Post adoption contact has ruined the chance of adoption for so many children

[Popcornhero]

I am a paediatrician, Mum of three children (who arrived by adoption) and have several foster carer and social worker friends. I keep seeing children no longer getting adopted now there is an expectation for face to face contact with birth families.

I have seen this through work recently, and today was chatting to a foster carer friend who was saying how many children in their fostering network are no longer being adopted. Shehas a 14 month old in her care, who she's been approached to keep as a long term foster as he's been up for adoption for a year with no one to take him.

The rules now around face to face contact with birth families have meant adoption rates have plummeted. I'm so angry about it. Children deserve a fresh start with their new family & they aren't getting it because needs of birth parents are being prioritised.

Some research suggests adoptees would have liked more contact, but there is a bias in the literature. It's those most affected by the adoption that are coming forward not those who grew up and moved on and adoption is only one part of their story.

I know we wouldn't have adopted it we had had to maintain face to face contact with the birth family. They are our children and they have a lovely protected life. We changed our children's names to give them a better chance in life ( they had for example names like Thor, Loki and Renesmee and are now, Theo, Luca and Esme) **just an example. We never send photos so they can be captured in birthday parties and their identity remains safe. They know their story, they know why we are their parents. We write to the birth family yearly. It would be awful for them to feel split between two worlds.

Surely they need to review the impact this has had,before more children lose the chance at having a family?

We adopted our child 15 years ago and they had ongoing face to face contact with their birth family at least 3 times a year. We were nervous and it was tricky at times, but ultimately we all felt it was a positive experience for our child. It really all depends on the individual situation and how it's managed. It certainly wouldn't put me off adoption, but does need careful consideration. For us, the concern that long-term separation might cause further trauma outweighed any anxiety regarding ongoing contact.

@Hazlenuts2016

There will be adopters who are more open to contact and that's great. But from years spent on forums, I've observed that most prospective adopters want a fairly normal family life.

Call it selfish, but most prospective adopters don't want to assume the role of an unpaid foster carer (maintaining regular contact with birth parents.) They may have had multiple miscarriages and been desperate to be parents for years. Adoption needs to factor them in too, or the placement will break down.

The child should always be at the heart of any decision making. But there is a general shift towards direct contact that is deterring potentially very good adoptive parents, often in situations where contact wouldn't have been advised ten years ago.

Yep - this. Most adoptive parents do NOT want the bio parents in the life of their (newly adopted) child. And they will become their child once everything is signed. Once everything has been signed, the new (adoptive) parents are the legal parents.. I can't imagine why anyone would want the bio parents to remain in the child's life.

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Surely this needs to be managed in whatever is in the best interests of the child? I would never go into an adoption without expecting to have to swallow some discomfort at times in order to center the child I'm caring for and there to support and help feel safe. Truthfully id be wary of adopters who don't anticipate this.

I work with adoptees and young people in foster care and I'd say it's a fairly mixed bag in terms of contact with biological parents/family and very much depends on their individual circumstances but more were keen to maintain some level of contact than none/letterbox. I would be expecting to fit around the child's needs rather than having a blanket rule that suits me as the adopter. Lots of kids go into care, not because they weren't genuinely loved by their parents but because of other very sad and unfortunate circumstances, often outside of the biological parents control. If we had a system that better championed the needs of the child to protect them from abusive parents and prioritised the child's wishes/ needs I think that would make the court process slightly less traumatic for children going through it. This has to be done on an individual basis and therefore all prospective adopters should be prepared for contact potentially being a part of their life.

I think it is complex, for example I don’t think a child who has been abused so badly that they have been adopted due to it should have to see their abusive parent. But I know a man who was adopted as a days old infant because his mother was 14, he had an open adoption and saw his birth mother and later on knew his half siblings when they were born when he was around 11. He is a well adjusted person who has wonderful parents but is also happy to know his birth mother.

