Woman awarded six figure payout for failed adoption

[inadequatepillow]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c623we048yzo

AIBU to feel a bit uncomfortable by the tone of this article?

I agree that the council should’ve been clearer about the child’s needs. But, if she’d birthed this child, he could’ve still had the same difficulties. It’s likely she’d have had no support with this if the child was hers biologically. The waits for paeds are shocking.

It says in the article he threw a heavy paperweight at her. How did he get hold of this? Why is she blaming the child?

I feel as though she’s wanted to adopt for selfish reasons and she was disappointed that she didn’t have a perfect, meek, easy kid.

When you give birth to a child, it’s luck of the draw. My son has SEND similar to the child in the article. On days when it gets a bit much for me am I supposed to just give him up for adoption? No, because I am his mother and my job is to raise him regardless of how hard it is.

I don’t think when adopting you should be able to be so picky. The child needed a home, she wanted a kid. It’s not like going to the RSPCA and ignoring all the three legged cats…

I think it is more complicated than that.

As a lone adopter, she had made it clear that she was not able to meet the needs of a child with severe difficulties. She was assured the child did not have any. The child was 2 years old and his difficulties were known to the system, he arrived with a helmet!

When you birth a child, they are with you from birth, and you can learn to adapt to their needs over time. And parents of children with severe difficulties should get support from the NHS.

Violence is hard to deal with, and violent children should only be placed with parents who are willing and able to take that on. The system failed both the child and the adoptive parent in this case.

I agree with the OP here. There is 0 thought of the child here.

They seemed to of deliberately withheld information about the child’s major needs.

She admitted what she could do, held her hands up and said I can only do so much.

I think your looking at it rather personally due to your own child’s needs.

The adoption hasn’t gone though she was not the child’s legal parent, are you really thinking she should be forced to keep a child she cannot look after and keep safe?

It sounds like the council failed in its basic statutory duties broth before and after adoption. Adoption failure is not uncommon, but payouts are, so this is not a matter of unreasonable new parent being greedy.

“Birth a child”

give birth to a ?

Anyway agree with @CatherinedeBourgh that your take is a bit reductive

they didn’t tell her AT ALL. Learning delay is not physically assaulting her

Failed adoptions unfortunately are very common. Children who are adopted are more likely to have SEN and will all have atatchment issues.

Parents in failed adoption situations are not simply giving a child back because it’s hard work. They’re at breaking point and if SS have lied to them so they take a child who they can’t manage they know it’s the child who suffers most. She isn’t saying she wanted an easy child. Parenting an adopted child is hugely difficult and they need a different approach to average parenting. Unfortnately if people don’t go down the court and media route then nothing will change and many incredibly vunerable children will be failed.

Do you fancy taking him on then? Or are you going to sit there in judgement of a sad situation where both she and the child suffered?

She tried.

Just read it. She's saying she was misinformed and denied the support she should have had.

It later transpired he had a serious underlying medical condition which she was not told about.

"I got absolutely no support whatsoever," she said.
"They kept insisting there was absolutely nothing wrong and that it was me, imagining it. I needed immediate help."

She suspected there was more to the child’s problems than developmental delay.

Social workers visited that day and seeing her bruises suggested the placement should end.

The social team proposed ending the adoption process after only four months, she didn't ask to end it. What she wanted was to know what she was dealing with, and appropriate support.

A birth mother would want the same. I think your take on the situation is unfair.

I think you're looking at it personally because you have a child with additional needs. Her story is not a reflection on your life and your child.

It sounds like the council completely misled her and that this child's severe needs were already well known before he was placed.

I feel incredibly sorry for her that as a result of the situation she lost friends and faced such harsh judgement from others. It's very easy to say what you would/wouldn't do if you've not been in her shoes and I doubt many solo adoptive parents would have been able to overcome the situation.

They’ve paid out, albeit many years later, which suggests they do realise they fucked up.

Did you actually read the article?

The child should have got the payout not her.

The article even explains that she was pressurized to end the adoption instead of being given specialist support. Also that there were known (by social workers) issues about underlying health conditions.

It was only later that Ms Maguire found out about the boy's underlying medical condition.
"Everything I had thought from the very outset was correct, and yet I was made to feel that wasn't the case throughout it all,” she said.
Ms Maguire said "adoption disruption" is not often discussed and she feels a stigma about what happened.
"I am consumed by guilt because I tried so hard to keep him," she said.
"The stigma is that you've given your child back and people don't understand the situation."
Ms Maguire said she lost friends over the decision.
"People made judgements about me," she said.
"You would walk into rooms at work and people would stop talking.
"Somebody actually said I'd given him back like a pair of trousers at Marks & Spencers".

'When you give birth to a child, it’s luck of the draw. My son has SEND similar to the child in the article. On days when it gets a bit much for me am I supposed to just give him up for adoption? No, because I am his mother and my job is to raise him regardless of how hard it is.'

Well, presumably the child's birth mother put the child up for adoption. It happens.

Did you read the article?

The council failed to give her all the information she needed to make the decision to adopt the child.

