what do you think adoption will look like in the future?

[Snazzygoldfish]

Just that really. I think open adoption will become much more common and adopters will become more like long term foster carers with ongoing contact with birth families facilitated wherever possible.

My suspicion is that one of the things preventing this now is that adoption is a cheap option for LA's compared to long term foster care.

Personally, I would be open to face to face contact but only on the condition that there were strict boundaries in place and whatever support was needed for all involved in the adoption triangle. This too would be costly in comparison with adoption as I know it. I'm aware things are different in different parts of the U.K.

sassy may I ask, and please do not feel pressured to explain anything you do not wish to, do you noe gave contact with birth parents and does it work well?

I agree with you we need to hear the voices of adoptees.

I meant assessed on a case by case basis by psychologists to do with what what is best for the child. Posting as an adoptee my focus is usually on the child's needs, obviously. And again, as I have said this before, in the UK the focus is the child's needs not the parents'. The law is also about the rights about children in family law, not rights of parents.

Re your question about relationship with bio family, I have posted about it before - yes, I do, and it is absolutely fine - as an adult I don't have needs for them to meet and so the relationship is an adult relationship. Same goes for adoptive parents. If you want to ask specific questions about it, about the positives or anything else, I do not mind - or at least, if I don't want to answer I will simply say so!

sassygromit thank you. That is very helpful.

I am aware I may come across as 'hard nosed' at times. I don't mean to.

We were open to facilitating some sort of contact (other than letterbox) for our son but it was not felt to be in his best interests. As I say, I am open but I also wonder how we measure these things.

What would be good would be for an open system. I don't know how open the system in Northern Ireland is, for example if it isn't helpful for a child. Is the pressure on a child to have to be the one to say no and maybe that's very hard. Very complex.

One reason I cannot see anything changing soon is because all this takes money and time and those are two things the 'system' and those who work on it, so not seem to have.

The USA's 'open adoption' system seems to be paid for by adopters and that's something in the UK I think we'd want to avoid, the idea we are paying to adopt. Because we do not.

And agree with others the USA system 'works' because there doesn't seem to be the financial support for single parents etc and because of a religious/cultural element against lone mums etc. But maybe they will also experience a backlash one day because many of these mums might have been able to keep their babies.

flapjack I did not mean to say all foster carers bail when the going gets rough - in fact, of my DDs one I was able to adopt legally, the other not. The one I could not adopt has (so far! Plenty of time for things to change! given me a harder time in her own way than her sister). My love and commitment is the same to each. BUT, people choose to foster rather than adopt (or vice versa) because the two are not the same in principle. That some of us choose to cross the line for our foster children does not change that.

Nor does it change the fact that on-going contact was disruptive and affected DDs deeply. For us, in our specific situation (DDs aged 5 and 13, trans-racial placement), that was better than stopping contact. On-going contact was damaging and healing at the same time, in different ways. One of the reasons it has been positive overall is because birth parents died young, for the same reasons they could not parent. So there is no possibility of contact when DDs are adult, but they know that the birth parents and I did all we could to support their relationship, yet after the birth parents died the chaos ended and DDs could settle and adapt to that.

Italian it was the Today programme, Radio 4 from 6am to 9am. In August this year, based around Lemm Sissay and foster care. I had a look on the BBC website and found it as 'not available', but haven't done a proper look beyond that.

There are no easy answers, and every situation is different. I wish there were the resources for every situation to be treated differently, and everyone involved have the support they need.

You don't come across as hard nosed to me.

When you say felt not to be in your ds' best interest, I am assuming you mean by you and your husband? I think it is very complex and I think it should be a decision made by psychologists, not the parents, because psychologists will have a better understanding of the issues and the likely affect. I also think psychologists would need to be involved in managing f2f contact.

I don't know how open the system in Northern Ireland is, for example if it isn't helpful for a child it is probably worth you doing some wider reading on the subject.

Is the pressure on a child to have to be the one to say no and maybe that's very hard no it would be totally inappropriate for a child to make the decision. But a psychologist would be able to talk to the child about their thoughts and feelings and take anything appropriate into consideration.

One reason I cannot see anything changing soon is because all this takes money and time and those are two things the 'system' and those who work on it, so not seem to have I agree

Re the USA I understand your points but it is worth looking carefully at research done in the UK, Australia and also how other European countries do it

sorry, that was for italian

PS I said I agree re funding, and also it would be a massive cultural shift - but it may be the future because one of the stated outcomes following the report i mentioned was a commitment to look at the issue of increasing required contact plus there has been judicial comment that it should be considered - though that was last year, was referred to as "opening a can of worms" in legal commentaries and i am not sure what has happened since.

@Ellington
Sorry if I sounded tetchy but it is a narrative that is often trotted out on adoption boards in a way that is derogatory to foster carers. It presses my buttons now so I am probably over sensitive .

@Allington.

Stupid auto correct ! Sorry x

I wouldn’t favour psychologists making decisions about ongoing contact for my children. I have three different friends who have adopted in NI and have contact with birth parents twice a year, in every case the run up to and weeks following contact see the children very dysregulated with regressing in behaviours. In one case it very much has impacts on the children settling with their birth families even 6 years down the line.

