To think adoption is often more about adults’ desires than children’s needs?

[MyNoisyGreyPombear]

It’s always framed as noble. But AIBU to think adoption sometimes fulfils adults’ wishes first, while the child’s trauma and identity issues get overlooked?

@ThePieceHall yes USA and having read the link posted up thread I now realize what an abusive /unregulated /done without remorse or morals this rehoming of children is.

Do you not think that, usually such stories are being told by the parents...

Their story is about wanting to adopt, the process they had to go through. Thats their story to tell and they're adults so they can.

The child however... may not want to, may not be old enough to make that decision. Their trauma, loss, identity issues, are none of your business, and adoptive parents will know that - it isn't their place to share their childs personal information.

Our son is supposed to have contact with his birth mother. When it was happening he would be silent and shaking with fear, he would sometimes become incontinent. After contact he wouldn’t sleep properly for days, he was terrified of being in a room alone. Why in particular do you believe he should have to experience that until he’s 18?

My son had contact with birth mum initially, but it only happened 2 or 3 times. She kept cancelling at the last minute, which was very unsettling for my son. I do understand it was difficult for her too, but it created unnecessary emotional turmoil at our end. So contact fizzled out.

We did talk about his birth family if he wanted to.

A couple of years ago, when he was 20, he wanted to get in touch and we helped him make contact. But we did warn him it was a very dysfunctional family then, and could still be now.

Initially it all went well, he stayed over with birth mother and a younger siblings a few times. That was very hard for me, but he was very clear we were mum and dad and his home was with us. But within a couple of months the gloss had worn off. I think he is still in touch with a younger sibling, but he basically said if he had been left in that environment he would either be dead, a junky or in prison.

And the adoption support fund was totally useless for us. Refused to pay a penny towards any of the support we paid for as they said "it wasn't directly related to the adoption". If course it bloody well was, it was all the trauma he carried from being left in totally unsuitable conditions for 15 months while mum was given chance after chance to sort herself out. But I didn't have the energy to argue.

I maybe assuming wrongly that you are a younger social worker? There are adults that were adopted as recently as the 1990’s with adoptive parents who should never have been able to adopt. That adopted children as commodities and inflicted further abuse on them. Are you ignorant of the case of the two male adoptive parents who have been imprisoned this may have happened in the USA. Do not pretend it does not happen in the UK. That is offensive to survivors of the care systems and survivors of abuse,

Yes but few parents would sacrifice and love a child unconditionally unless they had a real chance at having a family.
It's win/win and sometimes win for the birth mother too though I often wonder if, for very young mothers, there could be a way for both mother and child to be adopted together into the same secure family.

Once the parental bond has been formed with the adoptive parents and the child is eighteen, and hopefully old enough to cope with hearing about their birth family situation, they can obtain their records. It's better than when the child had no access to their birth records.

Thankfully adoption occurs less often due to contraceptive improvements, less stigma about being a single parent and more support.

Em no, I’m in my 50’s, practicing now for 30 years. I’ve seen trends come and go and come back again hailed as revolutionary. I’m not sure what your point is though. Does adoption go wrong at times - yes it does, sometimes horribly so and yes, in the UK.

Does that mean all adoption is wrong or the concept of adoption flawed? I don’t believe so.

Adoption practice and assessment has changed hugely in the last 30 years. We have better understanding of the impact on children and know more, at least in theory, about children’s needs - albeit there’s never the resources to do everything as well as it should be.

There also needs to be much better understanding of the needs of care experienced children and recognition that for many the impact is life long, regardless of how loving their adoptive family might be. Removing adoption as an option for children who cannot live with their birth families would be both short sighted and harmful.

Seems like a weird question? My friends are foster carers and they go through a lot of training because they care for children who often have very complex emotional needs. No child (adopted or fostered) is removed from their biological parents unless there’s significant issues.

Giving a safe home to a child who’s been through neglect or trauma IS a ‘noble’ thing to do and if it helps the parents to fulfill their own need for parenthood or whatever, surely that’s a good thing? Adoptive parent gets to be a mum or a dad, child in the care system gets a forever home. Seems like a win to me.

I feel as if adoption is being held to a higher standard than biological families. Families go no contact, children are neglected or used as trophies, children as neglected or abused but it doesn't come to light so children left in that situation, children with lovely families become mentally ill or criminals or drug addicts while they grow up in their birth families.

Is adoption perfect? Almost certainly not. Do birth families always work out great? No they don't.

I hope the adults desires and children's needs can come together and create good outcomes.

I have not suggested nor would I suggest adoption should be removed and not supported.

I felt your post was dismissing survivors of the adoption and care systems. That adoptive parents never adopt to gain access to already vulnerable children. The same way that certain professions attract predators who can and do use their profession to access children.

I would have thought in your profession you would be aware there are actual CEP researchers who have the lived expertise undertaking research regarding adoption/fostering/kinships areas to challenge the narratives and address the issues of the past and plan as best as possible for the future. However to this the harm that occurred requires recognition, after all the impact is life long.

I’m an adoptive parent, I’m very aware of the harm caused to children who are care experienced and the potential for adults to try and gain access to vulnerable children - I’m not sure why you thought my post was in any way dismissive of that.

There absolutely needs to be better research in this area, and voices of those harmed in care and adoption need to be heard more clearly. So do the voices of those for whom care experience and adoption had positive outcomes - how else do we understand what works for some children. The end result however cannot be a legislated one size fits all all solution.

Open adoption, for example, can be an incredibly helpful process for some children but there are also good reasons, beyond immediate safeguarding concerns, that mean ongoing direct contact can be really harmful for the children involved.

