To think this mother needs to accept a proportion of blame for the way her dd's turned out?

[Memoo]

The father does too of course but he isn't the one being interviewed.

I actually felt quite angry reading this article and sad for the dd's who were dumped back into care. The poor girls had shit upbringings. It's no wonder they grew up angry and violent. And the stupid mother seems intent to blame everyone but herself.

Sorry daily fail link

Devora, your post was indeed beautifully written and I totally understand where you are coming from. The balance between preparing adoptive parents and scaring them is a fine line, but I think people do prepare and research extremely well nowadays, but the general public still know so little about adoption in the main.

Your strength comes across immediately in one post. I understand your fears (as a professional and as a mum). It is a different type of parenting, but the same in so many ways. I know it is such a cliche but your daughter is so lucky (as I am sure you feel too). We do tend to concentrate on the negatives, but I think better to be prepared than not. I work with lots of parents who have really positive experiences of adoption...one family so much so they came back three times!!!

I seem to have quite a few friends and acquaintances who were adopted. Everyone of them is an interesting, balanced, kind, fun and professional. Totally "normal". Didn't know any of them were adopted until it came up in conversation. Devora am sure there are terribly sad horror stories but surely a large proportion of adoptions work in my anecdotal experience they do anyway.

One of the dirty little secrets in social work is just how many adoptions fail. The answer is lots.

Are all those adoptive parents to blame op? Or is it more likely that the children have issues that no amount of middle class love can solve?

Look up attachment disorder and see just how severe this can be and how hard to overcome. Add to this how little support mnay adoptive families receive and then decide if this Mum needs critisism or praise for sticking it out as long as she did.

kerala it entirely depends upon the age of your adopted friends.

It used to be the case that babies were given up for adoption by single mothers. Many of these babies were adopted very quicky with little trauma.

However, in recent years most single mothers would either keep their child or have a termination. The vast majority of DC avaialble have been removed from their parents by social services. They will most probably have suffered neglect/abuse. They then will probably have been through the hands of several foster parents. This can cause many many problems for these DC. Attachment disorder is hugely problematic. And hugely common.

Being adopted by a nice family will often not be enough to overcome serious issues with mental health.

Sorry, I haven't read all the posts, but it is very well-established now that the first two years in life are crucial. If a child is neglected or physically abused in those first two years, when the vital connections are being made in the brain, it doesn't matter how loving the family they are later placed in, the damage already done is almost always irreversible.

It depends on the sort of neglect, though, so not every child will be 'damaged beyond repair'. Even very damaged children can recover, to the extent that they don't become violent criminals.

The highering of CP threaseholds and of course the early reporting by the public, will help to stop long term damage.

But as is seen on here, posters seem to be in denial that neglectful/abusive parents exsist and are misguided in thinking that it is just a matter of putting support in place, rather than removal.

It also depends on a lot of other factors.

A loving aunt or neighbour.
A nursery placement
A close relationship with a sibling.

All of these things can help the child form healthy attachments and increase resilience.

As an adoptive parent it is very hard to get the balance right. Trying to explain the challenges faced by families and the children they adopt whilst not painting a depressing and untrue picture.

Its similar to the challenge faced by parents of children with disabilities. Its not easy but its not tragic either.

What's tragic is that there are many of us well equipped to take on damaged kids, for example qualified teachers, doctors and so on, but lack of finance and support from Local Authorities means we won't touch adoption with a barge pole.

I am not really sure why a doctor would be better equipped to take on a child than anyone else.

A huge issue is that there are thousands of relatives willing and equipped to care for the children but they are not supported and are denied financial and practical support.

So children are placed in care and lose all contact with their extended family. Placed in care that costs a lot of money.

Only that doctors and teachers and so on already have training in child protection, multi agency liaison and so on, and are used to coping with all comers ... of course relatives would always be the best choice if they were able to cope too. I'm just saying we're an unused resource for these very damaged children.

what an sad tale

For the Mum: Cherry, then 31, had previously endured two ectopic pregnancies, five miscarriages and the heartache of two stillborn babies.

sweet jesus

But I think that those who adopt are more likely to be educated and professional as it is boffin

Of course not all adopters are middle class but IME the majority are. You have to have a certain amount of resources to embark on adoption - spare room/s, financial stability etc

Actually, now you have mentioned it, I would be interested to find out the breakdown of professions, educational attaiment etc in adopters.

I can only go by my experience and I was always the only working class parent at training/events unless there were other kinship carers or fostercarers (who were adopting foster children).

I dont want to sound like I have an issue with educated, mc people adopting - I really haven't! (honest).

know quite a lot of SW who have adopted too. Now if they dont know the system who does?

devora

this is I am sure a very sad, rare and tragic tale

like many i know adopted kids whu have turned out great

sorry this has upset you

as said upthread:It's a terribly sad story. Those girls were horrendously damaged at such a young age and the couple clearly weren't equipped to deal with them.

