Complex birth family history

[Nel81]

Hi, just wondering if anyone has any experience of adopting a child with such a complex history that, as the child grows and learns of it, it's a definite that their mental health is going to be effected? How has the support been? Therapy, counselling etc? Thanks

I haven't adopted a child, but I work with children who have complex histories. Obviously it's very individual and each case is different but mental health issues are likely.
Attachment starts in the womb and even negative experiences that early can cause life long issues.
Even if the pregnancy and birth are good but they're taken and put into foster care until adoption the change in care givers can damage attachment significantly.
There's no way of predicting how a child will deal with the issues they've faced.
Not forming good secure attachments early on is incredibly damaging and is very challenging to undo.

My kids have probably the most complex birth family you could imagine, they’re still to young really to know much of it but my DD10 is already in what will be long term work with CAMHS to support her in understanding her life story. That work will include the complexities of her birth family and I expect some rocky times tbh.

In saying that, she’s very well settled and therapy will support her in developing a more secure attachment style.

The thing for me is that I went into it with my eyes wide open, I have the skills to support her through it and to argue for the wider services needed. The work with CAMHS is invaluable but I had to argue strongly for them to take her on, if that hadn’t worked I also had a referral for therapeutic life story work through post adoption support, and was also consulting privately with a clin psych with a good understanding of adoption (not all do). You need to be resourceful, and very persistent and also start much earlier than you’d think in accessing support. It also helps to have an good sense of what you’re asking for and why but that can all be learned.

Thinking that mental health problems are inevitable is outdated - it is not the case that a child will have mental health problems simply by learning about their biological family history, if they get the proper help and support, to think they would is a self fulfilling prophecy way of looking at it and not borne out by facts or research.

Where there are serious attachment problems caused by the lack of care in the first year or early life, the child will need specialist help. Attachment is one aspect of developmental trauma and if a child's needs are properly assessed at the outset or at any time when needed and they get proper help, and especially if they are well understood by and feel connected to care givers, they will be able to be helped to recover from trauma and build emotional and other skills to enable them to process and/or cope and build successful lives for themselves.

The problem is that so much advice given to adopters is out of date, the resources are inadequate or misleading or out of date, the assessments aren't done when they should be by LAs often because the LAs are working to out of date information themselves, the help is not available post adoption. Even in this bleak landscape, if the caregivers are able to read up on the research based information on the web and get sufficient support or have sufficient resources themselves, it is possible to help a child come to terms with their biological family and more.

Thank you for your replies. ObviouslyI can't say what the actual history is but the child will be brought up knowing and social.services are looking for direct contact with the birth mother too. I'm.just wondering really how much the LA would support a child in this kind of situation?

I would absolutely agree that nothing is inevitable.
My son's birth family is quite complex, and is in fact becoming more complex.
We have had difficult times, I'm sure there will be more, but at the moment I have a fairly average 17 year old.
Cahms for us was useless but we had excellent theraputic life story work funded by the Adoption Support Fund.

I'm not sure about the use of the term mental health to be honest.
My son had a particular issue around his birth dad, he was young, didnt have the language to describe it, or maturity to understand. Therapy and just growing up and developing understanding have resolved most things for him. I've been incredibly impressed with how he has dealt with some news we had this week.
Yes there are still strong emotions at play, but he does not suffer from mental health issues

I think having strong emotions about some of their stuff is a wholly emotionally healthy response tbh, there are things we’re not meant to take in our stride - being able to recognise and express that is essential to good mental health.

So, while my DD particularly may be distressed or find things difficult to understand or process, she doesn’t have a mental health issue.

How much support you get will depend on the LA I think as they vary. If the SW is looking for direct contact, it might well be that it is a forward looking LA who does provide decent support, certainly good support can make or break a direct contact situation. Can you find out more from the SW?

What I do think you need to do is get a good understanding of how intergenerational trauma works and the family yourself, and again, the SW should be able to help with this if they are suggesting direct contact. What can seem complex and horrifying from the outside becomes less incomprehensible when you get to know it better, when you understand the different things feeding into the situation and the reasons behind them. For many families you are talking about intergenerational trauma and once you start to break it down and make connections, it becomes something easier to understand, and easier to explain, and this and getting the right support can stop the cycle of it flowing down into future generations.

I've thought about this a lot since first reading it and reflecting on the 2 very different life stories of my 2 children. For both children you can view their individual histories as either straight forward or actually very complex and complicated, depending on how you think about it. The reality is that the bits we think of as straightforward could be the hardest bits for them to come to terms with whereas the bits that we view as complicated could be the bits that they have no issues with at all. Our emotional response to our children's stories is based on our life experiences and our position as an adoptive parent. It does not necessarily reflect how our children will feel about it.

As well as looking at what support is available for the child, I would advise you to look closely at what support is available for you. The reality is that you are the one that will have to live the day to day reality of the situation your child has found themselves in. The support services that are available are often patchy and take a lot longer than you expect to access. The various forums and Facebook groups out there are full of stories of delays and funding issues even with the adoption support fund in England.

Our emotional response to our children's stories is based on our life experiences and our position as an adoptive parent. It does not necessarily reflect how our children will feel about it.

I think it is really hard talking to dc about their birth family.

I think that where we bring up dc to understand that verbal abuse, physical abuse, not caring for a child whom you are responsible for, the reasons behind the PANTS rule, etc, are not okay, then our dc will inevitably at some point (usually quite young ime) make connections with the fact that their birth parents did things which were not okay, and have complex feelings about this, and ask things like "are my [birth parents] bad?" which might also mean "am I bad?"

I think that how we respond is going to be really pivotal to how well the child can recover, how well they understand, so that they don't internalise shame or blame and so that they feel they have choices and are not defined by their history.

I also think that adding to difficulties for parents is that where dc love their birth parents our visceral reaction sometimes will be that they shouldn't but in fact it is important to validate and explain that it is possible to love a birth parent while also understanding the aspects of that person's behaviour which are not okay or feel they need to copy it. Usually there will be a mix of "good" and "bad" in the birth family. I think that in this way, where children love their birth parents they can also be helped to understand problems and how to do things differently, it isn't a question of children putting birth parents on a pedestal which I think is the out of date - and very unhelpful - way of looking at it.

As I say I think it is a difficult subject matter.