In most walks of life if you routinely had your child spend time with an adult who had addiction issues, were routinely drunk in your child’s presence, were neglectful of their needs, was emotionally abusive there would be questions asked. More so if that adult had repeatedly harmed your child. But if the child is adopted and the adult in question is their birth parent?

It's not a bubble, it's shown in the evidence when examining psychological and education outcomes of adopted children compared to those who remain "looked-after". (https://corambaaf.org.uk/sites/default/files/Marketing/PRD/Adoption/Exploring%20outcomes%20related%20to%20adoption/Exploring%20permanency%20outcomes%20-%20literature%20review%20summary.pdf). Adoption is associated with fewer adverse events than fostering.

Ideally children would remain with their parents, with the necessary support to achieve this. But it's not always possible, and not always because of neglect/abuse. Children do enter the care system due to family tragedy or parental illness, and these situations cannot be prevented with additional wraparound support to the family.

The link is blank. I did not suggest there was more or less abuse within adoptive families compared to foster families. I stated that predators have adopted have historically and disgustingly shall continue to do so in the future. There is no perfect safeguarding in situ to prevent this.

i have not suggested at any point the positive stories should not be shared. You are again ignoring that adoption/fostering/kinship experiences are lifelong. My point was that predators historically and shall continue in future to access vulnerable children via the adoption system. Unfortunately there is no perfect safeguarding system insitu. There are cases where a child that was removed from abuse went onto experience further abuse from the adoptive parents. The survivor then told they should be grateful to have been adopted by the very professionals who should have been protecting them. To pretend this does not happen is disrespectful to survivors.

Sorry about that, it seems CoramBAAF have a redirect in place if you don't have the PDF directly bookmarked. You can access the document here (https://corambaaf.org.uk/exploring-outcomes-relating-adoption) or by copying the PDF link into your address bar.

We did the course (with the LA) as we were going to adopt a child.
In the end we decided against it. The course is harrowing, goes into lots of detail on the sorts of issues the children will have, and (for us) made it feel utterly overwhelming. We already had our own DC, and decided not to go ahead.

The interests of the children are absolutely first and foremost.

Where am I ignoring it? I’ve explicitly said the impact of care experience and adoption are lifelong, the need for ongoing research and for adequate resources?

You sound like an amazing mother!

Isn’t having a child at all about the adults desires?? People generally have children because they want them? No? Have you adopted OP?

Where on earth have I said kids that have clearly been abused should have to have to have contact with an abuser? I've said that safeguarding reasons is the exception so I don't believe they should at all! I do hope you've managed to get your child accessing mental health services for whatever they've been through. What I'm saying is where it is safe for the child to have some sort of contact with the birth family (not even necessarily the parents but perhaps a grandparent, aunties, uncles) the child should absolutely be able to have that connection and the adoptive parents shouldn't just be able to say "no that's not happening" because they feel like it. This has happened with 2 adoptions within my own family, both my adoptive cousins and yes I'm certain it was for no good reason as the adoptive parents of both cousins have admitted to it. Whilst I appreciate theres situations where no contact is what's right that doesn't mean that's the case for alot of adopted children and I think there should be more done to protect the interests of the children rather than the parents.

Most children are removed for safeguarding reasons.

The problem is that the default is now being set to direct contact (sometimes online). The gov consulted on this a few years ago. Adopters' concerns were basically overruled - there is indeed a vociferous group of adoptee activists who are very unhappy about their experiences and want contact to be the norm.

My girls were supposedly not in danger. Today they would have been designated contact, and if it is part of a court order, you can't ignore it.

But it would have been unsafe on so many levels.

People who adopt generally don't want to be seen as basically long term foster parents but without the financial and other support. Adoption rates are declining as people find out more about the difficulties of parenting children with eg foetal alcohol syndrome. Surrogacy is now popular with affluent adults who previously would have adopted.

So what will happen to the children? We have successfully almost stopped the unnecessary relinquishing of babies by mothers in this country. That's brilliant. Now we just have children who simply cannot stay with birth family. What would happen to them if not for adoption? A life in foster care, where they can be moved on at a moment's notice with their possessions in big bags? We used to send them to work houses or into service or abroad to work in the colonies, where they were very badly treated. We are doing better as a society now. No it's not perfect but no system is. Adoption approval processes in the UK are as thorough as possible. Compare with surrogacy - now that's an a way of becoming a parent worth much more scrutiny.

Genuine question from experience, experience that is out of date though.
Has it changed with contact post adoption? I often saw it dwindle after the celebration event/ finalisation. Sometimes families moved, even abroad, in other cases it was felt to be disruptive or tailed off. There was no involvement beyond adoption that was directed, it was the adoptive families choice as it was now their legal natural child as with any other family. I don’t have an issue with this decision ultimately lying with a child’s parents as per any other family - just asking if orders have changed. Tbh often contact was not well planned or supported, there were reasons it happened that were complex and often out of adopters hands- for example siblings in disruptive foster care and anger/ trauma that grew and was very hard to manage constructively

Adoption isn't this straight forward, for example siblings get separated as adoptive parents only want one child, or only want young children, or can't meet the needs of one sibling. That is the bit I find hardest to balance. Even with training and assessment parents can have such a strong drive for a child they gloss over the complications of adoption and adoptions can fail. That said there are parents specifically adopting children with complex needs and meeting, over and above, the difficulties that arise.

The new orders are court mandated - the adopters have to comply and if they want to stop it they have to ask the courts, which is expensive and possibly difficult. Previously it was a loose agreement between the parties.