To think that forced adoption is the best thing for many children

[ReallyTired]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31089412

Clearly taking a child into care or complusory adoption should be a last restort. However I don't think that there is a fundermental right to be a parent. There is a fundermental right for a child to have a decent childhood. Parents should not be numerous chances to get parenting right. Baby P is a prime example of a baby who should have been taken into care at birth.

I feel the secrecy of the family courts is an issue. In many cases there are strong reasons why someone should never be allowed to have care of a child. We need a way that there can be an appeals proceedure that puts the right of the child first.

There was no drugs in my case. No criminal convictions. I was epileptic had problems with my mental health, self confidence and self esteem. I'd left an abusive relationship. I was then raped and as a result my son was hurt. Unfortunately at the time I wasn't able to admit what had happened to me. They took my child as I failed to protect him. I asked for help lots of times but no one wants to know so long as the child is healthy NOW. They don't see me struggling now leads to the child not being healthy in future.

OurMiracle I am sorry to hear of your loss.

Yes, we often hear that social services will help and support, but in practice they often don't or can't. That is in part due to budget and time constraints, of course, but also because (as I said above) they need to know that the parent(s) can care for their child adequately without support, they are not in a position to keep offering the support for ages. They can have the child adopted and then they get to close the case, rather than keeping it on indefinitely. It shouldn't be a case of money in that kind of situation but of course it does become a case of money, if there is no money, they have very little choice. They are stuck between a rock and a hard place! Leave child with parent who is likely to need a lot of support, which they can't give, or take child away, get adoption order, close case knowing child is now safe. Extremely simplified version, of course, but you can see that they end up choosing that option, because the other is unsustainable. This may also have been the situation with the mum with MH issues mentioned upthread.

If they can close the case without an adoption order, they will, that would be their absolute best option. But they can't realistically offer lots of long running support, because they need to know that parents are able to cope without support and/or be proactive about finding support themselves if they need it in the future, not have it handed to them.

In an ideal world, they would have the budgets, or perhaps an entirely new department, from which to offer unlimited, conditional support to parents to allow them to keep their children where the issue is inability to function without support. The reality is that at the moment SS have two options to decide on in a relatively short time, and the onus is on parents to sort themselves out, the criteria of which is not always made clear.

OurMiracle1106

I feel so sad for you how utterly unfair :(

I didn't mean you specifically, miracle; I meant in general.

There are all sorts of reasons why a child may be taken away and unfortunately parents don't often in my experience see it as the best thing, only thing.

That doesn't make it wrong.

I also had no family support as my dad passed when I was a baby and my mum was dying from cancer.

I didn't have a normal childhood either. But I'm doing all the counselling and therapy to get better. Does that mean if I ever have another child I should immediately lose it? Because then why am I going to have another? Would it not be better to advise me of such so I can be sterilized to avoid the agony and heart ache of losing another child?

Thank you crackerjack00 for saying what I was struggling to say succinctly. I am an Adoptive Parent and I know to my core that my lovely DS is better off with us than his birth mother who has been given numerous chances.

I do believe my son is better placed with his parents than with me. They can give him far more than I could at the time or even can now. However I am still young and I am getting my life on track. I just hope my past doesn't mean I can't ever have a family

I don't think anybody stated that miracle but there are instances where a child should be removed from their biological parents at birth. I'm not commenting on your case but talking in general terms.

Miracle, you know perfectly well that you wouldn't and shouldn't automatically have another child removed based on the past. You're being provocative. You couldn't make the changes necessary in your son's timeframe, and you couldn't acknowledge the risks and harm at the time. You have come a very long way since then, and you have done amazingly well. But it wasn't in your son's timeframe. The reason care proceedings have to be concluded within 26 weeks is because any longer harms children, but it's not long from a parent's perspective.

OurMiracle1106 I remember you discussing this before too :( I hope one day you will feel less heartache

EhricLovesTheBhrothers do you know the inns and outs of this case I doubt it so best not to make such statements and quite understandable her fears given what she has been through really no need for such a response

Narnia72 your story is heartbreaking.

I know a lot of of adopted adults, and every one of them is damaged. At least now adoptions are open and you do not have kids suddenly finding out at 16 that they are adopted.

I do think that SS are overly keen to take babies away, they know that there are lots of adopters out there who want babies. They seem to take them for MH issues which, as we have heard can be managed.

I know a boy who was taken away from his BM at a few months old because of her MH issues. He was adopted by 15 months. His adopted mother turned out worse than his BM. She kicked the shit, literally and emotionally out of him. SS did not want to know, they refused to believe that the parents they had chosen could behave like this. He is still with the adopted parents now he is a teen.

I think that there should be more help for parents, esp those with MH issues.

Baby P's mother herself was a victim.She had an awful life and had been abused as a child. She was know by SS when she was a child, she should have had help and support when she became a parent.

Have any of you actually experienced TRYING to relinquish a baby for adoption? Because even when you, the parent, WANT an adoption to go ahead, it's extremely hard work to get social workers to listen to that!

They fall over themselves to offer help. It may not be the sort of help you want and it may not be the sort you feel is useful but there is a point where we have to say what else can we do? You are given priority housing, money, and access to healthcare professionals and education services.

Believe me I know sometimes it's just not enough, but seriously - people have got to stop blaming society and social services for every ill known to mankind.

