To wonder how other countries manage adoption

[Justinetimefort]

I keep reading the uk is the only country with forced adoption, so how do other Western European countries manage cases where children can’t live with their birth family?

@darkriver19886 it is incredibly brave of you to post that on this thread. I hope you get the support you need, and you
are able to keep up with the letterbox contact (or whatever is arranged) for your children.

Social Services go to a lot of effort to keep children with birth parents - offering them better relationship training (ie. learning how to not put up with your partner beating you up and treating you like shit) and new homes if existing partners are the issue (especially drug addict partners).

Children are usually taken into care when there is neglect and physical harm - often caused by heavy drug and alcohol use. It's always a last resort - the preference is to try and help the parents parent better and keep the children.

Before a child is adopted they look at all possible extended family members who could take the child.

Adoption is considered preferable to long term care as it is more stable and the adoptive parents form a strong bond and it's as close to a real family as possible.

Being in care can mean being shipped around to many different carers. And of course up to 18 years of care is extremely costly.

At the moment adoption can be open with continued contact (meetings) with parents or closed (usually with letter writing to parents). I suspect open adoption will become more common in the future - like it has in Aus and NZ.

@darkriver19886

I'm sorry you've got to this point. I appreciate you may not want to talk about your particular circumstances, but do you feel you were given adequate support/time to make changes before this decision was made? Do you feel resentful about the decision made?

Have you been reading John Hemming by any chance? Because there is a lot of emotive but not very fact based stuff written about "forced adoption" in the UK.

The UK's system isn't perfect but honestly I think it is the best of a bad bunch. Whichever way you look at it there is no neat and tidy solution for children who are unable to stay with their birth parents, obviously the ideal situation is that birth parents sort out the problems that make them unable to care for their children and become able - but how often does this happen? If they were able to sort these issues out most people would do so - nobody wants to lose a child. There is perhaps an argument that there could be better communication and support offered to parents (the kinds of parents who have unsolvable problems are often responding to trauma of their own) but this is very costly and of limited benefit - sometimes to do better overall in a system you have to put the resources you have to use where they will be most effective, even though that leaves some people behind.

It is very rare in the UK for parents to give up a child at birth - thanks to decent availability and low stigmatisation of abortion, low stigmatisation of single mothers, availability of welfare benefits, etc. So most of the children coming into care are victims of abuse or neglect. Every day they stay in an abusive or neglectful environment adds to the damage caused as a result of this, so unless the parents are able to sort the situation out, it is better for them to be removed as soon as possible. But nobody has a crystal ball and it is not fair or possible to decide early on which parents are likely to sort a situation out.

Where children can't stay with their birth parents the ideal solution is for them to have a stable and permanent home with another family - adoption. If this isn't possible long term foster care - but this has the issues of the meetings as discussed and constant risk that the child will be moved on. A succession of foster placements or institutional care are damaging to children - perhaps not as damaging as abuse or neglect but they cause further trauma. This should not be the solution. Remember traumatised children can become abusive adults themselves - the aim ought to be to minimise trauma.

There are problems in every case. It's a balance of trying to take children out of a damaging environment before too much damage is done (e.g. Peter Connelly, Daniel Pelka), but giving parents enough time and support to turn things around, as losing a parent/family is also traumatic, and at the same time not leaving children in limbo (institutions, foster placements). There is NO solution which does not cause harm, but I do think the UK's framework is set up to cause the least harm possible. Where it fails is generally down to lack of funding and resources. Too many changes of social worker, social services having too many case files and overlooking details, people making bad judgement calls (in theory should not happen as so many people look over each case, but obviously can).

My support was completely inadequate. I could write an essay about the failures and lack of support and the complete uphill battle that I had to get help for my mental problems that was the contributing factor that led to my two girls being taken into care and have reems of evidence to back me up. I also felt SS had very little understanding of my mental illness.

I am not in anyway resentful. I am sad and my heart is in pieces and very much will never recover but, I agreed with the plan for the girls to be adopted as I recognised that I needed to stabilise and get well and it wouldn't be fair to make my daughters wait for that to happen. I was praised by the judge, the social workers and legal guardians for my positive insight and bravery.

I now see a private therapist as unfortunately the NHS can't provide me with the help I need.

Adoption is considered preferable to long term care as it is more stable and the adoptive parents form a strong bond and it's as close to a real family as possible.

I have two D.C., we’re not “close to a real family”, we are a real family. My children’s legal status is exactly the same as any children I might have given birth to, our love for each other immense, they are my whole life.

I think one of the difficulties for people thinking about the idea of adoption is that the resulting family isn’t “real”, that the children are in some way second best - I’ve had people asking me if I’ve got “my own” children etc. I do have my own children, they came to me by adoption. We are a real family.

Well said Jellycat.

The best option isn't adoption when children can't live with birth parents. The prefered option is and should be kinship care. Evidence shows children have better longterm outcomes when placed with birth families. The standard for considering adoption is "when nothing else will do"

Things may have changed in the past 10 years, but when we adopted there were so many restrictions day to day things for FC or placed-but-not-yet-adopted children. Parental responsibility was officially shared between SS and the birth parents.

Prior to adoption without permission we were not allowed to:

• change hair length
• agree to non-routine / non urgent medical treatment (eg vaccinations)
• allow DC to go on a sleepover
• allow DC to go on a residential with school
• go abroad on holiday

Can you imagine for a 10yo in FC. 'Can I sleep over with my new bestie this weekend? Sorry, no, we have to check with your SW first'. That's no way to feel 'normal'. SGOs might have improved things, but still.

