"Finding Mum and Dad" - Channel 4, 10PM on the 15th

[Lilka]

This program needs its own thread

It explores adoption parties as a way of finding families for hard to place children, with a special focus on two little boys called Connor and Daniel, aged 7 and 5 now.

The Daily Mail have done an article about it today and also spoken to another family who found their son (who has a complex heart condition) at an adoption party - here

Heartbreakingly, the article says that the 3 adoption parties Connor and Daniel have attended haven't resulted in them finding a family. So the newspaper articles and the Channel 4 program are the last last ditch and if there's no family found through the TV program, then the boys plan will change to permanent fostering instead.

Also heartbreakingly I wonder how this is going to impact on them as they grow older if they aren't found a family

Would any of you consider letting your children watch this, aged about 8-10? DS is 8yrs 11mths, and he saw an advert for this and asked what it was about and now he wants to watch. He can't watch on the night with me and DD2 because it's on too late, but I'm not sure whether to record it for him to watch with me at the weekend or not?

I'm an adoptive mum and this is my first post on MN!

I watched it from a very different place to a couple of years ago...

Having always been the last one to be chosen at school for team games there is a large part of me that shrinks in cold horror at the thought of children being chosen or rejected, but it was clear that they weren't told what the activity days were for and that certainly the younger ones wouldn't have been aware. As they get older and go to more of them some children might realise.

What really interests me is the opposition to the SWs attempting to 'sell' the children. Surely that's their job - to find the right and best families for those children, in whatever way they can. And there must be something in the profiles that is being considered as things prospective adopters can't deal with - there's a reason why they're 'hard to place' beyond being boys and two of them. Because looking as attractive as that and being warm and friendly and affectionate as that, we all know there's something in the paperwork or background that is putting adopters off. So the SWs have to point out all the good and lovely things about them that counteract whatever it is in the various reports and papers.

I don't personally have a problem with the SWs doing this, they have a duty to the children in their care to find them the best family and sometimes the best family isn't the one who is at first most interested. The SWs know the risks of disruption but as long as they aren't forcing the issue I can't see that just sitting back and hoping for the best is the best or right thing for any children that need a family.

I'm not an adoptive mum, sorry I went into care aged 7, and went up to 15 in foster care before going to a residential home and phasing out, and had a failed adoption. I think that if disguised well as a fun day, a day to meet other kids in care and have fun etc; then for the children who aren't adopted, they had a nice day, and for children who were adopted, then brilliant. I think there should be an age limit, after about 6 or so, they would know.

Lilka That program me… Adopt Me - I'm a Teenager was interesting and sad. I hope Justine was OK in the end...

NinjaPenguin thanks for your perspective. It is always so helpful to hear from people who encountered the care system themselves.

I have resisted the urge to say too much as I was quite shell shocked after all the media stuff about adoption this week!

now with a calmer reflective hat on I think it is good to remember when watching a documentary that it is a snap shop of life and there would have been lots of day to day life in between the key bits we saw. The documentary kind of gives an impression of it all being very intense etc but I think on reflection it would not necessarily mean it was. The older boy was 6 at the time of one activity day (and either 7 for a later activity day or possibly 7 by the time the media of the documentary was reporting it). When he talked of finding a new family I did link it in my head with the activity day - of course I would, I know what those days are primarily for and of course I am watching a programme called 'Finding mum and dad'!!! But really for those kids finding a new family would be an on going thing and may not have been linked as clearly with the activity day.

I actually felt very sorry for the couple featured, who it seemed were so brave (and perhaps, I felt, a little unwise) to expose themselves to so much public scrutiny. On the day they may well have been thinking a thousand things and we (the viewing audience) were actually thinking one thing (if the rest of mumsnet and parts of faceboo are to be believed), that one thing was, of course, please someone adopt those two boys!

So in a way I feel the couple were in their own bubble looking for a child/ren they felt able to cope with/bring up/parent etc and the viewers were almost watching a totally different show, the 'find those two boys a family' show!

Personally, the good side of all this for me is that it has challenged me to be genuinely more open about the child we will consider. I think this is a direct result of watching the programme and may well end up helping me to make a better choice for the child and for our family.

Italian I think you have raised some very very valid points. Also as human beings there is surely an element of "chemistry" which you may detect at an activity day that you would just never get from reading a profile - again getting you to consider completely different options, surely that can only be a good thing.

Most of all I just wish there was much more post adoption support.

I'm an adopter, we have a teenage birth daughter and two sons aged 4 and 1. Ours boys are not birth siblings, we have therefore been through the assessment process twice albeit with different authorities. Our 4 year old has been with us since he was 2, he's almost 5 so soon he will have been with us for 3 years and our 1 year old since he was 10 months.

I think the programme was tough but it was also never going to cover all the issues in such a short space of time. If the purpose of the programme was to raise the issue of the numbers of children in care and who may remain there then it did that. If it was to maybe create some interest in people who've thought about adopting or not then I suspect it did that as well. It didn't really though explore the wide and complex issues about what makes children 'hard to place', possibly because they may deter people where the programme sparked an interest but also maybe because the issues differ from child to child but ultimately will require an immense amount of love, time, understanding and resourcefulness from adopted parents to support the children to understand them and either learn to live with the issues or work through them.

I haven't been to an adoption party but I have been to an adoption event where every authority in my region had a stall and the walls were literally covered in photos and profiles of 100’s of children looking for forever families. At each stall we were asked simple questions that identified whether we would be classed as likely adopters for that authority, mainly were we living outside of their area and what our home was like etc. We were then asked what we were looking for in relation to children, that's tough and to be honest you need to have some idea of gender, age, sibling group and the kinds of issues you could support a child with and through. We didn't find our first son through this but we did learn an awful lot about the kinds of issues we thought we could support.

Anyway my point is simply that anything that might create an interest and start people thinking about adopting is great and if this programme results in forever families for Scott and Connor and Daniel that would be awesome! I don't have a problem with the adoption parties, being in care is tough and if the parties help kids find forever families in a way their paper profiles don't then that's a result and 20% of the kids in those parties got that result.

Finally my hat goes off to the adopters who went to these parties, getting through the assessment process isn't easy and it's an emotional and draining process full of highs and at times lows. So going to a party to meet a room full of children, remain balanced and grounded and potentially make a decision that will be life changing for you and some of the kids is a pretty amazing thing to do!

I'm not an adopter. But I have friends and family who have adopted. I don't think people should blame adopters for being 'picky'. For goodness sake, you are seeking to add a new member to your family. It's not just about picking a sofa from DFS (where, I guess, you are going to be picky, too) - as with ANY relationship, you need to know what you can handle, and who you can live with… for the rest of your life.

Choosing younger children does not have much to do with cuteness (I hope). Deep inside, everyone knows that the older children are, the more history they carry that might have been bleak. It is up to the adopter to decide whether they can live with that. An adoption that is disrupted is a whole damn lot worse than rejecting a child. I don't think adoption parties are bad. Meeting people is the only way you can test for chemistry which with older children, I think, is a very important thing to do.

In a utopian world, adoption would be the way it sometimes happens in America: Birth Mother gives her consent during pregnancy, gets great care (we're talking about free accommodation, healthcare, etc.), adoptive parents are present during the birth, and baby comes home with them (as happened with David Miliband and his wife). But of course, the adoptive parents in the US pay upwards of US$30,000 for that privilege, which some people will think is buying them a child.

For anyone who may be interested, on an adoption Facebook site, they updated and it looks like Connor and Daniel may be adopted very soon. :)