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"

Hi Ring and welcome

Hope you continue to find the board helpful, please ask us anything at any time, rant to us, or celebrate progress with us!

That's really kind, Ring. Hope your adoption journey is going smoothly

Hello good morning

No I haven't been scared off, far from it. I really appreciate everyone's answers thankyou.

Yesterday was a pretty terrible day and though it best to avoid mumsnet in a headfog!my ex dp didn't come and collect the dcs yesterday so I have been comforting them and trying to explain without saying basically your dad's a bit shit'

Anyway! I've given the dcs my laptop so I'n stuck on my phone.difficult to go back through thread on here. To be honest I agree with everyone it's not in the child's interest to be placed in a family that cannot meet their needs. But as a parent of a dc with sn I was really struck that people can cope with a lot more than they think. For example on the itv programmed they said no to any child on the autistic spectrum. Which is such a shame! I can understand them feeling overwhelmed at the thought of how to care for someone at the low-functioning end, but it means they are also rejecting many children at the high-functioning end who really who have fit what they were looking for.

I can believe there isn't much support for the family who adopt a child with additional needs of any sort (not found much for birth parent either to be honest), I'm saying it SHOULD be there. Which you all know already of course!

I don't know how coherent this is, cannot reread well on phone. Someone posted how I felt so I'm going to read through thread again to look for it...

Oh, and rereading my post I need to be clearer on something. I think at initial stages it's not necessarily helpful to say no to 'tick boxes' as one poster pointed out, She eventually adopted a child who fit a 'category' (Sorry, horrible word, can't think of a better one right now though) that she had originall rejected. But of course if you are offered a child who's needs you know you couldn't meet you must have the right to say no.

Out of interest are you given information about dla and other related benefits? For those who believe they cannot afford to be good fulltime,this and other related benefits can make that a possibility. On professionals told me about it though, I just heard through other parents. I'm a single parent and carer for my son who has autism.

Oh, and someone asked about me and adoption. I really want to adopt. I'm sure lots of people say that, but I have been thinking about it since I was a teenager. I got pregnant at uni, but my life plan was to graduate, career, buy house etc, then adopt. I left dcs Dad in part because I knew I would never be able to adopt or foster with him in the home. I would still love to one day, and other days I panic over my own life. A single parent, without family support,when my son hits puberty I'm worried about his aggression, how will we cope, how will I protect dd, will my son end up in care? So it's not straightforward for me, and I'm aware I have an emotional investment in the issue. But I really appreciate the honesty posters have shown answering my questions so I wanted to be just as open in my reply.

Biscuit very glad we did not scare you off!

I am sorry your exdp has let the children down. I feel very sad that so many dads out there are able to 'get away with' not functioning as dads and as a society we almost seem to shrug and say 'what would you expect'! (NOT you, I mean society in general.) I almost feel we need the national expectation of what a dad is and what a dad does to be raised. Like an awareness campaign. Do you remember those old learn to swim ads?

www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/films/1964to1979/filmpage_swim.htm

Aside from the use of the word 'birds' to describe girlfriends(!) it's pretty fab (in fact I eve like the use of the word there - it's so dated!)

Anyway, I wonder if we need public information firms for men to shape up!

Anyway, I wonder if parents of sn kids could have something really useful to bring to the table in terms of better information about children with sn awaiting adoption.

All the best biscuit.

Yes I really think so greyhound. I go to a support group for kids with autism and their families. After watching the programme on Thursday I did think if potential parents could come along to the group they could see how brilliant the kids are, and that the autism is not the bit to be scared of!

The thing is biscuit that when you have a child as a newborn very often any special needs they have are in a scale relative to their size. Even very severe physical disabilities in a baby still don't stop them being portable etc and as the child grows the needs grow for all sorts of reasons but you adjust to that as things change.

When you're adopting and older child, you get hit with a full whammy in a child that you really have no bond to at all. Its like wandering into the street meeting a total stranger who might have quite significant support needs and inviting them to move in with you and spending every waking hour of the day and night with them from then on. Yes you might cope but do you have the head space to be able to fall in love and bond with that person too or does it just become a chore you can cope with?

I'm not sure high functioning autism would very often be often diagnosed in children waiting for adoption (though I might be wrong) as they've rarely had concerned parents noting their behaviours.

Its also very common for issues such a attachment disorders which are very common in LAC to be misdiagnosed as ADHD or ASD (and vice versa).

