Adoption with parental consent

[FakeUsername]

I hope to phrase this respectfully, and would be grateful for anyone with more insight and opposing views- I am not an expert. I am asking questions. To be clear, I certainly do not disagree with the idea of adoption in the case of relinquished children, or those with no one to care for them. Also I think adopters themselves are usually resilient people who do amazing jobs (often managing a lot of fall out from a poorly run system, for example adoption following inadequate support of a child over a long period). I’m also not into the weird stuff online about financial incentives for adoptions etc and don’t wish to echo individuals who say this.

I’m concerned that the process is sometimes flawed. That a secret court can split families without evidence that would be taken to a criminal court. That particularly emotional abuse cases have potential to be unsound. Or new evidence comes to light in an irreversible process. Is the risk acceptable, that children are removed without warrant for the sake of others. There could be a clause for maybe categories of physical abuse and criminal convictions of neglect or assault and therefore losing parental rights (eg a criminal conviction of abuse)- but most cases I believe don’t reach this. I’m not sure we are placing enough value in family structure and identity. Or maybe working with families to either adequately support them, or work towards a point of accepting the best route forward is adoption. Does the system have enough checks, and when does it become too secretive to be held to account.

Many families may either react poorly to professionals or have difficulty acting in court in a way that reflects parenting. The current system has few checks or recourse for when it goes wrong for families. Some families can present themselves in a way to the system that shields parents, others get lost in it. For example some women may speak culturally of events in a way seen as ‘minimising’ events, whereas another culturally speaks very openly to professionals. Both carry out the same actions.

I’d also question the links of poverty, budget cuts and adoption from families below the poverty line. If society is either directed towards a bias or families are facing additional struggles that break up units. That underfunded care systems can lead to more unsafe conclusions, strings of locum SW turning over in some departments creating holes in chronology and inconsistencies. We need to be very very very robust if we are to separate a family. Not a bitty system that can be unpredictable and act differently for the same issues.

Do we do enough to support care leavers, is it a cycle that can be broken?

Do we have higher numbers/ different practices from other countries and do we need to learn? Do we need to look at ourselves, track children better, listen to more stories? Are we too often placing children but not talking about disruptions or outcomes?

To me it seems a huge huge deal to separate a family forever (or childhood) and bar contact. A closed adoption, without contact, for every single case seems very difficultly. Disruption, where an adoption ends, is also an issue. If we have a fixed adoption that then breaks down due to a faulty system placing the family in an impossible situation the impact on children is HUGE.

Is there some element of a perception of punishing parents for actions? Do we ever lose focus on the child’s rights and future in the case ion how a mother may present and judgements made?

I won’t write an essay, but I’m happy to expand. As I said these are not views of an expert, if I cause offence I apologise, I hope for respectful dialogue (or being ignored which is also fine!). For transparency I have not had a child in care, these views mainly come from talking to a close friend who had a disrupted adoption/ lots of care places and returned to a (rather dysfunctional) mother and siblings as an adult for a relationship that is messy but carried on. Also from working with children in many stages in care. Are there many cases where contact with family and care would be appropriate?.

Lastly- if you are an adoptee or adopter I hope you do not take questioning a system personally . I do not question an adoptive family as less valid in anyway, I am asking about the UK process.

OP I would suggest reading some serious case reviews from recent years.
In fact, read lots. See how often children are neglected, injured or killed despite SS involvement, because it was a 'grey area' whether they had reached the threshold to remove them. Where parents gave the appearance of compliance or distracted from the experience of the child.

What about the less severe cases? I had friends growing up (during the 90s) who were neglected. Not severe enough to remove them, but enough that their physical and emotional health, self-esteem, education, and futures were impacted. Homes where an eleven year old is responsible for feeding their younger siblings breakfast and dinner because mum can't be arsed, missing school because you don't have clean clothes or basic toiletries, a friend coming round in January in flipflops because she's outgrown her school shoes and didn't have a single other pair of shoes (but her mum always had money for cigarettes and alcohol - we gave her my outgrown pair).