Parents are responsible for making decisions regarding their child’s welfare, they also live with the day to day impact of those decisions. I’d be adverse to any professional mandating what happens with my children and there’s no legal basis for ongoing professional involvement after the adoption order. I’m not saying the decision making shouldn’t involve other professionals but ultimately, post adoption order, the adoptive parents hold full parental responsibility for them.

The reality is ever parent makes decisions in the best interests of the child with the information available to hand. With hindsight the child when grown to be an adult may wish things were different or different decisions had been made. I think that about decisions my own parents made so I don’t think that’s unique to adoption by any means.

Against my better judgement I agreed to contact with foster carers at professionals insistence that they understood the children and their attachments better than I did. The outcome was disastrous for both my children, and oddly enough the professionals who argued the case weren’t there to pick up the pieces. As with any aspect of parenting, all we can do is make the best decisions for our children at the time and be prepared to talk through the thinking when children are old enough to question.

Yes adoptees voices need to be heard, but frankly so do adopters and birth parents all of whom are poorly represented in the system. There may be an argument for more direct contact, I’d love to see evidence from countries that do work in this way but I don’t see any moves within my nation to go in that direction.

I have three different friends who have adopted in NI and have contact with birth parents twice a year, in every case the run up to and weeks following contact see the children very dysregulated with regressing in behaviours. In one case it very much has impacts on the children settling with their birth families even 6 years down the line In my experience, this is down to mismanagement of the contact, and this is where psychologists come in. Adoptive parents generally are normal people who are not equipped to deal with the trauma or to make judgements about this thing. Any parent should get assistance with things which fall outside the norm, and for adoption that would include contact with bio parents. There was an earlier thread when someone said that a child could not attach to the adoptive parents if there were contact - in fact in my experience the opposite is true, and on the basis that attachment is to do with meeting a child's needs, it may well be that one of the children's needs is contact with bio parents - it just depends.

Parents are responsible for making decisions regarding their child’s welfare, they also live with the day to day impact of those decisions
firstly parents are required to seek help when appropriate, and secondly there are just too many problems in adoption to justify how it is currently done.

The reality is ever parent makes decisions in the best interests of the child with the information available to hand but we do have information available about this, which has been largely ignored. In the UK alone, the original research by Norwich Uni in the 90s made a list of recommendations for LAs based on the research none of which were followed.

Yes adoptees voices need to be heard, but frankly so do adopters and birth parents all of whom are poorly represented in the system Contact is to do with the child's needs. Adopters have been listened to - courts currently make orders based on the fact that the majority of adopters do not want contact - and again there is judicial comment on this.

The benefits I experienced:

• knowing exactly who I was and where I came from
• understanding why things happened and having a full picture
• given the opportunity to talk about the trauma, to process it, to deal with it, to cope, to mature, to learn about what is important in relationships, different kinds of love, different ways of looking at the world.

I have robust mental health and I feel a large part of that is to do with the above.

Jellycatspan in relation to the people you know from NI who have contact there must be some positive they see in it if they have all maintained the contact even if it has such an adverse effect on their children. If they can not see a positive why are they continuing with it? Post adoption contact in NI is an agreement not a court order and an adoptive parent can stop it at any point. Yes a SW will try and persuade them to continue or alter arrangements somewhat but ultimately no-one can make them do it.

I will hold my hands up and say my kids are still fairly young ( under 6) and so maybe our experience of contact is still very rosy. They both lived at home with BM for a time and had regular contact with her for a long time while in fC and I can honestly say contact is not an issue for us yet. We don’t build it up for long in advance (a couple of days at most), we go and enjoy a sociable hour catching up and come away again. It does bring up some more questions for a week or so afterwards about their lifestory but in a helpful kind of way. This might change and if it does and things deteriorate we will stop it or alter it without a shadow of a doubt. That is our right as the children’s parents.

I know many with direct contact and the effects on the children are variable. For some contact has stopped, for others the level has lessened but for many they continue with it in quite a positive light. For those who have reached teen years and they have begun more thorough therapeutic lifestory work they have said the direct relationship with birth family has been hugely advantageous in their understanding of the story.

Sassygrommit you very eloquently put my thoughts exactly. Thank you.

Sassygromit I would very much be interested in reading the report you refer to down thread if you can link to it.

Jellycatspan in relation to the people you know from NI who have contact there must be some positive they see in it if they have all maintained the contact even if it has such an adverse effect on their children.

They continue because they’ve been told the longer term benefits will outweigh the short term negative impact - and they made a commitment that they would support direct contact and don’t want to break this commitment for their childrens sake and the sake of the birth parents. Basically, they’re going with the idea that in the long term contact is a good thing, despite the pretty significant impact on their children in the here and now. I think too they don’t want to be the ones who stop contact and are hoping the same professionals who said it would be beneficial will change their view and seek to end it, in their shoes I would have stopped it by now.

