Wanted: A Family of My Own - Episode 1 tonight

[Lilka]

At 9.00PM on ITV

From their website:

Dan and Ania from the south coast have applied to adopt. Originally from Poland, Ania met Dan 10 years ago when she came to the UK to work. Dan has two older daughters but the couple want a child of their own. Will they find a baby?

Also in this episode, we meet a baby living with foster carers. He desperately needs a family to love and give him a permanent home. His birthparents have struggled with mental illness for many years and can’t take care of him. Will his social worker be able to find the right family for him?

My only comment is that I wish one of these programs would actually follow up or do something about post adoption. Looks like this also is only interested in up until moving in day. Oh well. I hope it's a good program. Again, I hope there's no "let's judge/bash potential adopters because of their matching criteria"

Did not mean to post and run. Will read and reply later. My point is about flaws in the system rather than looking to criticise parents.

Have you adopted, Biscuitfreak?
What is your experience of the system....I'm genuinely interested but understand if you'd rather not answer that question!

In my opinion, it is essential that the match is a good one compatibility wise. For that reason, I stated 'would consider/would discuss' for most of the criteria on 'The Form'. A friend of mine adopted a little boy from Vietnam and basically chose him. I always said all along that would be my worst nightmare. I didn't want to choose.
My experience was that members of a highly skilled and experienced team felt that the needs of my now daughter would be well met by what I had to offer.
I then had to consider whether I felt able to meet her needs effectively.
Thankfully, I felt that I could, and two years on, I can say they were right, we all were.

If you take away choices, you heighten the risk of placement breakdowns.

youwish you said But,Italian,wont the kids then feel refused by all the adults in the room? Wont it be damaging for their self-esteem?

I would hope not, but I have no knowledge of this aside from what I stated, information read and gleaned. Kids in the looked after system know that social workers are looking for a family for them so it may be to some degree they already feel unwanted, which is terrible. It is my own personal opinion that once children are of an age to understand then it is better to be told and process information safely with foster carers rather than work it out on the day and therefore find the whole day more stressful. I don't know I am right, it is just my opinion.

64x32x24 very good point about dealing with a room full of 20 adults rejecting them instead of the whole world. I guess that was what I was trying to say then read your post and you said it better than me!

Biscuit There are a lot of flaws in the system! You are right. Better support would definitely help but not everyone can parent every child, I don’t think that would be possible with unlimited support and unlimited support, as other have pointed out, is just not on offer!

And everyone is entitled to their opinion.

The system is set up to find families for children. Not children for families. But the idea that you don't think prospective parents should have the right to say no is frankly in no way a recipe for what is best for looked after children.

How could it ever be in the best interest of a child to be loved, nurtured, cared for and looked after by someone who does not want to do that?! Don't get me wrong, as a birth mum there are sometimes times when I don’t always feel like looking after DD and once our new son comes to live with us through adoption I guess it will be the same, on occasion. But love and commitment will ensure I do. For me to be committed (to life!) to someone I do not want to be committed to would be madness!

It does not upset me, it just is not as child-focused as it sounds and it is utterly unworkable.

You say extensive evaluation should take place of the family to ensure the right match for the child. It already does but ultimately the parent/s to be, must decide because they are the ones making the commitment, not the social workers or social services or even the child (although we would all hope that is how it turns out).

Yes Devora says it very well, I too have a birth child and had to think of her and all the children we considered had problems, not one was a child with no 'issues' or potential issues. They were all cute, lovely, real people with real issues and all infinitely 'adoptable' just not all by me.

I was, and am, still sad for those I felt I could not adopt. And maybe if I had seen those profiles later in the process, I would have been more open. I got very hung up on wanting a girl and a documentary called 'Finding Mum and Dad' persuaded me to be more open about boys, I am now in the process of adopting a boy (and ludicrously happy about it).

These documentaries open up thoughts, views and discussion so please Biscuit do not feel got at, that many are saying different things. This is what debate is all about.

Absolutely agree with HappySunflower I did not feel I 'chose' - he was just right for us.

Agree with RhinosAreFatUnicorns, CloserThanYesterday, Angelwings11 and prumarth too.

Crossed posted with Mary, yes agree with you too dear Mary.

biscuitfreak I understand that you feel it's sad for the children when they can't find a home, but what you are proposing is unworkable

By the way, the current system is absolutely entirely focussed around finding families for children, not children for families. It's one of the first things your told when you begin and right the way through, you can tell that that is the focus

I was thinking the same as MyFeet - People KNOW that some children have issues they do not feel able to cope with, and if they can't say 'no' to a child with these issues, they will quite simply not adopt at all, and we will have a bit of a crisis on our hands.

But secondly of all, how is the social worker supposed to find a good match for an adopter if she/he doesn't know how they feel about all these issues? You CAN'T place a child in a home where the parents are anything less than completely accepting and comfortable with all their needs and background issues. That would truly be awful for the child. So how do you find out what the parents are accepting of and comfortable with? The easiest way is quite simply to ask them! Hence the current system - they spend a while with a list of potential issues, think very carefully about it, and then say 'yes', 'no' or 'maybe' to each one. Then the social worker can go and look for a match and have a much better idea of what is a good match and what is not. And she will also base that on his/her extensive knowledge of the prospective adopters.

