what do you think of this?

[talllikejerryhall]

www.telegraph.co.uk/women/family/adopting-a-child-in-britain-its-hell---but-not-for-the-reasons-y/

I think a lot of what she has to say is a fair reflection - certainly from my own experience as an adoptor and my sons experience. My sons SW tried so very hard to keep DS within his birth family before finally asking the courts to facilitate his removal to a safer environment and having read a few CPR's before being matched with DS I feel that in all those cases the aim from the start had been to support birth families in keeping those children. I will admit to being shocked at just how many opportunities some were given and the seeming unwillingness of the courts to remove children when it appeared on paper at least the most obvious and sensible thing to do in order to protect the child. So yes totally agree that children being whipped out from birth families is nonsense but equally why haven't the government/judges stepped in to clarify how removal should be applied rather than allowing the ever growing delays meaning that children are in shitty and potentially dangerous situations for longer or languishing in foster care with no real closure or future plans in situations where birth families are clearly unwilling or unable despite a lot of support to comply with basic care and safeguarding. This was certainly the case for my son. The rules are there and rightly so, removal should always always be the last resort but the interpretation into the law must be made clearer for those who have the responsibility of making that decision and the SW's who bring the cases forward. The current numbers of children available was described to me by my SW a long time ago as a bottle neck, the knee jerk reaction of LA's and judges to not remove following other cases. I think that the vast majority of these children will still eventually come to adoption albeit much later in the day with so many more issues and trauma to deal with. I firmly believe that it's only a matter of time before the adoption system is inundated with children whom the 'average' adoptor will be unable/unwilling to cope with and then what? It's heartbreaking.

I take issue with her end advice "go abroad"! It's not that simple in fact probably still harder than the UK and numbers are running even lower - the last year I could find any info for was 94 application in 2012 resulting in 24 actual adoptions (there will be adoptions which were applied for in previous years). There include kinship adoptions for example I stongly suspect that the 6 from NIgeria and 14 from Pakistan and a fair few of the 18 from INdia are kinship carers.

Apart from that it sounds like the situation described to me by others.

My fear like Minty is what happens to all those children who are not found a family carer. There has to be a happy medium between acknowledging that children are better placed within family where possible but putting some kind of reasonable time frame on this approach.

Are children always better off with bf? Genuine question.

I would have thought - dedicated granny, able to support child's identity clearly yes. Random second cousin, already has three kids, tentative links to bf...what's the qualitative difference to an adoption?

Maybe. Happy to be told I'm wrong.

But post bs I think scenario 2 is what we have seen the rise in. Not scenario 1.

no not always but I think birth family who are good enough tend on the whole to be better for children than adoptive parents who are "better". I don't think "better" parenting makes up for the additional trauma of being totally removed from birth family.

I still think random second cousin with some knowledge of family dynamics and shared history is a better option, random second cousin who knows nothing of birth family and lives hundreds of miles away maybe not. as always depends on individual circumstances.