much irrelevant background information is collected.

Research is needed and hard evidence should be gathered by the government to support or dismiss the effectiveness of such drawn out and intrusive questioning. Adoption practices in other countries need to be evaluated for their effectiveness by the government.

The pool of prospective parents available to children from ethnic minorities should be widened much more quickly. If a suitable ethnic match isn't available immediately, then other approved people who have expressed an interest should be considered. It is totally unacceptable that children are left in care a minute longer than they need to be.

Hi everyone. Hope you don't mind a Dad chipping in.....

It is nearing the end of National Adoption Week and you may have noticed a lot of recent media coverage about adoption. The fact that you're reading this means you have some interest in it. What you won?t have heard about is anything mentioning post-adoption support. Most adopted children nowadays aren't relinquished babies, but have been removed from their birth families due to serious neglect and abuse, and placed into foster care before adoption. Schools, health professionals etc are rightly obliged through legislation to support their often complex needs whilst these children are in care, but this obligation disappears once a child is adopted. Of course, the complex needs don't magically disappear, even if the children are placed with the most loving and patient adoptive parents.

I?m now 5 years in to being an adoptive Dad. Our son was placed with us from foster care as a toddler and adopted 9 months later. Since his adoption, our life has been spent in constant battles with the system to try and get the best for him. Whilst we received good support from our local authority before his adoption, this dissolved once we came back to them later on as the extent of his problems became more apparent. In fact I got so fed up with us having to constantly advocate for him (to doctors, teachers, lawyers, social workers, his birth family etc) that I have written an e-petition about it.

If you click on the text below:

epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/14435

and follow the instructions, you can read my petition. Please sign it. Even better, after signing, pass it on to friends, family and colleagues and get them to sign it too!

It?s now well past the 1000 signature mark so can at least now be considered a serious petition. It is currently the 11th most signed petition covered by the Department of Education, and near the top of page 8 of 447 overall, but won?t go much further unless it manages to break out of ?adoption world? and reach the general public.

We?re meeting our MP next week to discuss this. He?s already brought it to the attention of the Dept of Education, who are currently reviewing the whole adoption system. It?s great that adoption from care has become a talked-about subject, rather than just glossy pictures of celebrities adopting beautiful orphans from exotic locations, but all this talk about improving adoption must mean better post-adoption support too.

Thanks for your help

Philip

Add message | Report | Message poster 4madboys Thu 03-Nov-11 17:33:46

"can i ask are children who are adopted not entitled to the usual help that a child 'acting out, with bad behaviour issues' etc would normally get, i am thinking cahms type and other youth servies support, age appropriate etc, of course the issue ther eis trying to get a referral is like getting blood out of a stone with the cuts being made! but parents with difficult children/teens can get help, althought its hard to get, are adoptive parents not allowed to use this as well? "

Speaking as somebody who has made extensive use of CAHMS for a different kind of situation, I would guess that one potential problem could be the lack of therapists specifically trained in adoption. When my dd was acting out due to disability trauma it took a very long time to find a therapist who could actually do her much good because this was simply beyond anything they had been trained in. They were very good at talking to dd about all sorts of problems she didn't really have but which they had been trained to deal with, and dd was very good at stringing them along.

Besides, CAHMS can only do so much: the person who is actually there on the ground having to deal with each new unexpected problem is the parent- so any work put in preparing the parent has got to be the most efficient.