You say you couldn’t imagine being pulled between two families but when parents separate and have a child 50/50 and step parents are involved they are pulled between two families, the only difference is step parents accept they are not the real parents so are not threatened by the real parents being on the scene.

I've said this above, but for us it's to be able to manage contact with our child.

We know of too many people who only realise some kind of contact is happening via social media, internet etc with their teen child when something bad happens, eg when the child has a deep emotional issues or has gone to meet them in an unplanned unsupervised way

It does make sense to try and do it in a more controlled way so there isn't some big mystery, or ability to fantasise about another family. We would rather it happen in a safe, graded way, with us ti support then in his bedroom under secrecy with a 14yr old making the decision

We were influenced by my DW who was desperate to meet her own birth parents and would have done all sorts of risky things, and wasn't mature enough to manage on her own. For her luckily it came at 18 (simply because that's when she got facebook), but she still wasn't equipped

That must have been really difficult but it’s lovely that you were able to do that with your child’s best interests at heart. Very strong and selfless. I hope I’d be able to take that approach myself but as previous, easy to say when it’s a hypothetical child and not your own.

Because often there's a pre-established relationship between the child and their biological parents and the child wants to see them. Contact also extends to other family members and siblings remember too. Not every adoption is borne out of abuse or ill intent from the parent.

I agree. I grew up feeling an outsider in my family and the sense that something wasn't right. The pain of finding out I was step parent adopted at the age of 16 has always stayed with me. There was no help and I was simply expected to feel grateful. My adoption report consisted of half an A4 sheet of paper. I wish i could have got hold of the idle social worker and given her a verbal lashing for the trauma she caused. For many people adoption isn't warm and fuzzy and feeling that your medical history, identity and ethnicity is missing definitely doesn't help.

@Lavender14 I agree with some of what you say and in some cases contact will be really beneficial. But from the perspective of prospective adopters, why wouldn't they just become foster carers where there is payment and much more support, if they still need to deal regularly with birth parents?

@Fallulah you are right to take action now if you feel that strongly.

These websites that facilitate tracing piss me off truth be told. So many people doing DNA tracing just for fun with no thought of the consequences, these sites make money out of causing all sorts of grief. There was a process when I traced my birth family, with social workers and counselling. My DS recently wanted to track his DNA for a laugh and it pushed me to tell him about the circumstances of my birth which is complicated and something I didn't want to raise. He now is going on about his cousins not really being his cousins and does he have other 'real' cousins etc etc. He finds it all very exciting. I'm terrified he will pursue something. It's nothing for me but he could rip apart a whole community, my birth mother and father have social connections and lived near each other their whole lives. One family do not know of my existence, the other know about me but not about the fathers side.

Wildly different scenario, and please be careful with your use of ‘real’ parents. My ‘real’ parents are my mum and dad, not the woman who gave birth to me.

So you are not adopted but feel the need to challenge ‘saccharine narratives’ about fresh starts. Why is that? I was adopted from an absolute shit hole and certainly feel that I was given a fresh start and a chance in life. Absolutely nothing saccharine about it. I’m very grateful but positivity and making the best of a situation seem to positively offend people like you. Very odd. Maybe don’t comment on what you don’t know about?

Some were forced to give up.their children because of the church sticking their noses in and attitudes of the time.

They never got a chance to patent. The children were taken away just because they were single, not anything they'd done wrong.

@Pearlstillsinging

Surely surrogacy is a form of the adoption process, at least one of the parents has no biological link to the child. The removal of the child from the birth mother must be just as traumatic as in cases where the removal is court ordered.

Yep, this. ^

This is why I can never understand why many posters on Mumsnet go absolutely batshit when anyone suggests surrogacy/that they are considering using a surrogate. Yet they are fine with adoption.

It makes no sense whatsoever. Both scenarios involve a baby/child being removed from its mother.

Some go on about women from 'poorer' countries being used as surrogates, and being given very little money for it, and being taken advantage of etc etc, yet many people use surrogates who are more than willing, and are well paid for doing it.

