To wonder what on earth happened with the Leiland James case?

[Grasscrowns]

Utterly horrific, but AIBU to wonder what on earth prompted a woman with no criminal history to ‘leather’ a baby? Even people who believe a good hiding won’t hurt them and other such stupid statements don’t apply it to babies.

I think we are agreeing with one another tbh @rosiethefemaleone

We both seem to be saying there is both judgement and stigma attached to disrupting adoption, and I also think this is even more marked the younger the child is. Someone disrupting the adoption of an angry eleven year old might just elicit some sympathy but a baby, as in this case - not a chance.

But I do also think the process and other peoples experiences - adopters - are pretty honest about the fact it’s challenging and about the fact that it’s not easy. I don’t think that a wide eyed illusion about the reality of adoption was what killed this little boy.

I don’t think that a wide eyed illusion about the reality of adoption was what killed this little boy. No, not at all.

I suspect the Castles under-estimated how hard "hard" is. I suspect they under-estimated how abusive they were. And the LA under-estimated how urgent this all was.

This little boy was utterly failed by everyone. (I'm sure I read somewhere he had two foster placements, before his adoptive placement?)

Loads of people do not think this. And differentiating between a punch and a tap is common sense. I do t hit my children, but it of course they're done different.

As bad as physical punishment is I do not know anyone who would hit a baby. Even people who freely admit they smack do not often hit babies, that's a whole other level.

They were not yet adopters though, this was a Foster to adopt placement. They were foster carers for him. If you read the information published in the trial you'll see that social workers were visiting regularly and very worried about the placement. In fact they'd been back to panel and approval to adopt had been deferred pending further assessment and work with them. I think it's likely that baby would have been removed from them fairly soon if she had not murdered him.

Also to people saying its not illegal to smack children in this country or that some people deem it acceptable. No social worker would deem it acceptable to smack a baby and likely they would have been prosecuted- the law allows reasonable chastisement, which smacking a baby is not.

100%. Best not to even cross that line because it starts resentment and anger, and ends up with the adult hitting harder every time to provoke a reaction.

That was my thinking as well @TriptotheBog and I also think @Merryoldgoat is wrong that ‘loads’ of people think hitting a baby is acceptable.

@rosiethefemaleone - I definitely underestimated how hard having a baby was (made the mistake of reading a couple of Cathy Glass books when pregnant, and she makes it sound EFFORTLESS! Like literally all you have to do is make up a bottle every four hours 🤣🤣)

@wherethewildthingis It wasn't foster to adopt. It was an adoptive placement. Between placement and the adoption order there is a weird space legally- the LA retain parental responsibility, it's like you're legally an unpaid babysitter.

Most adopters are 'mum and dad' from placement. They weren't foster carers, they were adopters.

If they told their social worker she had hit him, the baby would have been removed asap. Smacking isn't acceptable for an adopted child.

I do feel the language of 'baby' vs 'toddler' here is confusing though. A lot of birth parents do smack toddlers. Some babies are toddling from ten months. So I think some birth parents do think it's ok to smack babies. But hopefully it's becoming less and less acceptable.

@Grasscrowns We all underestimate it!

But almost none of us murder our children.

I think pedantically a toddler becomes so on their first birthday, but I really don’t know anyone who would smack a child this young.

I think anyone who does think smacking a toddler is acceptable would be around the 2 year mark.

They must have had really dysfunctional upbringings themselves to see smacking a child under one as normal. I wonder what role their parents played in it, from one article it sounded like one of the reasons she didn't ask for him to be taken away was because she felt their parents wouldn't be happy.

Do you honestly think people who believe in physical punishment decide ‘oh, it’s acceptable from two so until then I’ll use different methods’? They find different ways of coping and suddenly change methods because it’s ‘acceptable’?

no @Merryoldgoat . That’s not it

People who use smacking to punish don’t tend to smack babies. You might as well say that because someone snacks a six year old they’d smack a six week old. They don’t, as a rule. This case is different.