My own DC visibly relaxed after court as finally they knew they had stability, and were not going to be moved again.

I think fostering in UK is poorly supported and organised. There should be a focus on long-term stability for the children and that requires much more support for the foster parents and even to birth families. To offer children the confidence that even if they're not adopted they will still have the stability and security of a family. Many children in foster care will never be adopted.

More support for adoptive parents as well to decrease the breakdown of adoptions.

Yes, sorry, I suppose I was thinking of kinship care as a kind of adoption and/or a kind of staying with the birth family - so yes as it has the positives of both it fits there. Next best, sometimes better than birth parents.

If you do not have forced adoption then you are essentially saying all parents whose children have adoption as a realistic option must first agree. I can't see that as fair, in a case where a parent has been awfully cruel and vindictive, handing them the power to continue the abuse by refusing adoption? Or perhaps a parent who has voluntarily not had contact for many years. Or simply a parent who refuses to give up hope even though their situation is not changing.

Sometimes although it sounds awful it is best if somebody outside the situation looks at all the evidence and makes the choice which is best in the child's interest.

Mental health and special needs support in the UK is shocking - it's unsurprising that this would also have negative effects on foster care and adoption.

I read this the other day, it's an appalling situation.

www.theguardian.com/society/2018/nov/01/cruel-bureaucratic-maze-childrens-services-special-educational-needs

The prefered option is and should be kinship care.

If a stable, safe relative can be found, yes of course it is however all too often kinship care is used as a cheap alternative to foster care and children end up placed in the family where difficulties originated in the first place. A vast number of parents in the Child Protection system had dreadful experiences of being patented themselves and then watch their children being handed back to the wider family.

There’s no straightforward answer, the right solution will suffer in each situation and adoption has a clear place. The poor outcomes for children in foster care (and, yes, in kinship care) suggest we’re not getting it right still.

Also in kinship care, birth family don't always get the support they need - a 70yr old single grandmother with health issues may want to look after grandchildren, however may not be fully aware of the long term implications of those children being exposed to drugs/ alcohol before birth. I've certainly seen kinship carers who would never have been accepted as foster carers ( and have not been recommended by the assessing social worker), but because they are birth family, for the court that trumps everything. For those children being placed for adoption, there really is no other choice.

As someone currently going through the kinship care assessment, i am required to meet all the standards that any other foster carer is, including training and being approved by panel.

Yes I agree ss use kinship care as cheap foster care and support is lacking but then the problem lies with ss not kinship care.

The long term outcomes for children placed for adoption are also often poor. You are right there is no perfect answer but I feel that adoption should always remain the very last resort for children.

@lljkk almost all adoption from foster care in the US is without parental consent.

The long term outcomes for children placed for adoption are also often poor.

Yes, because of their experiences in the birth family, some children are massively impacted on an ongoing basis. But where there are no other suitable carers, adoption is in my view still a better outcome for most than staying in LTFC for half their childhood would be.

Perhaps your reply should say experiences with birth parents, not birth family. And removal from birth family (although it is undoubtedly the least worse option in many cases) creates difficulties in it's self.

I agree adoption is preferable to LTFC but only when placement within wider birth family has been discounted.

My experience is there is a general rhetoric of adoptive parents are great parents. Kin carers, the problem must lie in the family so they must be bad by association. This leads to kinship carers, and by extension kin care children, being seen as less worthy of support.

Surely that rhetoric would suggest kinship carers were more in need of support, not less. Kinship carers should be paid in the same way as foster carers with the same supports offered - I’m not at all adverse to kinship care but I honestly think it needs to be better assessed and supported. I strongly suspect if it cost local authorities the same amount to place in kinship care, there would be fewer kinship placements made.

Having grown up with an adopted sibling, I know how enormously important it is for him to know that he belongs on exactly the same terms as the rest of us, that his family unit is his as much as it is ours and that this will be the same until the day he dies, that he will always belong. He needs that in a way that the rest of us probably don't. If he had been fostered he would never had had that security. His belonging would have come to an end when he turned 18.

There are all types of kinship carers and also adopters, good and bad, and if you are required to undergo the same training and discussion that foster carers get, then SS in your area is performing as it should. In a few cases in my experience, some children have been placed in kinship care (because the courts felt that was the best place for them despite negative assessments from SS), there hasn't been that full discussion about the long term problems these children were likely to have (which definitely would have been done with adopters), and the placements have subsequently failed a few years later. Who knows what would have happened had they been adopted, but the subsequent evaluation and discussion around the breakdowns sighted the lack of preparation for those carers and overestimation of what the carers could provide for the children (assuming as they were family, they could handle anything.)

Can i ask how you think kinship care is assessed?
As stated i am expected to meet all the same standards as a regular la foster carer, and in fact will be employed as a foster carer.
The fact that you state that you think there would be less kinship carers if the la payed the same suggests you think that kinship care is a poorer option than other options.

In my experience, the assessment is the same, and recommendations at panel the same, but more weight given to agreeing the long term placement (not necessarily short term fostering, but for example SGO) by the court. A very simple case (obviously this is only a tiny part of the picture) being that a child under 5 would never be placed with a smoker foster carer, but would be placed with a kinship carer who smoked.

It depends hugely on local authority, I know many situations where informal and formal kinship arrangements have been in place without much in the way of assessment- often when a child has been removed on a CPO and needs immediate placement.

It’s not that I think kinship care is a poorer option, so much as disagreeing with the presumption that kinship is always best - sometimes it is, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes long term foster care is a better option for particular children and sometimes adoption is the right thing.