This also has a lifelong impact. I'm not saying adoption doesn't - but it would be wrong to act as though neglect doesn't affect children greatly.

That’s my childhood, caring for multiple siblings from about 7 or 8, playing in old school uniform, plimsolls in winter rain or snow, limited furniture (mattress on floor, deckchairs in the front room, roaming all hours over the estate, Mum MH needs, disabled siblings... etc. Lots of stories, I wasn’t posting from some privileged mansion. This silly speculation on mn is annoying, too much is guessed. I’m not asking because I never met anyone in care or every had in fact some involvement from ss. I grew into an adult though, as did friends, fine.

I’ve responded to others who posted genuinely thought provoking links which made me think a lot beyond my own experiences and that if people I knew.

@SavanahXx As I said to start with, I am an adopted child. I don’t need to imagine how it would feel to be one.

And as an adopted child, from what I know of the system these days, there is a lot of focus on the child being told their original history in an age-appropriate way from the beginning of the process so that they always ‘know’ they are adopted. How well that is done in each and every case will of course vary.

Practically all of the people having their children forcibly removed will be ‘very, very shit’ parents at the time for a variety of reasons. It is not fair that children endure this. The parents do get help to try and change but in most cases it’s going to take a really, really long time, if even possible. I do have a lot of sympathy for some BPs with severe mental health conditions and mental disabilities that mean they can’t properly care. I have far less sympathy for BPs who don’t fall into this category. (Those that relinquish not included of course.) Most adults have issues of some sort or another, most of know it’s up to us to get our shit together for our kids. There’s a sense of entitlement in expecting that help to come completely externally.

Over here it's really easy for you child to be put up for adoption, maybe make it a little harder and focus on helping families instead

I’d really love some evidence that it’s really easy to have your child put up for adoption. I can point you to a hundred significant case reviews that evidence how bloody hard it is to remove a child from harmful parents, with tragic results, but I can’t find anything that tells me the process is too easy.

Legislation placed the welfare of the child as the paramount consideration when intervening in family life, there’s a huge number of hoops to jump through to remove a child, and even more to remove parental rights. You still have answered how long we should leave a child in neglectful or abusive circumstances, how damaged we should let them get, how much we should compromise their chances of a good life, while parents try to get it together.

Put the child in foster care until the parent is suitable to parent the child. And understands the importance of the LA concerns. I haven't once said keep them with neglectful parents. And if you read my previous comments I've said that shitty parents don't deserve their children. I'm on the side of the parents who have lies told about them by the LA. And I personally know someone who's proven that the LA doesn't have a high threshold to take a baby and put them for adoption. As I've said previously before. Adoption is great if a parent doesn't wish to have the child. Bit forcing someone into signing their baby away and giving a stranger parental rights in my eyes isn't right. What if a mother/father gets their act together, has a job and normal life etc. Why shouldn't they get the chance to have their family back. The child back with their actual parents?

Each to their own opinion.

How long should they wait though? 1 year, 4, 6? My daughter was 6 when she was adopted, my DS was 4, they spent 2 years in foster car waiting for their mum to get it together. The difference in the two of them in terms of their emotional regulation, capacity for learning, sense of security is enormous. They have an older sibling who, by the time adoption was being considered, was assessed as being unable to cope with adoption and in two years has had 3 different placements. The chances of him forming strong attachment relationships at this stage is pretty unlikely.

You really don’t seem to understand that children don’t have unlimited time to wait for parents to get there. The longer they are in foster care, with the possibility of returning to birth parents or continuing in care, the more long term the damage, the harder it is for them to grow and develop and learn. There has to be a point where it stops. It sounds like you’d leave kids in a place of uncertainty indefinitely, endlessly waiting for parents to get it together. You might be prepared to sacrifice kids lives in that way, I’m not.

Savannah, if you think it's too easy for a child to be taken into care, then your bar for acceptable parenting must be set very low.
The threshold for remo is ridiculously high and there are many many children living utterly miserable lives who are below the threshold for intervention.

