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

I have a friend who fosters and who specialises in turning very damaged children around

I doubt there are enough people like her to go around though

*I have a friend who fosters and who specialises in turning very damaged children around8

As well, there is going to be further damage done, by the child leaving and going into a new family, so lots of issues that are ongoing.

The youngest DD was only 6 months when she was adopted. The older girl at 3 doesn't sound far off a typical 3yo - many have temper tantrums and attack those closest to them. I'm not saying it's right but it does happen adoption or not.

I think the mum in this story did everything she could for her DD's. She admits herself her time was taken up with the eldest - but she sought help and homeschooled so she obviously did care enough to try. I find it very sad that a nursery 'expelled' a young child due to their behaviour. I'm glad that nowadays help would be given and interventions put in place. I do wonder if this expulsion affected the elder DD - as in she felt once again no-one wanted her.

One of my closest friends was adopted at a young age. It wasn't what happened before the adoption that affected her but the knowing she was adopted - her elder brother was the birth child of her adopted parents.

I think a huge flaw in our system is that when a child is removed from its mother at birth that child will nearly always go to a temporary foster carer.

I don't understand why that child can't go IMMEDIATELY to an adoptive parent?

The whole system is chaos and I can't see it ever changing.

We dropped out of the process because our authority were putting us under such pressure to take sibling groups - the only reason for this being 'you have the room' - our worries over being able to cope didn't seem to register.

Really interesting to read the more thoughtful responses on here, like MrsDeVere and Devora and several others as well.

I think it's a terribly sad story. But I really wouldn't be too judgemental on the adoptive parents. I'd be prepared to bet good money that all the stuff about the nice house, for example, was put in by DM journalists. I think they made a mistake in speaking to the DM, but some people are naive about this kind of thing, and think it's just a chance to get their story heard.

The message seems to me to be just that we need masses more support for parents adopting older children. And also, perhaps, that social workers shouldn't wait too long before removing abused or neglected children from their birth families - though that is obviously a difficult one.

that social workers shouldn't wait too long

That is the court system and the law and it is designed so that the birth family ahs a chance to sort out any issues. Remember that other family members have to be given the opportunity to come forward. Which partly answers the next point.

I don't understand why that child can't go IMMEDIATELY to an adoptive parent?

Lots of issues as to why that cannot happen, but the tightening up of timescales is helping.

I too am of the mindset that love can't conquer all. However I think if I was to adopt I would see it more like an ethical 'job' where I just did what I could on the care and affection front, but without expecting a miracle tbh. Perhaps people expect it to be like the early 1960s a bit too much, with newborns from young girls who had been caught out.

A question - if you foster a child, you are paid. However if you subsequently adopt the child, do you lose all financial support?

do you lose all financial support

The child becomes as though it is your birth child, so you are not offered any extra financial support.

The child is still under 'the system' for a time period and is considered as a 'looked after child' would be, so in theory support is offered/given.

That support varies iin different areas.

I thought so. This may be one of the main problems - foster children who are doing well effectively cost too much to adopt, so they are moved on. If the payments continued, or there were a dowry of some kind, I am sure people who already had children of their own would be more likely to be tempted into making the relationship permanent. Why would you forego £20,000 untaxed income in order to do carry on doing exactly the same things for the child as before? Your altruism would cost you dearly.

I remember reading a few years ago arguments that when the State acts as the parents, children should be funded at the level of comfortable middle class children, with extra curricular lessons, tutoring, and so on covered until they had graduated from university. At the moment we are lucky if any of these children makes it through secondary school with a single GCSE, let alone make it to university. This stores up so many problems for the future, and is a completely false economy. What a miserable country we are, to write these children off so obviously.

Buy there isn't a reason as to why the family needs to adopt, if the foster placement is working.

You need to remember that children have a say in whether they rae adopted and a lot do not want to be, if they are still having contact with family members/siblings.

Private guardianship is a another option, rather than long term fostering, again most of the time, adoption wouldn't make a difference.

You cannot state sanction payments for what is,in effect their child, in adoption cases, otherwise why set the benefit levels so low for families?

Also, that won't improve the adoptioners situation,good investment in services for all, is the real answer.

birdsgottafly no depending on the situation there will not necessarily be further issues from moving from foster to forever home. Children with an attachment problem (most of those abused/neglected by a parent before the age of 3, myself included) need to learn to attach to someone. Once they manage that successfully they can repeat it with other people. Depending on the situation this is sometimes better done with an experienced fc than with a (loving and absolutely fabulous, but nevertheless) first time adopting parent.

yes Boffinmum you lose all financial support. Which is why friends of mine have fostered a significant disabled child for the last 14 years. It has meant that the LA has kept responsibility and has successfully been bullied into paying for a specialist school for severely autistic children. Doesn't stop her still living with them now she's an adult and being part of the family.

There is also another drawback to foster carers adopting: You lose your experienced, professional foster carers.

Boffinmum makes an excellent point about adopting a child from care being an ethical job. This is why long term fostering can often work. It is an entirely different paradigm to adoption.
Both the carers and the children have very different expectations.