Because it reflects reality that the child has biological parents and contact may be in the interests of the child. Because adoption and fostering shouldn’t be about what best suits the adoptive parents but what is in the best interests of the child.

@Lavender14if there is already a strong bond with birth parents, and they dont present a signficant safeguarding risk, then foster care should surely be the plan? A lot of adopters are open to contact with siblings, particularly if it can be maintained via other adopters. But a strong bond with birth parents would be better facilitated through foster or kinship care.

I think you are right and obviously you’re coming from a place with a lot more direct experience than most people.

A lot of people in my wider family (all adults now, from their 30s to their 70s) are adopted. Only a minority chose to meet their biological parents. As one of them said: “I already have a Mum and a Dad.” He meant his adopted parents. I think we risk damaging that key relationship and confusing things

I should add, perhaps, that a number of those adoptions were inter-racial, and that wouldn’t even have been allowed at various points which I find sad - better a kid grows up with two loving parents of a different race than in care surely? Though I know this is controversial and many disagree.

That’s your perspective, from my perspective I don’t see my adoptive family as my real family.

I think your argument is backwards. If a child is not going to be able to return to their family, they are going to have more "normality and security" being adopted, than potentially being moved about the foster care system. Wouldn't your argument produce cases where the child would never be able to be returned to their family, but HAD to be kept in foster care and never adopted, because they still wanted contact with their birth parents?

Imagine
Child one spends a day a month at the zoo with their birth parent, and the rest of their time with their forever parents at a home that will be theirs until they grow up and move out.

Child 2 spends a day a month at the zoo with their birth parent, and changes other carers from time to time during their lives.

Discounting either birth parent being utterly abusive on the day a month at the zoo, surely child 1 is likely to be overall more settled than child 2?

That was a completely different time... 60+ years ago for many. That doesn't happen anymore, and it's not fair to bring up that long-time-gone scenario, to people wanting to adopt a baby today. (And to not want the adopted child to have contact with the bio parents...)

Why?

@the7Vabo if contact is best, then surely in those circumstances shouldn't the children stay in foster care where it can be safely maintained?

Separate to that, if you could receive lots of support and be paid to care for a child and facilitate contact, why would you not choose that over being an adopter? As an adopter you rarely get financial support and you get very little other support. Foster carers can get respite.

I think to be honest it's the reality of the life of the child you're adopting and it's just part and parcel of supporting and caring for any child who's being looked after/adopted. People's circumstances change, I also work with biological parents who's children have been adopted and while they were not in a place to parent the way they needed to initially, they are now a few years later and that relationship is now very positive both for them and for the child. Severing all contact in this way is a massive thing. Changing a child's name is a massive thing which is why it can't be done by a parent even in cases of domestic abuse. Its important that an adopter is able to accept every aspect of that child's identity and journey as they will be partly responsible for helping that child feel proud of who they are. I think most people prefer adoption over fostering due to permanence- they know they will be caring for this specific child for the rest of their life as part of their family and they can make the necessary decisions for that child's best interests whereas in fostering (even long term) you don't have that same security or ability to make those decisions. This is particularly important when you look at the stats showing that most fostering placements break down when children hit puberty and start acting like teenagers. I think it's important to have that sense of belonging and core responsibility when things get tough. In terms of contact with biological parents, that's something most adoptive parents should already be doing to some extent if your trust works as ours do and prioritises foster to adopt placements to reduce the amount of placements a child will have before they either return home or are freed for adoption. So this shouldn't be strange. I also think having some degree of compassion for biological parents is crucial when supporting a child who's trying to process WHY their parents did/ didn't do certain things even if you never meet them. It doesn't mean excusing awful things, but being able to be level headed about it.

Edited to add that i think realistically there should be much more support out there for adoptive parents and children (and siblings/ extended family like grandparents) to ensure the adoption is set up for success as much as possible. There is a lack of this and i don't think it's talked about enough.

I’ve already explained up thread.