What?! How rude. First of all, how could Miracle possibly 'know' what would happen in the future. The system is bloody confusing and frightening. I'd feel exactly the same in her position. I'd worry enormously about losing a future child. And as for being 'provocative' that's one thing I've never ever seen Miracle do. She's coming onto a thread where she could be judged horribly by people because of what's happened, posting as honestly and frankly as ever.

FFS

Lilka I have so much respect for you and your posts and it pains me in a way to disagree with you; however I have to say I don't like the way a general discussion on adoption is being turned, through some of the posts above into a discussion about one specific case by someone with an agenda.

Sorry. I want to agree with you, because I like you :)

Its a pretty odd 'general' discussion if we can't bring our own personal experiences to it isn't it?

I haven't felt anyone is hijacking anything. I thought this was the whole point and value of a forum like this that different people could bring their different perspectives. I know I have learned an awful lot from threads like this which have helped me immeasurably in my professional life (as child protection lawyer).

I think there is definitely some urgent debate to be had because my own experience thus far (not of this thread, but the discussion in general) is of two different camps - one shouting 'adoption is great' and the other shouting 'social workers are evil' and nothing will ever change because neither camp can listen to the other.

I wasn't even planning on posting originally. But now I am, from my perspective, you aren't going to find any reasonable person who thinks that a care system of some sort shouldn't exist. The majority of people do support adoption without parental consent, in certain circumstances. Beyond that, it gets very complicated and our current system isn't working in the way it goes about doing things. I do think we're right to have a system which allows for adoption without parental consent. Well I would do, given I've adopted 3 children myself. But at some point during my years of parental and dealing with really difficult issues, I would have changed my mind if mine and my childrens experiences lead me to believe adoption itself doesn't work. Actually, I think that thought it's bloody complicated and full of losses and trauma, it is in no way 'wrong'. All depends on the individual 'case'

I'm certainly not saying or suggestinf that personal experiences can't be brought into things but to repeat your personal experiences when that has been answered and explained largely shuts down the discussion.

People are pointing out that in some cases babies need to be taken at birth and ourmiracle is repeatedly asking if we mean her; this has been answered and in any case the answer was pretty obvious. All that does is deflect from the points people are making.

I agree with your last paragraph though spero: that said I am between the two.

Yes, this is why I despair of some of the contributions to the debate, particularly from the politicians and Sir Martin Narey. Adoption is absolutely the right thing for some children - but certainly not all. And press releases such as the recent one from Nicky Morgan 'celebrating' the recent steep rise in adoptions really worries me. It is not a panacea, it is not a cure all and it certainly isn't something to rush into because we can't organise or fund the system properly.

mytartan - if you find miracles posts 'deflecting' then I can only assume you are not a veteran of these kind of threads!

I don't find them deflecting - if someone is in pain, they may well return to an issue long after you or I think it necessary or sensible. But that doesn't mean it brings the debate screeching to a halt. Seriously, I think most of us have seen much, much worse on these types of threads in the fairly recent past.

This looks quite interesting
www.communitycare.co.uk/2015/02/03/childrens-services-reflect-reinforce-reduce-social-inequalities/

No I agree spero and I'm prepared to eat humble pie if needs be! I suppose really what I'm trying to get at and I'm wincing myself at how harsh it sounds, is that there just isn't an answer other than oh no, poor you. And while I understand that it is nonetheless a serious issue and I just don't really like sentimentality getting in the way of it

The point is, someone who has had a baby taken from them is not impartial nor are they always best placed to judge a situation.

My own experience was that SS will move heaven and Earth to keep families together. But for some people heaven and earth isn't what they want or need. It's hard when it's a round key and a square lock or whatever the saying is.

Ok, hands up, that wasn't as nicely put as it could have been. But I Know that miracle has been told before, on here and probably in real life, that she is not guaranteed to have any future child removed. I know it's a frightening system but I also don't think it helps to feed anxieties by giving them airtime when they have been discussed to the nth degree previously.
Miracle, let me apologise though for not being as kind as I should have been in my tone.

Isn't it possible that prospective parents would be reluctant to adopt on those terms? I don't think I'd like it.

It would certainly be very hard. And certainly adoptive families are desperately needed to come forward and want to adopt. But I've had adoptive families say to me that despite all their preparation they really weren't given much idea of the kind of trauma their child had suffered or how it would affect them as they grew up, in some cases it was actively played down during the adoptive process so as not to frighten them off. And when they realised their child's needs, there was no support available. And there can be, no matter how hard the families work in preparation, some families who still have that underlying belief that a young child won't remember much of before, the child is kind of wanted to forget about before. There's a kind of subtext expectation culturally that the child will be 'grateful' to the adoptive parents, there can be the celebration of the day the child moved in which was a wonderful day for the parents who had longed for a child to love, but may have been a day of terror and devastation for the child. The child may for years grieve the loss of its parents, home, siblings, what was familiar, and feel guilty about those feelings.

The bottom line is maybe it needs to evolve over time to be more about the child and supporting particularly older children, and whether that might open doors to different and less devastating forms of adoption - I think of the many cases on the relationships board where mothers would love for the NRP to never have contact with them again because he's an abusive bastard, it would certainly make life much easier, but the court still say the child needs to know and see him and to have that right protected. And in those cases where this kind of adoption may not automatically be a total end to a relationship with the child maybe there could be a middle line between forced adoption and no further contact, or the months and months of gathering evidence while trying to save the situation while a child is in danger because it's such an awful thing to separate that family permanently.

It's not easy in any way.