Thank you for coming back... we can be a little robust sometimes in our own defence and we've had a bit of a battering this year! Don't worry about being coherent - its not really compulsory on this part of MN.

If it helps re explaining their Dad's absence to DC (we are generally experts in explaining absent parents!) I say to DS that not everyone is very good at being part of a family and that's sad for him because he misses out on so much.

The hardest thing is trying to get across to them then its not them its HIM. My sympathies, its not easy.

Biscuit, there was a pioneering programme about 5 years ago, where prospective adopters were invited to explore adopting 'hard to place' children. They got opportunities to spend time with children who have Downs for example, then were even able to care for one of the children for a whole day at their own house. I found that to be an extremely good idea, but haven't heard of it since, so I suppose they ran out of funding.

When we were at the 'tick box' stage, I tried really hard. For instance I spoke to people who are deaf or partially deaf, and to people who are parenting a child who is (partially) deaf. Tried to find out about schools, if (partially) deaf children usually go to regular school or if they need to go to special schools. And so on.
Then I moved to the next tick box. E.g. I researched Downs, mainly online, tried to find out about what is myth and what is reality, what support is available, what life would be like for us as a family. It was hard to judge because much of the published research on Downs is based on people who were born in the 70s or earlier, and sort of doesn't match with the experiences people seem to have when parenting Downs children today.

I also heard of a friend of a friend, who's (birth) child is profoundly deaf, and has Downs. Apparently she says she could cope with Downs, or with deafness, but both together were bringing her to her limits, maybe past her limits. That made me realise that whereas I was now comfortable in saying yes to the 'hearing loss' tick box, maybe I was still being naive... deafness by itself I am confident we could 'deal with' i.e. have a happy family life, but how about deafness in conjunction with FAS? Or in conjunction with anything else that has not yet been diagnosed?

So for us, the tick boxes were a start to guide us through thinking about these issues, and kind of laid out all kinds of issues that we should think about. However, it was totally up to us how much we actually did research and think about them. And tbh it was impossible for us, despite being well educated and being able to understand medical language, to get an in-depth understanding of EVERY point on the list. At the end of the day, it will be a real child we will be considering, and tick boxes will fly out of the window I am sure. When there is a particular child involved, we will also know which issues we need to research particularly - maybe we will need to understand autism but not downs. Or vice versa. We cannot at the stage of the tick-boxing really get a proper understanding of everything.

However already now I feel we have a better understanding of many of the 'issues' than our assessing SW has, so it would be terrifying to leave the decision to her. Both in the sense that she might rule out 'our' perfect child, or that she might place a child with us who we couldn't cope with.

64x32x24 I saw that programme it was excellent. Now Lilka media-guru, what was it called?

We saw quite a lot of kids in terms of seeing profiles (not CPRs) and we saw few with an actual disability. More in terms of a 'risk' - e.g. born early so risk of this that or the other, parent with this that or the other.

I think one thing adopters could use is a way of accessing and managing risk. Not risk that the kids would have issues, as we have said most do, but how much risk each prospective parent can cope with.

A friend has a disabled daughter who may well never be independent and is very smart and absolutely lovely in every sense. The mum learnt about the disability gradually, and did not (perhaps even now does not yet) know the full extend. When I asked if she would have preferred to know all at the start she said no, it had been better to find out gradually. I am not sure what point I am making but just that birth parents to kids with additional needs could be a resource to prospective adoptive parents for children with additional needs. (HUGE apology if any of my language is non-pc or non-helpful!)

Italian the program was called "Find Me a Family"

Unfortunately, that one is not available online anywhere

Speaking of media, this evening I've been hunting out "adoption on the radio" to add to my linky thread if anyone's interested?

Always interested Lilka!

Having scan read posts I feel I must be honest.
Our first adopted 4 had Down Syndrome and learning disability was not a problem including medical difficulties.
DC's 5-8 had complex medical needs and learning disabilities.
We always said we were not experienced enough to deal with autism/adhd
Guess what our youngest is definitely on the autistic spectrum and surprise surprise we are coping because we love her so much.
Sorry if this sounds sloppy but as with birth children every thing is a risk.
This is not to undermine the lovely parents who are prepared to adopt children with known psychological problems.

63, yes I thought of the 'Find Me A Family' programme too. I think that, generally, all prospective parents could do with more information on what life is like with various SN and medical conditions. I thought that the basic concept of FMAF was a good one, though I disliked the guilt-tripping and egging on that we saw.