I don’t have skin in the game here - contact with my DCs birth family was never going to be a consideration for very good reason, we faithfully keep letterbox contact, which birth mum has never responded to, and we’ll work with them to fill in the blanks as far as possible, we’ll also support them in looking for their birth family when they’re old enough to do so, if that’s what they want.

I don’t think direct contact should be mandated and I do think adoptive parents should ultimately be the ones to make that decision. It’s not as simple as direct contact good/indirect contact bad. I can’t see resources being made available to support direct contact so I think it either won’t become more common, or you’ll see families struggle with contact they think is a good thing despite the impact on their children day by day suggesting it might not be.

I think that the idea that a more open adoption system should become the norm is something that really needs to be done on a case by case basis. Rosie Jeffries of NATP has recently published articles on what direct contact meant for her and the impact of expecting a child to continue to see the people who abused them.

As adopters we were open to direct contact with a sibling in long term foster care but they still had direct contact with birth family who had previously made threats against SWs and FCs so the risk was too high.

@Allington that must have been so hard.

@sassygromit

"When you say felt not to be in your ds' best interest, I am assuming you mean by you and your husband?"

No, the post adoption support we have. We have not had contact with a psychologist since ds was 4 (he is 9). We saw ed psych re school.

One 'issue' is that letterbox has not been constant and birth parents not willing to meet us so we do not know exactly what situation would be.

As I say, I am open, knowing ds's history. As I say case by case. However, for me ultimately, as oarents, I feel the responsibility is ours to choose wisely on behalf of our children.

Well we had play therapy, so maybe that counts as a psychologist?

Adoptive parents generally are normal people who are not equipped to deal with the trauma or to make judgements about this thing.

But we are dealing with it. And the adoptive parents I know have taught themselves a great deal about trauma and its after effects - in reality I have known more about it than any of DDs SWs (or school counsellors, which has been very unhelpful as they were convinced they knew more).

@italiangreyhound

DD1, now aged 20, has a place to study SW at uni - so we are reaching the 'sunny uplands' I think she has reached a point where she is able to use her experiences and reflect on them rather than react to them, IYSWIM

DD2 is heading into the teen years with attitude already well in place - so far 'normal' tween behaviour though, rather than the all-singing, all-dancing attachment-disordered variety. Though as I said upthread, there is plenty of time yet for her to try and out-do DD1!

I am glad to hear you are heading into good places.

I agree that adoptersso try and equip themselves for the task. We gave been so lucky to have on going support.

In contrast to the siruation with our autistic birth dd - where there is little support.

@ifchocolatewerecelery would you mind linking the articles you referred to, by Rosie Jeffries? I would be really interested to read her point of view. Thank you

@Thepinklady77 thank you I will try to find the report tomorrow.

@allington Firstly I agree that normal parents (both adoptive and bio) are having to teach themselves about trauma and end up knowing more than some of the advisers around them such as school sencos, counsellors etc - I relate to what you said as I had some extremely trying conversations with the school senco a few years ago, though all that is in the past now - but the fact is, a clinical psych who has expertise in relation to developmental trauma and has prof experience in relation to children who are also adoptees are going to do a better job most of the time, and would be able to explain things to adopters who had concerns and talk them through concerns and strategies. Yes there are adopters who are brilliant at dealing with their children's needs. And there are adopters brilliant at dealing with contact with bio parents (there is the longitudinal study done by UAE (I meant UAE when I said Norwich...) which followed families such as these such families. It is the families which fall between the gaps which need help. There are too many failed adoptions, too many adoptees being failed, too many parents struggling. And too many books being read by adopters written by people who have zero qualifications and zero professional expertise.

but the fact is, a clinical psych who has expertise in relation to developmental trauma and has prof experience in relation to children who are also adoptees are going to do a better job most of the time,

I’d like to see evidence of that tbh. In most cases clin psych aren’t going to be involved with children - usually Ed psych are involved as a discipline. I don’t know of clin psych being involved in adoption at anything other than the most extremes where their input can be invaluable. I think it’s pretty disrespectful of adoptive parents who have worked hard to educate themselves about their children’s needs and who advocate for them on a daily basis to suggest any professional is going to have a better understanding of their child’s needs based on a couple of hours assessment. Yes they can bring theoretical knowledge, distance and perspective and than has its place but no one understands my children’s needs and what they can cope with better than I do.

I meant UAE when I said Norwich.

I often get those two mixed up. I understand women are allowed to drive in Norwich now :-)

the fact is, a clinical psych who has expertise in relation to developmental trauma and has prof experience in relation to children who are also adoptees are going to do a better job

Better job than most parents? No.

I understand electricity more than 99% of electricians. I have more qualifications. I would not try to rewire my house.

Psychology is in its infancy as a Science. It has many more variables than a hard Science like Physics. Even the areas with good evidence like Attachment theory are still just models with a lot of limits on their applicability and areas of debate.

The evidence that contact is (on average, generally) a good thing doesn't have anything like the amount of data to predict individual outcomes, I doubt it ever could.