Being informed when BM has another child

[AngelsWithSilverWings]

We've just discovered that my DD17 has younger siblings she knows nothing about who were all born in the five years after she was.

We were never notified even though the siblings know all about my DD as their Guardian was given all the court records and full history of my DD including lots of details about her birth and health status by social services.

DD is so angry to have missed out on the chance of some sort of contact.

We were also never notified that BM died over 10 years ago and she is incandescent with rage about that on top of grieving for her.

Would you expect to have been notified?

Have called post adoption team and they are going to support her but said they may never get answers as to why we were not told as it was obviously a different local authority who dealt with the guardianship order.

That's so hard, I am so sorry.

Did you ever have any letterbox contact?

My experience is that letterbox is just regarded as an admin job and no one takes much initiative.

New LAs often have zero interest in previous children. My girls' birth father moved and had more children. He told us in a letter, but when I tried to get contact, his new LA wouldn't get involved and the previous LA wasnt interested

It's a real grey area, sorry.

@AngelsWithSilverWings

That's a lot for your daughter to find out and process.
I wasn't told about the birth of siblings from mum, until the LA they were in at the time were looking for an adopter for the first one. The child was 2 at the time. In our case mum wasn't living in the LA where she was when my son was born, and we live in yet another LA area. I wasn't told about her second one either or dad's new baby. I keep a little eye out on Facebook so I knew anyway.
I think its a lack different parts of the LA involved and not being very joined up and also multiple agencies involved, rather than a policy of not telling.
My personal view is not to dwell on why it's happened this way but to focus on her coming to terms with it, and taking opportunities for contact now.

Thanks for the replies.

No we didn't have any contact at all as birth mum wasn't traceable after she left DD at two days old. She didn't even name her. BM was known to social services already so we had names of immediate family but at the time of DD's birth BM was not in contact with them.

DD's focus at the moment is why wasn't she told and she wants answers to that.

This has all come about through her getting names from her life story book and doing some facebooking to contact her birth family - all without my knowledge until she discovered BM had died so was upset and told me.

Your poor daughter, that is very tough and comes at the worst time (teenage years).

I remember being told by social workers during introductions that we would be informed should a birth parent die. However, when a birth family member fell ill, I only coincidentally found out via the siblings' fc. Like you, I was angry that social workers had not informed us.

One of my children found a grief workbook very helpful when she was little. Has your daughter had life story work? I hope you manage to establish positive contact with her siblings.

That's appalling.
DD may have birth siblings on her dad's side but he wouldn't acknowledge her so that's a whole other can of worms.

It’s very difficult. Part of the difficulty is the birth parents tend to move around a lot, sometimes to avoid social work involvement with a new partner or new child.

There’s no national register or database for social workers to draw on and unless the person is up front about previous involvement the new local authority may never know about previous removals until they’re trying to remove a current child and even then that information may not be passed on to the new social worker or birth mum may have refused consent to share.

It’s awful for your DD, and she may never know why she wasn’t told. I agree with @Ted27 its best to focus on what she needs now to recover.

@Jellycatspyjamas but in this case the info about my DD was all there. The guardian of her two younger siblings has told me that she has known about my DD ever since she applied for guardianship.

She knows everything about what happened at the hospital where she was born , how DD was named by her foster carer , and that she was adopted by us. The local authority where they live clearly managed to get that information from our local authority and yet our local authority didn't think to tell us anything at all.

The birth mum may have withheld consent to share. It can happen where they can’t really think about the child they lost, or feel life has moved on, or don’t want reminded themselves. The local authority can’t share that information with you without her consent because, while we both know it’s part of your child’s story, if birth mum doesn’t consent the LA can’t do much about it. It’s also possible it just never occurred to the new LA social worker that your child needed to know - or they passed the information back to the placing authority who didn’t join the dots.

Realistically you’ll most likely never know what happened because there’s a limit to what the local authority can’t share about processes that involve other people. It’s shit because, yet again, you’re left picking up the pieces with no real informed place to start from.

@Jellycatspyjamas I suppose that's possible. Birth mum was very secretive apparently.

But no one asked our permission to share our details and the details of our legally adopted DD with the guardian of the new siblings.

I'm going to phone the local authority we adopted through tomorrow and find out what they know.

Yeah that shouldn’t have happened. Disclosing a sibling was adopted yes, but giving personal details is a massive breach of confidentiality, safeguarding and GDPR. I’d take that up with the relevant local authority.