Can I just point out that while RAD is a very serious issue, and yes adoptive parents often remain failed over support, (as does the child) but even for those children who fail to bring joy to the lives of others and fail repeated placements and are perceived as unrepairable, and labelled as damaged for life, RAD still doesn?t automatically equal BAD. :-)

Mrs DeVere I wrote a post about class difference between potential adopter and adoptee, from the working class child's POV, but decided I can't articulate the problem without offending, but you're on the right tracks there.

That is very interesting just

I have often thought about the amount of effort put into matching ethnic and religious backgrounds and how little attention is paid to class.

It must be a great shock to older children to be whisked into an entirely different sort of lifestyle and difficult for many parents to understand why their efforts are unappreciated.

That is not to say that wc children shouldnt be adopted by mc parents. That would be unworkable and unecessary. And I want to repeat that I have nothing against mc people adopting (I am sure everyone will be saying 'thanks a lot Mrs DV I am so glad we have your permission )
But perhaps we should all stop pretending its not an issue?

I think a great deal more work needs to be done to help M/C would be parents understand how negative views on working and lower class families or professions, tattoo's, food etc seep into everyday life and conversation, and that the child knows it is from the thing despised or being dismissed as unworthy.

PS before anyone misreads me as being in any way anti M/C adopters, I'm not, my childhood fantasy was a well heeled middle class couple whisking me out of the badlands and into a flat overlooking a park with big windows, and dressing me in blue velvet and providing me with a grand piano! (which I seem to have thought I'd be able to instantly play!) :o

Thanks to all those being nice to me

MrsDV, I often think about class and adoption as well. I was really struck, while we were going through the process, how much attention was paid to ethnic matching. IN our PAR (is that the right acronym?) it said something like, "Devora's home is clean, comfortable and full of artefacts reflecting their respective ethnic heritages". We are as middle class as a Farrow & Ball colour card, and I can only assume she was referring to books: hundreds of them. Yes, many by Toni Morrison or James Baldwin or whatever, but still - books.

So much effort to find an ethnic match; so much jubilation when we were matched with a child was not only half black Caribbean, but from the same Caribbean island as my dp. But in terms of class, our family is a million miles away from that of the birth parents, or indeed of the foster carer. This was never deemed important. It was never even mentioned. But I struggle to see why race is so much more important.

I'm not saying we should introduce class matching. But I do wonder if some of the dislocation and fractured identity experienced by many adopted children is fed by their awareness of just how different their two families are.

I remember hearing Peter White (radio four presenter) talking about his time as a foster carer.
He was shocked when one of his FC railed at him for wanting 'to bloody talk about stuff all the time!'

She was so unused to the sort of 'family conference' method of parenting. It made her uncomfortable.

I am not suggesting that this sort of conflict resolution style is wrong, but it was just as much of a culture shock to this girl as any difference in ethnic background would have been.

Your experience is very interesting Devora. I wonder why it is deemed so unimportant?
Perhaps it is because there is a lack of wc adopters so facing it would be like opening an unclosable can of worms?
But the answer is NOT to ony allow wc parents to adopt wc children. That would be daft.

Surely it would be helpful for everyone involved to address it? Support around ethinic heritage is seen as important and is valued by adopters. Adoptive parents bend over backwards, sideways and upside down to help their adopted children. I think that most would be open to this sort of input.

We haven't had any support around ethnic heritage either, MrsDV. I did go to a PAC training day on it, but paid for it myself. (It was a catastrophically rubbish training day, but that's another story.)

I think it was very much assumed that my black dp would 'carry' all the race stuff, and there was no need to probe that further. And of course it is a wonderful asset to our dd that one of her parents looks like her, and shares the same Caribbean heritage. And yet I think in some ways my extended family is just as useful, in that it's mainly working class with lots of racial mixing with black and white siblings within the same family down three generations. This was seen as completely uninteresting by the social workers, which I found odd. Whereas my dp's family, which is upper middle class, was seen as the real deal.

Adoptive parents are advised not to talk about birth families in a derogatory way, which is absolutely right. We talk a lot about how to achieve this when the birth parents have been neglectful or abusive, which is a tough task. But we talk less about how this may be exacerbated by a general class distaste and a lack of comprehension of what life has been like for our children's first mothers.

Maryz its not all judgmental - honest. Quite a few of us have tried.

Although i really do question the mother's jugement in talking to the DM.
Its very well know for its spin on adoption.

I went on one of those PAC days Devora.

The highlight was someone a few rows forward standing up and declaring 'well its easy for these mixed race couples isnt it? I mean they get the pick of the babies and its all rushed through while we have to wait'

FFS. This was almost two years down the line. DS had been with us for nearly all that time but we had yet to adopt him.

Easy? My arse.