Then they failed to support her appropriately. The word gaslighting is thrown about on MumsNet far too readily but it might be appropriate here as they made her feel that she was the problem, not the child’s high needs.

They screwed both her and child over. Badly.

I feel for her and can understand completely why the adoption wasn’t able to continue. She was very badly misled. I hope the boy is now a teenager able to live a good life.

What is not clear, however, is the basis on which her damages were quantified. In common law systems (of which Scots law is one) damages for things like negligence or breach of statutory duty are usually based on the principle of compensating for actual financial loss caused by the wrongdoing. There may be a small element for distress or emotional suffering but not 100k. I wonder if an insurer was involved. Councils usually have quite a high excess on their insurance though, so more likely it was a payout of public money.

Perhaps she gave up a job to adopt and has never been able to get her career back to where it was. Or maybe she has suffered long term psychological effects that have affected her earning power. I can see she was treated very badly by her local community so maybe they tried to put a figure on damage to reputation. Quite possibly she rationalised the claim on the basis that hitting the council on its pocket was the only way to make it change its procedures and learn from the mistake. However I am broadly uncomfortable with the idea that this terrible situation put her 100k out of pocket.

We have adopted children and comparing it to going to an animal shelter is really, really offensive.

It took over a year of discussions and over 20 hours of interviews and a week of testing to adopt each child. It is rigorous and you are encouraged to be honest about what you can cope with and what needs you can meet.

Your point about how your birth child could have needs is incredibly naive at best. Unfortunately, there are no babies left on church steps in the adoption system. Many children have experienced significant harm in utero through drug and alcohol misuse, lack of nutrients and early years trauma. These are things that would not occur should I have carried my children rather than adopted them.

We almost adopted a third child but Social Services misled us about the child's needs. Through incompetence rather than willfully (allegedly), they had mixed up the name and photo of the child with the file of. It was only when we insisted on a meeting with a paediatrician that we found out the incredibly high needs of the child. She was HIV positive, had been born addicted to crack, showed huge developmental delay, may not learn to walk or speak and was unlikely to gain intellectual ability or emotional control beyond that of a two year old. Due to heart defects due to drug use in utero, she was unlikely to live to adulthood.

It led to a serious case review and it broke our hearts to have to state we could not care for a child with this high level of need (as we already had two complex children). I had already told my work I would be going on adoption leave and I was so heartbroken I just left. We had counselling and it took us years to reconcile ourselves with our decision not to pursue the adoption. However, the choices that were made that impacted the baby's life chances were made unfortunately before we even knew her name. She was adopted by an older couple, we found out, and they had all the information to make that decision.

Nobody who goes into adoption wants it to fail. This woman has held a broken system to account.

I get what youre saying and I'm the parent of a child with complex needs but the council appears to have seriously minimised this child's needs and mislead her ,my sons needs becsme apparent over a period of time and by the time ww knew how complex his needs were I could no more give him up than cut off my own arm ,I do think there is a difference.

Did we even read the same thing?

I read the article and really felt for the lady. It’s sounded like she still really cared for the child and wanted it to work with support in place, but that wasn’t provided.

I know that people with biological children with additions needs also have to fight for support for their kids but she really was thrown in the deep end.

from what I read, the council misled her and withheld information and then it sounded like they pressured her into ending the adoption which isn’t really what she wanted.

This is a bit of a coincedence, I was just reading my Adoption Uk magazine last night about how high the percentage of adoptive parents is who continue to be blamed by LA, SS, etc for not dealing with the behaviour and challenges. This case and the OP shows it.
After what most of these children have been through with their birth families, why shouldn't they get maximum support?

Councils absolutely need to be honest about the needs of children in care. Otherwise they are setting adopters up to fail, and setting the children up to get hurt.

Adoption is a different kettle of fish than a birth child, even with no additional needs, because of the trauma of moving between families. Adopters go through a very long process pre-approval, the aim of this is to be sure they can meet a child's needs, and to identify what kind of match would be likely to succeed. If the council then ignore the outcomes of the process, lie about the match, and then continue to lie when more support is requested, the breakdown of the adoption is their fault.

We don't know that the child might have been removed for other and his disabilities became apparent as he developed, my sin has a condition that wssent detected, and we had no idea thee was anything wring untilll he failed to meet his milestones.

To me this child was more suited to foster care than adoption. Foster parents would be still on the system so to speak and there would be supports available and financial assistance. The issues he had should have been disclosed to assist with support and a single parent was not the best choice for him. It sounds very isolating and challenging.

Post it on the Mn adoption forum for much more knowledgeable responses to this case, including from people who have undergone the singularly painful experience of disruption. You are being reductive, OP. Adopters get to become parents for ‘selfish reasons’ n the same way that birth parents do, only they do so via a lengthy and intrusive assessment process. No one approaches parenthood as an altruistic endeavour.

If she had birthed a child with a medical condition, she would have progressively grown to learn about it and how to manage it, and they would have a bond already.
It's completely different from being thrown at the deep end with 0 explanation or support.

I habe heavy objects in my house, it's never come to my 2 yo's mind to throw them at me...