Adoption Disruption Artcle BBC

[Arran2024]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0kdv1x83gko?fbclid=IwdGRjcAOWpIBjbGNrA5ajsmV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHj2E0wixnkdSOHi_x24ac0hK4gkFMpcvrO119IF8PQWTeFFXniPST25KOofI_aem_AC3sgw9xa0U1QuclunpLzA

Thanks so much for highlighting this.

Yes, the government and LAs have managed previously to dismiss our concerns as a niche issue. However, the BBC research and its FOI requests blows the ridiculously low and inaccurate statistics out of the water. It is criminal that LAs do not have to report these statistics. I am glad that people and agencies can now see the truth of the scale of the issue.

The CPG in Scotland made a number of recommendations starting with having an agreed definition of adoption breakdown/disruption and annual reporting. At the moment data is very inaccurate (as you know) because no one wants to define it much less report. I imagine not much will change pending the elections here in May but the new National Social Work Agency gives another avenue for change so I’m hopeful in Scotland at least.

Yes, Scotland seems much more on the ball than the other home nations. We have to name it and define it and report it otherwise too many families will become collateral damage. If people know the level of risk involved in adoption, then they can make their own informed decisions as to whether or not to proceed. Very, very, very few of us get to dodge the bullets.

I think you are spot on. I think most prospective adopters listen to the "negative" stuff but don't believe it will happen to them. Most prospective adopters have done pretty well in life - overcoming challenges along the way. They can't imagine it can be that difficult to parent a child.

I think we should focus on more support for adopters and leave the prospective adopters to choose what to do. I just don't think anything will change their minds.

I got loads of help btw. I got family therapy at the Post Adoption Centre for us when the girls were 3 and 4. This helped enormously. We were unusual in going there so early. Staff said people usually waited til kids were at least 7. I think everyone should get something from the beginning.

We went because of our elder daughter. We had zero concerns about the 3 year old. Guess who PAC identified as having the most needs.....

Frankly, most of us have no idea about early trauma and how it presents. It took PAC a couple of sessions to identify attachment issues with our younger daughter. Placing LA didn't do anything useful pre placement. And we had no idea.

You are lucky to have had the pre-austerity help you did. Honestly, there is no meaningful help for adopters now. I also hate the distraction of the ASGSF, which is not fit for purpose, in my opinion. The fund has been hijacked by corporate therapy companies and private social workers who provide, at costs over the odds, non-evidence-based therapies. Sadly, the only evidence-based clinic offering evidence-based (yes, I am overusing the ‘e’ word!) assessments and therapies, the National Centre for Fostering and Adoption at the South London Maudsley Hospital, the national CAMHS centre, was very quietly dismantled earlier this year. I have a FOI document that shows just how rich the corporate therapy companies have got on the back of the ASGSF, if anyone is interested? Also, even worse, in England, the regional adoption agencies, whose purpose is to provide support and help to adopters, are now ‘charging’ adopters, via the ASGSF, to access training such as NVR, provided by in-house social workers who have completed basic CPD courses. It is literally the job of regional adoption agencies to provide help to adopters. Not to scalp them.

It’s a balance I guess, I believe adoption is, over all, a societal good and is utterly life changing for many children. However both assessment of children and adopters is absolutely vital.

Some children won’t do well in a family home setting be that foster care or adoption because it’s just too intimate an environment for them. I’d argue that for even some very young children the structure and routine of a residential placement will better meet their needs and give them a place to thrive. There’s a lot of push back on that though because of the myths that go with families as warm, caring places. Some children need a lot of support to cope with being cared for. A proper assessment of that child’s route to permanence and their future needs would take some children out of the adoption pathway.

I also think adopters need much stronger assessment. It’s not enough to be stable, financially secure and to want a child. Adopters should come out of the assessment process with a very good understanding of developmental trauma and how it can present, they should have a good sense of their own limits and absolutely have addressed any previous trauma (including any infertility) through thorough therapy - not 6 sessions of CBT. Any vulnerabilities should be fully explored and should exclude some people from adoption. In my experience adopters often treat the assessment process as a hurdle to jump over rather than something to engage with fully and thoughtfully. You sometimes see in here people saying “just tick the box, don’t tell them x” when really an open and transparent process is one step towards a successful placement.

Social workers need to fully understand their own process and be much braver at explaining why X means adoption may not be for you, or why they’re focussing on Y.

In all we need to take seriously the fact that children coming to adoption are by definition the most vulnerable in society, that they have been impacted by their experiences and the full nature of that impact often isn’t known at placement. Which is why life long support, practical, emotional and financial is essential, not a nice to have.