My son waited nearly 8 years for his birth parents to get their act together, including 4 years in foster care. He is nearly 15, should he have waited his whole life for them? He has had extensive life story work, he understands exactly what happened. He has expressed an interest in seeing his birth mother who he hasnt seen since he was 4. I asked him what he wanted from seeing her, did he want to go and live with her. He looked at me and said No why would I do that, you are the safest bet.
Thats it in a nutshell - safety. I know they love him, I don't think they are 'bad' people, but his birth parents cannot keep him safe. He has known to social services before birth. 8 years is more than long enough. They could't do it, So I am.

There has to be a point where it stops. It sounds like you’d leave kids in a place of uncertainty indefinitely, endlessly waiting for parents to get it together.

I wonder too if you’ve thought about how children understand parents who can’t care for them? My son at 4 told me that his first mummy knew he was a bad baby and didn’t want to look after him because he was bad - because all mummies care for their babies so babies must be very bad if mum doesn’t look after them. We’ve done a lot of life story work, he knows he’s adopted and that his first mummy didn’t know how to look after him - I don’t think she’s a bad person at all but 9 years and 3 children all suffering incredible neglect, neonatal abstinence and domestic abuse, I think it’s fair to say that ship has sailed.

I’ll happily support my children to find her if they want to as adults, more able to cope with the emotional demands involved but until then it’s my job to love them, care for them, protect and defend them - because in every single way that matters, I’m their mother.

@SavanahXx I don’t think you have much comprehension of how unstable it is for a child to be in foster care waiting for their parents to get it together. I was adopted at 7 and was in foster care before then. I don’t remember much but I do have a very clear memory of a knowing that i was waiting to see if my mum could take me back and then another memory if being told I was being adopted and realising that she didn’t want to take me back. Obviously it was a case of she couldn’t and wasn’t deemed suitable, but that’s not how a kid absorbs it. The feeling of rejection was devastating, because before then there’d been a year of two of hope that my mother was working hard at being able to have me back

The problem is who do you prioritise? The parents rights to be given more chances or the kids chance of a stable family? The reality is that there's a small window when adoption is likely to be successful and the children's long term issues are likely to be minimised - miss it waiting for 3rd, 4th, 5th chances and they are likely to be in foster care for their childhood

MtotheG

As an adoptee who traced her birth mother 16 and long before the advent of social media, I think we need to ask ourselves why adopted children have such a strong desire to reconnect with their birth family, even in cases where the birth family are still repeating past behaviours.
Many, many adoptees will tell you that, no matter how much they love their adoptive family and no matter how young they were went removed from birth family, there is an almost primal need to connect in some way with blood relatives, even in cases of past abuse.
Ongoing support for the child, the adoptive parents and even the birth parents should be offered. It isn't enough to place even a very young baby and assume that the new family will just work.
Our genetic identity can't just be erased but we may need help to access that identity in a way that doesn't compromise our safety or wellbeing.
I am not anti-adoption but I'm anti- the assumption that adoptees should ignore their genetics and just blindly accept that "your family are the people who brought you up"
I also realise that I don't speak for all adoptees here.

I'm an adopter and it fills me with horror that my son could be waiting endlessly in long term foster care for his birth parents to make the changes necessary rather than have the permanence of adoption.

Also, for those arguing for long term foster care as an alternative to adoption, do you have any idea how expensive foster care is? Would you foster for free? Would you be happy for a hike in taxes to pay for this?

It's massively expensive, my own LA has had repeatedly tried to reduce the numbers of children in foster care as it is crippling their budgets. Every initiative has failed as some parents just can't make the necessary changes and they are left with a large number of traumatised older children in foster care who will never have permanency.

Adoption is a cheap option for local authorities. I do think there is space for another alternative, perhaps more open adoption, it again would be expensive. Personally, I would support a more open adoption and perhaps ongoing direct contact for my son but there is no way I would agree to it unless there was robust ongoing support, and where necessary therapy, for him, his birth parents and me as his adopter. That again is very expensive whereas at the moment we are cheerfully waved away at the adoption celebration with no futher expectation on the LA. This leaves us with a draconian system that's far from perfect but is fairly cheap for tax payers and at least offers the most stability for the people who matter the most...the adoptees.