I had a bad 20 week scan with dd1, when she was diagnosed with talipes. I was told I was now considered at very high risk of a range of serious genetic conditions and offered a termination. I asked for information, counselling, even a leaflet - and was told there was nothing available. Just the abortion. Thank goodness I had MN, which instantly rustled up for me a geneticist, and loads of parents who had faced similar. (dd needed a little physio and one pair of special shoes - she is now running, dancing, climbing with the rest of them.)

But I'm aware that showcasing 'what life is like' is itself fraught with problems, because of course there is no unity of experience. You could meet a family with a sweet, smiley child with Downs, or you could meet my friend who's teenager who has Downs is aggressive, unhappy and almost out of control. She gets almost no support, and her previously glowing career is wrecked.

Brutal bottom line is that we all get some limited level of control, and we all make decisions that are at least partly based on our own convenience and life preferences (and there's nothing wrong with that). Birth parents have the option to terminate a pregnancy. Adoptive parents have the option to say no to profiles of waiting children. All of us live with a level of uncertainty and risk, though adoptive parents live with more.

2old2beamum I am sure you absolutely love your daughter and that is brilliant but I wonder if it is really about love (you said ...surprise surprise we are coping because we love her so much.). Of course only you know about your situation.

I tend to think that also there are those who can cope with some things and those who cannot. Maybe there are those who can cope with everything and those who can cope with nothing. You never know how much you will love or cope with any child.

I guess what adoption brings to the table is that element of choice, what bisucit was talking about earlier! Glad you are still around biscuit.

People choose adopt (not all birth parents choose to be birth parents), people choose which child to adopt (although we almost feel our new ds was chosen for us as he seems such an ideal match!) yet still there were more choices along the way for us as adoptive parents than there ever were as birth parents! That's true I think for most adoptive and birth parents. And of course it is a slightly skewed choice as we cannot chose to have a child with no issues at all.

I am not sure where I am going with this, I think I am going down the path that adopters would possibly choose harder to place kids if they felt that they would:
be told all the facts
get advice and support along the way
get support after the adoption was final.

I am thinking of all the lovely people I know how were approved for just one child and may well have coped with siblings but were not approved for siblings in spite of the fact at least two couples I know did initially want a sibling group.

I think of the programme we all chatted about before (15,000 kids and counting) and that lovely little girl and her brother, being so hard to place! Yet, actually as a mum to a 9 year old they are fabulous (and she was only 7, her brother was 3). They are still loving and cuddly and cute and funny (sometimes) and playful like younger kids. So for prospective adopters who want to adopt are they thinking it is just an older child or a younger child. I can't cope with both. But with a sibling group even of two (like that) you could get an older and a younger child.

So often it is portrayed that adopters want babies but actually I only know about three couples who actually wanted babies, or had babies placed, (out of about 9 of us couples - so only a third!).

What is stopping adopters opting for older kids or sibling groups or special needs. For sibling groups I feel it is not (IMHO) the fear of two kids as that is kind of the UK average family but the thought of no bloody support down the line.

We only ever wanted to adopt one because we already have one and I felt it was unfair to overwhelm her. That was my decision (with hubby) but when I saw twin toddler boys I was almost swayed! Could I have coped with more, who knows? For me one was right. But I worry there are other adopters out there who could happily live with (cope with) two and end up with one because of playing it safe because of lack of support! They may not have the right house, they don't have enough room etc. There are all kinds of issues yet often I think that those are more minor things, could they actually cope with two and I think some could but are discouraged because of lack of support. So as prospective adopters we coudld have even more choice, to adopt two rather than one, and to create a home for two children from the looked after system instead of one, if there was just a bit more support in he system. When will these programmes focus on that!!!!!

OK....Rant over!

I think it's difficult because there is so much information that seems designed to put you off! It is really probably intended to give you a realistic perception but it's very hard when you are thinking about risks, and people tend to be very risk-averse.

In our case (at least at this stage of the process) we are considering an older child. One of the things that has helped us in thinking about age is that, in our extended social network, we know someone who fosters and so we can think of some older children and can see what they are like. It's less scary when you can put a face to it and see that children of that age are lovely (as well as whatever issues they might have or trauma they have been through). So it feels like a more balanced perspective. If we didn't have that experience I think we would feel a lot more wary.

(And of course we are not at the matching stage yet so for us this is still hypothetical).