There’s legislation going through the Scottish Government that would mean local authorities retain corporate parenting responsibilities for adopted children in conjunction with their adoptive parents. It’s not intended to address adoption or post adoption support but an unintended consequence might improve things because of that joint legal responsibility. It means parents can rightly point to that joint legal responsibility as a way of forcing support, or indeed respite or longer term care.

I will also throw into the mix that it’s not all ‘attachment and trauma’/neurodevelopmental trauma. It does adopters (and the children) a huge disservice when SWs bang on about attachment. To be fair, there are incredibly high levels of autism, ADHD and neurodivergences in our children because of the high heritability factors from their birth parents. I am a middle-class, Oxbridge-educated (former) professional and it took me three years to achieve an EHCP for my AD1 who is BLIND! Our birth parents didn’t have sharp-elbowed parents who could navigate the SEND system successfully. It’s no wonder that people self-medicate their SENs and their mental health issues with drugs and alcohol and then engage in risky relationships because like attracts like. My AD1’s birth father hanged himself in prison with schizophrenia and her birth mother was ASBO’ed out of her home town with significant criminality caused by her mental health issues.

@Jellycatspyjamas

Agreed, this is why I keep posting here in the hope of educating prospective adopters. I have been accused on this thread of creating posts that are not a good advert for adoption.

It’s not all trauma/developmental and I think the needing to jump through the “trauma” hoop before you get neurodevelopmental assessments is so counter productive. It’s like services can only think of one thing at a time (usually discussed on the current trend because that’s where the money is).

@ThePieceHall

To be fair, your posts aren't an advert for adoption. But then I don't think we should be advertising for adopters.
And you provide the side of the coin that prospective adopters need to know about.
They need the balance of your experience and my experience so they make fully informed choices.

And whatever has been thrown at you, you have always fought hard for her.

Thank you. Yes, you know me of old and know how hard I have fought for my AD1. I will never give up fighting for her, I just choose not to live alongside her now. I will always be there in the background, busily scaffolding away, so she can present a successful face to the world. I’m pleased for you that your adoption story has been so very successful. It just goes to show, it’s just pure chance, with a lot of luck thrown in. I have every hope that my AD1 will come through in the next few years. The really sad thing is that she is a highly academically able girl and, without any specialist tutoring, passed the 11+ to a super-selective grammar school.

Exactly, not all attachment. But it is one of the areas that potentially needs addressing. But if you go to an adoption specialist, they will undoubtedly put everything down to attachment.

Our experience at PAC was great re my younger daughter and attachment. But it barely touched my other daughter. Years later we discovered she had a proper moderate learning disability. She was given a then Statement in Reception for behavioural issues. Everyone, including the ed psych, though she was very bright.
Later in year 5 came the adhd diagnosis and in year 11 the autism diagnosis.

Every professional only assessed and diagnosed within their own area of specialism.

We got her privately assessed by an Ed psych in year 5. We went to Family Futures as I wanted someone who really understood attachment, so we could pull out her real ability levels. The ed psych they used saw all the kids who went through FF. He said to me " I'm not picking up attachment issues, she has an IQ of 56".

But everyone previous to that had not even considered it.

So imo you need proper assessments to know what you are dealing with.

Later on the girls were referred to the genetic clinic and we discovered they have a genetic deletion. It could be connected to learning disabilities.

I shouldn't have had to work as hard as I did to get her into all these different services to be assessed. And I remember how horrible a lot of professionals were, blaming me for her "behaviour problems" when actually it was more because of her adhd/not having a clue what's going on.

My other daughter was found to have a clinical speech and language disorder. We went private for that assessment too. Oh, and we paid for a private ed psych report which showed severe dyslexia.

We were lucky in that the diagnoses were mostly done at primary and they both went to nurturing sen schools and kept out of trouble.

Our difficulties have always been more medical/neuro developmental/IQ based. Oh dis i mention the epilepsy?!

These are easier to deal with as there are services for them. Ehc plans up to 25 are an absolute godsend.

Both of my girls are mid 20s and ok. No police involvement, domestic violence, stealing, drugs etc. They are both still stricky though. Constantly walking on egg shells with them and they have bizarre social skills. But still...

@ThePieceHall many thanks for highlighting all of this. I watched the BBC report and so much of it resonated with what we have been through. Thank you for having the strength and courage to put yourself forward and for speaking for those of us who are still too broken by everything that has happened. Xx

Not an adopter so I hope you don’t mind me posting, but I have two high need bc myself and two sets of close friends adopted. One of those families had an experience very close to some of those in the article, with one dc taking drugs, stealing, running away from home and living rough in mid teens, followed by a severe drugs overdose and a later drug-related prison sentence. This poor young man has been set up to fail by society and his parents who had done everything humanly possible to care for him were really traumatised themselves by their adoption experience.

Adopters have been so incredibly failed for decades, with dc’s true histories withheld from adopters or not even properly ascertained, a complete lack of support for families when things start to go wrong and terrible parent blaming at that point as well.