Without that list, the matching process would be much harder and more stressful on everyone. The social worker would be showing the couple profiles of children they would absolutely not be able to parent properly or maybe not even able to love as their own. Either way, the parents would be keeping saying, 'no I really can't adopt this child' and belive me, saying no to a childs profile is often very upsetting indeed and doing it time and time again will put you in danger of burning out. Rather than the social worker knowing what the parents can and can't deal with in advance, only bringing profiles shhe/he knows are possibilities, and thus minimising the stress as much as possible

It just feels very wrong that the children who need love most are missing out.

I do understand your views biscuit but I think you'd do better to take that up with the millions of people who don't adopt rather than the few thousand who do.

You have the choice not to drink excessively during pregnancy, or take drugs during pregnancy or expose yourself to life threatening viruses which can be transmitted to your children, you also have the choice not to beat your children or starve them or neglect them or allow other to do so. I also had the choice to not take on a child who had been exposed to this but if I'd ticked ALL the boxes that I wouldn't have done then I wouldn't have been able to adopt at all because there are so few children in the system that don't tick one box or other because otherwise they wouldn't be there.

In any event the "choice" of adoptive parents is an illusion because you really have no idea. One of the boxes I ticked to say no to was the extreme prematurity box and ended up adopting a 26 week premmie with significant delays. Of course by the time he was 4 and had started meeting milestones I fell into the "Oh she just wanted a cute little baby" camp and everyone conveniently forgot the months and months and months of watching and waiting and nurturing and finger crossing that happened in the meantime.

And as the mother of a child who is struggling emotionally at the moment I can say that accessing post-adoption support isn;t easy and many therapists won;t take on adopted children because it needs special training so I can;t even access the support normally offered by school.

In fact the picky ones are those who don;t tick the boxes at all - they are the ones who don't adopt. "Oh I'd love to adopt but... my DH won't/my children are too young/I'm too young/I'm too old/I'm single/I don't have a spare room/I have a dog/cat/goldfish delete as appropriate).

If you tick the "no adopted child at all" box then you don;t get to judge those who ticked any other box. However sad you find the idea of children not being adopted. Believe me, as a parent of a divine boy who turned down one other lovely child before him you aren't even at the foothills of my sadness at knowing I was responsible for a small child not having a family for a crucial 6 months of their life.

And you know, I find it really sad that there are so few people willing to consider children as old as the DD's (who were nearly 8 and 10). But I also know with a complete certainty that trying to push people into adopting a child who is much older than they are comfortable with is a recipe for disaster and disruption.

Also pushing people to adopt a child with emotional/behavioural/mental health/social etc issues they don't feel they can cope with is another recipe for disruption, pain and misery.

I don't think it's a coincidence that IME the adoptions of children with significant issues which are still going relatively smoothly years down the line with the families being the 'happiest', are usually those adoptions where the parents actively wanted a child with those issues, rather than the adoptions where the parents didn't know that their child had/would go on to develop these issues

My eldest daughter already had one adoption disruption before I adopted her. Disruption usually affects the child really badly. If she'd been placed with a parent who deep down wanted a baby and inside felt sad and a bit resentful that they couldn't have that, or a parent who didn't feel able to cope with a child with sigificant emotional and behavioural issues but were pushed into it.....well, that's another disruption, and a childs mental health taking another huge battering, and no more chances of adoption. It's absolutely awful, it doesn't bear thinking about

Then there's me. If I want an older girl and am comfortable with emotional issues, then how is it a good idea to not let me say 'no' to babies?

I'm not having a go at you biscuit, because I can imagine having said EXACTLY the same thing a decade ago. All I can do is assure you that the impression given on these programmes is misleading.

Am I the only adopter who felt that I came at the bottom of the pecking order of the agency's concerns throughout the whole process? The child (rightly), the agency, the social workers, the birth parents, the foster carers - it seemed that everybody's needs and feelings took priority over mine at times! I think there's a bit of an institutionalised determination not to allow the sharp-elbowed middle classes to use adoption services as their personal baby-finding service, so they drill into you at every opportunity how this is not about YOU, how you mustn't expect even the basic courtesies of, for example, having a social worker respond to your requests for information.

The other thing is that you are told throughout how ludicrous it is to expect a child with no problems - that you almost daren't expect anything approaching normal family life. Yes, you are allowed to specify what you can't handle, but I imagine most adopters felt - as I did - that to get TOO picky would seriously backfire on you. The agency would start to really question your suitability if they thought you were only after a cute flawless baby. I felt very punished when I met the medical advisor to discuss our dd's issues (this was just before matching panel) and when I asked a series of questions about FAS, she turned to the social worker and started saying, "I don't think this woman is suitable to adopt, she clearly isn't prepared to have any child that isn't perfect".

On the programmes you get these social workers and foster carers talking about picky adopters, but you rarely get the other side. Most of the adoptive parents I know work really hard to support children with very real difficulties, and it's odd to be so consistently characterised as nose in the air lady bountifuls picking our way through a Timotei ad of adorable children till we find the one that is the perfect accessory for our perfect lifestyles.