Interesting points @elliollie and I agree with you on most of it. It’s natural to have an interest to find out where you biologically come from.

I do think the life work & letterbox contact etc that is done these days (and wasn’t in mine) will go some way towards giving adoptees the security of knowing info about their BF and that they are ‘out there’. I’ve read on here on the Adoption board of adoptees who, when they get to about 10/12, often don’t want to keep up Letterbox to their BF because they view them as essentially strangers. It’s heartening that they have the choice and feel secure enough to do that.

Ongoing support for everyone in the adoption triangle would be wonderful. But with my realist hat on, that’s a helluva ask financially, administratively and practically.

x-posts with Snazzy both saying the same thing about cost.

@MtotheG I understand what you are saying about ongoing support however, think of the enormity of adoption. You are removing a child from a family. You are removing a family from a child. You are placing that child with strangers. You are placing an unknown child with a couple.
Because adoption is so normalised, we underestimate just how huge it is.
People should not be left alone in this.
Again, I realise I can't speak for all adoptees.

I agree with everything you've written ellioellie...except perhaps the couple bit! Single adopter here!! Seriously though, there does need to be so much more support for adoptees. It's further complicated with future siblings. I feel a lot of the time I'm floundering around in the dark answering my sons questions as they arise and desperately hoping I'm getting it right but with no access to advice or support for him unless things get really bad.

@Snazzygoldfish my apologies, completely fair point.

Have to say I’m getting a little fed up with being told by a few different people now to think of what it’s like to be an adopted when I AM ONE. I wrote above about the devastation of rejection (thanks for the flowers @Apileofballyhoo ) - you really think I wouldn’t have loved ongoing support? As it happens my parents (adoptive, for the avoidance of doubt), paid for therapy for me and I’m grateful they did, but naturally it would be better for all if it was provided by the state as a matter of course. But I’m being pragmatic - there isn’t the money and resources. That doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s a bloody good idea or even a necessity.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - adoption is fundamentally flawed because of its very nature. There is no way round that other than by all birth parents choosing and/or being made to be good enough parents; sounds so simple doesn’t it, but it’s an impossibility. Because, people.

I don’t think any adoptive parent underestimates the enormity of adoption - we live daily with the impact on our children and on ourselves and yes, knowing that every single thing in my DCs lives changed at the point of adoption is enormous. For them and for us.

But the alternatives are also enormous, the living circumstances for some children are horrific, adoption is generally the least bad option - of course ideally all children would be cared for in their birth family, of course ideally they would have ongoing contact with their birth family if they needed to be cared for by the state, of course we’d hope to reconcile children with birth families. The problem is that there comes a point when it’s just not safe, when birth families present clear risk to children, when they simply can’t put their child’s needs first, when keeping the door open prevents the child from being able to grow and develop securely - there’s endless research on this.

Yes there needs to be better therapeutic support for all involved in adoption, I can pay for therapy for my family, many can’t and support for birth families is woeful.

@MtotheG I've said in both my posts that I don't speak for all adoptees.

@jellycatspyjamas I don't necessarily think it's adoptive parents who underestimate it. I think, as a society we do. It's only the people who are living it who can truly understand.
As an adoptee, there is the temptation to make it all about me. I also need to remember that my adoptive parents have had their struggles, beginning with the pain of infertility.
I've seen quite a few reunions between adult adoptees and their birth families and in some cases, adoptive families have been cast aside.
I don't know what the solutions are but the advent of commercial DNA testing has shown how much people are wanting to reconnect with their original families.
Perhaps with life stories and letterbox, this ache to understand wont be as strong.

@elliollie yes you did. But in case you’ve forgotten, you directed the “think of the enormity” comment at me specifically.

@MtotheG that wasn't specifically about being an adoptee though. It was about the enormity of the situation for all involved in the process. And, to be fair, it was probably badly worded. It should have read, "as a society, we don't often think of the enormity..."
It's a shame we can't have this discussion without rolling our eyes at each other.
Maybe Mumsnet isn't right for me on this particular subject.
Wish you well.