As a veteran of SEND services, I also agree with many of the pp that some of the issues adopters experience are part of the nationwide SEND crisis, with a total lack of sufficient support unless parents fight through the courts and that is incredibly bruising in itself for exhausted parents.

Just to highlight how this project has been a labour of love for the BBC journalists involved. There was wall-to-wall BBC coverage across the UK and even the world as the story was picked up and used by the World Service!

Adoptee here but early 70s.

Have started this podcast. I am so sorry how hard this has been for adopters.

I'd guess the downturn in adoptions could well be a combination of factors: CoI (people cant afford to work part time or quit work to give the required support) as well as surrogacy.

When I have Googled adoption disruption I havent necessarily found that many articles but it is a topic I am very interested in.

There is a lot of content on adult adoptees and reunions which is easily accessible - I wonder if it could be offputting to adoptive parents. The Ancestry thing has spooked people but also social media and how much harder it can be to keep your kids safe and anonymous.

Sorry - I was on my phone before and I want to come back to this. Feel free to ignore me.

In terms of adoption now relative to when my parents did it in the 1970s is also the varying degrees of 'open' adoption and what that means which I am guessing may also be an issue for people, however well-intended it is (and theoretically good for adoptees.)

What I find interesting about the timing of this investigation is that it comes after recent proposals in the UK for adopters to facilitate ongoing contact with birth families.

For crying out loud - what? It's hard enough advocating for adopted children with challenging needs, being asked to facilitate contact with a family they were removed from for a reason is frankly, barking.

It feels like the government is basically outsourcing social care and they need to be called out on this.

Thank you for joining the debate. Your voice is as important as mine and my children’s. I’m possibly a bit of an outlier in adoptive terms as I wholeheartedly embrace direct contact with her birth mum for AD2(9). She is not a danger or a risk to my child and she herself is the victim of multigenerational abuse and neglect. As a consequence, she makes poor relationship choices. Last weekend, AD2 went to the cinema to watch Wicked for Good with her birth mum, mooched around a local Christmas market and then went for tea at McDonald’s. My AD2 loves her birth mum (she was removed at birth) and treasures these meet-ups. Every contact case should be judged on its own specific merits, there should be no blanket ruling from the courts. I choose not to facilitate direct contact with AD2’s birth father as he was responsible for the death of a 10-week-old baby from non-accidental injuries. Conversely, AD1’s birth father hanged himself in prison and her birth mother was ASBO’ed away from her home town. My AD1 has no sense of her own identity.

No, not at all, thank you for posting and joining the debate. Agreed, this is a wider societal issue but, as adopters, we have been marginalised for too long and Friday was our day! There is massive overlap between the worlds of SEN and adoption as the vast majority of our children will have SEN, even if not diagnosed yet. This will be as a direct consequence of their in utero exposure to the toxic trio of drugs, alcohol and domestic violence. Not to mention the incredibly high heritability factors for neurodivergences. As stated previously, I am a middle-class, Oxbridge-educated (former) professional and it still took me three years to achieve an EHCP for my AD1 who is blind, among her other complex disabilities and needs. It is no wonder that birth parents self-medicate with drugs and alcohol and engage in risky relationships. Because fighting the system is hard. You’re blamed if you ask for help and blamed if you don’t. The systemic abuses are widespread. I am a huge fan of Professor Luke Clements, of the School of Law at the University of Leeds, and his important work on the parental blame game.

Edited sorry:

I'm glad it's worked out for your adopted child, but I nevertheless think it is likely to be a very big ask for many (most?) families, on top of everything else.

I see it didn't work out for your other one.

Agree, it should be judged case by case.

As I’ve said, it’s working currently for my AD2 but AD1 has no contact at all and never has. Her birth father is dead now so that’s another missing piece of the jigsaw for her. I’m not advocating direct contact for everyone. I’m just giving an example of how it’s (currently) working for my family. Flexibility and openness is the key, in my opinion. In the main, birth parents who have had their children removed by the state are themselves victims of failure by society.

@ThePieceHall thank you for your reply and 100% agree this is time for adoption to be properly addressed which is long overdue. The conversation should rightly be 100% adoption framed and focused because otherwise the unique needs of adoptive families will be lost.

If the SEN bit of the jigsaw isn’t addressed with enforceable EHCPs and funding I do fear however that adopters will not ultimately be well served because poorly met needs at school, in social care and in health make for very unhappy and let down children.

When Pupil Premium Plus was introduced for all adopted children in England, some adopters were furious. I remember debate on the AUK noticeboard. They thought it was stigmatising their "perfectly fine" children and identifying them as adopted. There will be people who do not want ehc plans or any other kind of support when having children placed.