For a child with attachment disorder, living with the expectation to behave as a family must be a living hell. You are going to fail every hour of every day of your life.

Maryz, that was an interesting post and I went away to think about it. I think I actually consider looking after my existing four kids as an ethical job in the main, which is probably why I don't get particularly guilty or stressed about my parenting, like some on here.

I often tell them my job is to bring them up to be happy, functional adults and that means sometimes I will be getting them to do some things that they will temporarily hate me for, for example insisting on good nutrition, manners, homework, hygiene and getting up in the morning. I often find myself saying that I am not here to be liked, but here to bring them up well. They actually see the point of this, and I would say we're probably closer as a family than some of their friends' families are. There is certainly a lot of love in this house, but I can't say we have ever chased it.

I don't put a whole load of emotional energy into building love, and a 'normal' family life, because my priorities lie in getting the most number of people feeling happy and fulfilled most of the time. If you get that right, then love often follows. If it doesn't, then at least your conscience is clear. You can't expect kids to feel love or gratitude simply because you have brought them into the world (which was generally your choice, not theirs), but you can do right by them and set an example of being a decent person, which I think is more important. In that sense, I suppose it's what the Greeks would have called 'caritas' as one form of love - altruistic love for a fellow man.

I remember watching a programme on teens in care a few months ago, and there was one kid kicking off and attacking a carer's car. The carer drove away expressing disquiet as he felt he had been working with this teen for a long time, and he felt the teen ought to be more "grateful" and less violent towards him. Surprisingly, I found I was entirely with the teen on this - yet another person disappearing off in his life, a life he wouldn't have chosen for himself, as none of us would. If the carer had worked out that nobody should have to be grateful in that position, that the teen would not have chosed this life for himself where gratitude was expected all the time in return for basic human needs being met, then I think I would have had more sympathy. But the carer just left, and the teen was abandoned yet again.

My point it that sometimes it's more important to be decent than to love. Or perhaps simple, plain decency is a form of love we don't value highly enough.

i read the article and it rang true of a situation i have seen in RL through the course of my work.

i also think there must be a huge difficulty in suddenly going from non parent to being presented with a couple of toddlers from a damaged/troubled background.

you wouldnt get in a car without learning to drive first would you?
your first dog wouldnt be a rottweiler.
so why should your first experience of parent hood be a troubled little person?

there should be help and support and there is none.

there is not enough support offered to parents in this situation - i watched a programme about adopting troubled children on beeb 2 during their "care" season - the family had adopted about 12 of the most troubled children going over the years and had turned them all around - it was wonderful but with the last one they needed very specialist support that was not widely available, it was very sad that the authorities would rather have spent hundreds of thousands on putting her back into care than a few grand on specialist counselling services - i thought it was ludicrous and so very backward of the council.
in the end they got the specialist counselling and they adopted her - i think her name was Milly and she was lovely but such a handful that not even the most experienced parent could cope alone with her.

these children have had such huge losses in their tiny lives. They deserve so much more and so do the parents who adopt them. i think on many levels these adoptions are set up to fail more often than they are to succeed.

the whole system is at fault. children should be taken earlier and specialist support should be available where needed instead of parents having to fight tooth and nail to get it or put the children back into a system that costs far far more in the long term.

Two of mine have ADHD and it's certainly a bit wearing at times, and the lack of support from the local authority can be jaw dropping (they are almost spiteful in their attempts to undermine all the measure everyone carefully puts in place to support the kids - I choose that word quite deliberately because some of the behaviour by council officials is utterly bizarre).

However we describe ours as 'non-standard' children and I think that's an important differentation. 'Non-standard children' covers a multitude of issues, but it doesn't pathologise the children or take away from them the talents and abilities that they do have. Mine may be square pegs in round holes at school, for example, but that is more to do with how school is organised rather than them. However mine have capabilities that go beyond what school can ever find, and that will stand them in good stead as adults, where intangible and non-measureable talents count for a lot more (eg being kind to small children, having a moral compass, asking difficult questions of the world, etc).

I think we also see the children as trainee adults and speak to them on a 1:1, calm basis very often. I will say things like, "I don't like picking up all your things because it takes a lot of time and it stops me doing things I would rather be doing." or "I suppose you could be doing this but I am actually enjoying making you a nice packed lunch, so I don't mind this time." The kids know where they are with us.

That having been said, of course there are time they do my head in, but they are pretty good at apologising. DS1 was horrid yesterday evening but then secretly got my laptop and set up a lovely new wallpaper for me, then set up the screensaver to scroll 'Sorry Mum!' You gotta laff at the end of the day!

If you didn't laugh Boffinmum where would we all be

Well, quite. There's nowt so funny as putting the song 'Scat Man' on, for example, and watching ADHD kids dance. They have their advantages.

It's our ADHD theme song in this house.

Another advantage of kids with ADHD is that I will never, ever have to sit through long games of cricket, and certainly will never have to fret about cricket teas. If a sport takes longer than 10 minutes, it's basically out.

I quite liked that one myself back in the day

Lovely posts, BoffinMum