Most people who hit kids actually aren't sadistic monsters, they do it because they think it works (wrongly), or that's how they were raised so it's just the norm. Genuinely, I don't think it's that common to strike such a young child. Even in cultures where smacking is acceptable it would not be in any way condoned if someone admitted to smacking a little baby imo. It does start from 2-3 usually.

Leathering a baby who can't even speak is not common and is beyond disturbing even amongst parents who smack.

I suspect it's not either of those reason you give and more likely that they lose control in the moment.

When you started the adoption process, along with most people, you’ll have searched online. Maybe before that process begins people have starry eyed disillusions, but once that process has started - even if only an open evening - that will have gone.

it may go to some extent, but you honestly can’t anticipate how difficult the reality of having a newly placed child is. You don’t have any of the pregnancy experience to prepare you for having a small child to care for, you don’t know how that change in lifestyle will impact you, you don’t know how the child will respond to being moved - how far they’ll regress, how physically clingy or rejecting they might be etc etc.

I’m a CP social worker with many years experience, I have post grad qualifications in working with trauma and still was knocked off my feet in early placement. It’s a very different beast parenting a child you have literally no relationship with at the outset, when they’re terrified and you’re experiencing a huge change in every area of your life. The pre-adoption training and assessment only take you so far, the rest you need well established support systems, a reflective, flexible approach and high levels of personal resilience for.

I don’t know what went on for this couple, how far they might have idealised adoption or what they expected their experience as newly placed parents to be but few people go into the process truly knowing how they’ll cope and react because there are so many variables to contend with. Nothing excuses what they did to this little one, they had options in terms of support which they didn’t access effectively. The local authority here absolutely has a case to answer though both pre and post placement - someone needed to have eyes on the child.

What worries me about the direction of this discussion is that we appear to be searching for answers and coming out (almost) excusing it because parenting a adoptive child is difficult and hard and thankless and challenging. We blame the system etc. Reports of birth parents killing their children are more prevalent than adoptive parents so clearly the vast majority of adoptive parents are managing not to kill their children and are doing something right (regardless of the lack of support, rubbish system, children left too long in traumatic situations etc)

The fact is this woman had plenty of opportunity to access support and decided to kill a baby instead. She abused him on many occasions with the full knowledge of her husband.

This isn't to say the SW and SS don't have questions to answer but the incidents of this type do seem vanishingly rare.

@Jellycatspyjamas I'm not sure I agree with you that being pregnant is preparation for looking after a newborn baby. You may be able to (you may not be able to) build a bond with your unborn infant, but in terms of how hard it all is, sleep deprivation / colic / CMPA / change in relationships etc. it doesn't come close. It's just a different set of challenging.

But I think if we start to comparing the different challenges, placing one above the other, it minimises and does not help us look at the problems individually, improve the system for all and prevent disasters like this (and where birth children are murdered) happening again.

@Crazycatlady83 You're entirely correct, nothing excuses her actions in murdering.

However, I do have difficult feelings, and empathy, with the effects the early days of placement can have on a new parent. I found reading about the "lack of bond" difficult, and remembering how much the endless moaning floored me the first time. I'm not violent, I'm not abusive, but I wasn't at my parenting best. One of the things adopters do is cultivate empathy, so that you can think of birth parents empathetically, so you can be empathetic to children that reject you, that sort of thing. So I can't help but feel some empathy here. But, good god, she should have disrupted sooner. I think suggesting that disruption needs to be made easier isn't offering excuses, but something has to change to ensure this never happens again.

@Jellycatspyjamas I'm not sure I agree with you that being pregnant is preparation for looking after a newborn baby. You may be able to (you may not be able to) build a bond with your unborn infant, but in terms of how hard it all is, sleep deprivation / colic / CMPA / change in relationships etc. it doesn't come close. It's just a different set of challenging.