We adopted a couple of years ago, but actually there was more on our list than that. I specifically remember questions about a child born from rape or incest being on the list as DH and I discussed it in detail.

I hated that form with a passion but yes I remember incest/rape being on it

It IS really clinical and difficult to fill out And I certainly thought very hard before the final tick boxing.

My form was also more detailed than that, for instance that form only mentions Schizophrenia as a MH issue. My SW asked me specifically about Schizophrenia and Bipolar disorder, and then "any other MH conditions". It definitely also included conceived through rape, conceived through incest, child exposed to alcohol in the womb, child exposed to drugs in the womb and several other things

Why isn't there a box for "Will support my future ~13+ year old in daily Facebook chat and weekly meet ups contact"?

Needs updating

My area of social work is adults, so I have limited knowledge of placement orders and adoption orders, so those in the know, please can I ask a few questions?

If a child is moved from a care order to a placement order, might contact cease immediately?
What are the circumstances surrounding contact and adoptions? I was under the impression that this was unusual but from this boards, perhaps not. I thought it was mostly letterbox contact only. If your child is finding contact very challenging and its distressing them and they are old enough to decline it, do you as parents have the legal power to stop contact with birth parents?

P.S. Happy Friday, everyone!

I'm a really early stage potential adopter here just about to go onto stage 2 bit I was horrified by biscuits post. If that were the situation as others have said the number of potential adopters would fall through the floor and I would imagine the number of failed adoption would go through the roof!
The example I had in my head was a couple that have endured years of infertility and maybe miscarriages and other losses to then be placed with a severely disabled child that they would outlive. (That by the way is not us but just the first thing that I thought of).
If a couple knowingly make the decision that they want to adopt that child that's fine but for a stranger to decide that for them would be unbearable!
The thing that I see needs to change first and fast is post adoption support. There needs to be real support that can be accessed easily and without question. Once that support is in place you may well find adopters willing to take on children with higher needs or greater uncertainty. Surely that's the way to tackle the problem and not something as ridiculous as having no say in your child.

candy, as far as I have gathered from reading MN and other places;

contact is sometimes used as short-hand for direct contact, but equally, is sometimes used as short-hand for letterbox contact. Hence perhaps the confusion? I think the norm today is for once or twice yearly letterbox contact, though I believe that direct contact is being explored more and more often.

On a care order, a child may have direct contact, up to 5x/week in some cases, more likely 3x/week or 1x/week though, or may not (due to birth parents consistently failing to turn up, for instance). Upon placement order, direct contact (if still ongoing) would be reduced very quickly, though not always instantly. It depends on circumstances. In most cases there would be at least one final 'good-bye' contact. But as long as the child hasn't been placed in a permanent family, there may still be occasional direct contact happening (as in, maybe once a month, or once every three months). Not on a scale of 3 times/week or anything like that, as might have been the case before placement order. When an adoptive family has been found, at the very latest, direct contact would cease (after a goodbye final contact). Unless direct contact is part of the agreements of course.

If your child is finding contact very challenging and its distressing them and they are old enough to decline it, do you as parents have the legal power to stop contact with birth parents?

In most cases, there is no contact order, but rather only a contact agreement. In such cases, the vast majority, the adoptive parents are not legally bound. They can cease contact if and when they judge that to be the right thing. This counts for letterbox as well as direct contact.
However if there is a contact order included in the adoption order, (or a contact order put into place at any other time) then I believe the adoptive parents cannot simply disobey the order. There would be legal ramifications for them. They could however appeal to a court to have the contact order amended.

Don't mess with the adoptoraptors...

Oops! Didn't mean to!

candy

In my experience

1. Usually contact is not immediately ceased when a PO is granted, it's gradually tapered down, the speed of that tapering down very much depends on the child. Often, the special "goodbye" visit with the birth parents will not be until adoptive parents have been identified, and the child will continue having reduced contact until that time (my DD2 was meeting her birth mum once a month when I was being matched with her). Sometimes contact will have ceased before adoptive parents are in the picture

2. Letterbox contact only is the norm, and I would simply refer to that as 'contact'. I use contact as a shorthand for any kind of contact to be honest. The vast majority of adopted children have a contact plan of either 1 or 2 letters a year, far fewer have a direct contact plan with their birth parents. Direct contact with siblings who are also adopted/in care is much more common that DC with the birth parents

3. Once an adoption order goes through, the adoptive parents have the right to decide on all matters of contact, so yes, you could stop it. You could stop it for any reason at any time, quite a lot of letterbox arrangements stop happening after a few years for a variety of reasons. The exception to this is if a contact order is granted by a court. Contact orders are very rare, but they are legally binding and an adoptive parent would have to go to court and try and amend a contact order if the contact specified in the order was not in their childs best interests/wishes. The courts have made it clear that contact orders in adoption will only be made rarely when it is clearly in the childs best intersts to do so. They don't take a good view of imposing contact by a court order if it is against the wishes of the adoptive parent.