Its not a competition at all, but with pregnancy you start to slowly orient your life towards being a parent, your body physically changes hugely, you adjust your lifestyle, you psychologically start to adjust to the changes coming because it’s here, present and happening. You don’t need to explain that you’re having a child because it’s usually pretty obvious - my last 3 weeks at work were spent explaining i would be on adoption leave with all the questions, assumptions and inferences that go with. I had 3 weeks to get things ready for two children arriving, while also finishing work and adjusting to being at home for a year.

The psychological pressures are significant before the child even arrives, and then you have a small, scared stranger to parent well from a standing start. No one is saying her behaviour is excusable, it’s not, but as ever we do need to look at the systems, challenges and pressures because if we don’t, it’ll happen again. And those pressures are usually significantly different in adoption and need a different approach.

The saintly adoptive parent trope needs to be challenged, adoptive parents are people too with all their faults and failings, it’s the job of social services to place vulnerable children with safe people and to ensure those children receive a good enough standard of care. In this case they were still legally the child’s corporate parent so had an active responsibility in ensuring the child was safely placed and the parents were coping, or to remove the child to a place of safety. It’s right to hold her accountable for her actions, it’s equally right to hold statutory services accountable for theirs.

@Jellycatspyjamas 100%

Parenting the hardest newborn (scbu, colic, feeding issues) as a birth parent is honestly just not as difficult as the early days of an adoptive placement. It just isn't. I've done both.

You can’t speak for all adoptive or birth parents though @rosiethefemaleone

Some adoptive parents may have found it relatively easy, some birth parents very, very hard. There’s no rule that applies to all.

I got the impression that they - she in particular - didn’t even like the baby. They didn’t like his name, perhaps they thought it was stupid as it appears to be misspelled; the name James more respectable. Perhaps it reminded them that his birth family were of a lower social class and they saw him as damaged from birth and worth- less. He was probably “difficult” and they may have felt he didn’t “like them”.

The birth mother has had 4 or 5 other children taken away. So there is something amiss there-could be alcohol, drugs or DV.

Far more about personality is genetic than we like to think.

The thing that got me through the sometimes awful early years was the unconditional love I had for my DC because they are biologically related to me. I understood my DC’s “ways” because they were similar to me. I was also able to soothe my DC by breastfeeding, something which wouldn’t have been available to an adoptee. I was able to ask my mum if I was like this as a child etc etc

I will admit I’m not sure I could adopt because I don’t think I’m the right person for it. I find other people’s babies of little interest and the idea of changing their nappies etc, repulsive.

it’s not hard to see how all of this can result in them not seeing the child as a human being at all and that ultimately to them he was an object to discard.

It’s not an excuse before any straw men pop up but these are slightly taboo topics which need to be confronted and understood.

I don’t have an issue with changing a name of a child of this age I must admit.

Changing a name can be part of claiming that child as part of your family, and thus improve the bond. I wouldn't read too much into the name change. With social media etc, a name change early in life on permanent placement could be a protective thing for the child.

Name changing is a hugely controversial issue, with good arguments both ways. I just wouldn't read that much in to it.

Some people aren't meant to be adopters, that's true- everyone has different skills, and that's ok. It takes big self awareness to know that about yourself.

The local authority did though. It was made very clear that they were to use his given name, they were corrected and reminded when they were heard calling him James and it was part of the agreement they signed when they took him on. The LA said it was better for the child to have a link to their past.
If they wanted to change his name they would have had to apply to the family court to do that.
It demonstrates more disregard for what they signed up for.

That's not true. When you apply for the adoption order, you can put what name you like on it. When the adoption order is passed, you can change the name to whatever you like- you have complete PR.

People get very het up about name changing- I suspect it's a red herring here.

Many adopters change a child's name, for many good reasons, and many people disagree with those reasons. The fact is those adopters generally don't murder their children, name change or not. I don't think name changing is a red flag.