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?

Not if it's a baby or a toddler.

Surely adoptive parents are entitled to a settled life too? Adopting and fostering are very different concepts and our friends who adopted write annual letters but the children are very much theirs, they are mum and dad, the children are anonymous with new names and the safety that provides. One friend has a king term foster/kin arrangement that involves not disclosing school, pictures, upsetting visits etc that have caused anxiety and stress over many years.

It shouldn't be about what is best and convenient for the bio parents either.

You keep beating that 'bio parents should be allowed to see their children even after they have been adopted' drum by all means. Just means fewer and fewer children will be adopted, and many of them will end up in care... Forever. (Well, until they are 18, and then they will be released from care, and all alone, because you can bet the 'real' parents won't want jackshit to do with them, when they're 18!)

Absolutely. I was one such baby, taken from an Irish Catholic unmarried mother's home. When I met my biological mum the first thing she said to be me is that she never wanted to be pregnant and had wanted to put me up for adoption. While i thought it a strange thing to say it was a huge release for me. I had known for most of my life that mothers in this place had no choice and there was an element of guilt i felt for causing such pain and a sense of injustice because the system was horrific. Knowing that she consented meant it was the right thing and that I truly belonged with my family. It made me grateful for what happened.

Yes, exactly. As I (and many people have said, including the OP,) all this is doing, is putting people off adopting!

Anyway 9 out of 10 people agree with the OP, sooooooooo...

Not necessarily, the outcomes for children in foster care are significantly poorer than the outcomes for children in adoptive placements. But I'd also say that's also perhaps down to the age when most people are willing to adopt and the likelihood of a child being adopted if they go into care at an older age. What we need are more people willing to adopt older children. By age 3 the chance of adoption drops by 50%, by age 8 it drops by 75%. Adoption should be considered where there is no plan for reunification or where reunification cannot take place, for example where a parent is too poorly or is vulnerable themselves even if they are not a direct risk. The goal should always be to work to shore up a family to help parents parent the way their children need them to, and if that cannot be done then it's about providing the most stability possible for the children. Foster care will always, by nature, be more unstable than adoption.

@Lavender14so maybe more long term foster placements is the answer, rather than asking adopters to take on an unpaid foster caring role. Having said that, I do have compassion for my son's birth mother, but waiting around in foster care for her to get her act together (from such a young age) would have been catastrophic for him. And it would have never happened. I can see the lives of lots of adopters being ruined by this new system and placements breaking down more often. I really don't think anyone thinks about the impact on adopters in all of this.

I agree with adopted children staying in contact with their birth parents if allowed.

If its a toddler then yes there will absolutely be a relationship established. Lots of children who enter the care system even at point of birth have attachment disorders. The idea that if you get a baby straight from the hospital you're avoiding all that/ any trauma is a complete myth. And it's important that prospective adopters recognise that so they are ready and equipped to meet the needs of the child, rather than thinking they've just got a shiny new baby to show off.

Having adopted a child I completely agree with you. I had to meet the birth parents as part of the adoption process.

My experience has been that the birth parents seem to be the priority in the process, then the local authority are all about arse covering, then the child and last the adoptive parents who are at the bottom of the pile.

Full respect to anyone who adopts a child to give them a home. Hear so many stories of birth parents re-entering the child's life and the child then having nothing to do with the foster parents.

Having read some previous threads where people who wanted to adopt had to have visits with the bio parent I'm not surprised this puts people off. It should be on a case by case basis. I can't see the benefit of taking a child to see a parent who is an addict and lives in a chaotic state. Not to mention if the parent doesn't seem to care about them. It would be a negative experience.

The threshold is so high to have your children removed that surely in a lot of cases you're just taking a child back to an environment that was damaging for them.

I’m not beating on about bio parents, I’m beating on about the child. It’s not bio parents V adoptive parents, it’s about what is best for the child.

Lots of us are just fine but you don’t hear about the positive cases. Just like with everything really.

I'm adopted, my adoption was closed until I became adult. Friends have adopted under the new regime & it looks bloody stupid, cruel, & all about indulging some loud & selfish adult voices.
Being adopted isn't easy even if one's adopted parents are the best one could wsh for, the niggling feelings of not being like other kids, not good enough to keep, not the focus of that famously fierce biological parental bond, those things do intrude bcause children think childshly. It's the childish adults who've driven the "contact at all costs" fashion for whom I reserve my contempt.
In-person contact with one's birth family is something to be reserved for adulthood when, hopefully, a loving & supportive adoptive family has provided the basis for a free & mature personal choice to see or not to see one's birth parent/s & the resilience to cope with all that entails.

I think it’s really tricky.

One of my closest friends is adopted and wishes she had had contact with her birth mum growing up. Her birth mum had mental health issues at times but she does genuinely love my friend and when she is well, she brings a lot of positives to my friends life. My friend feels like she should have been able to see her mum when she was well, but unfortunately that didn’t happen. Her adoptive parents have admitted they didn’t want my friend to have contact with her birth mum because they didn’t want to share her and in family therapy have admitted it was wrong of them. It’s caused a problem in their relationship which is really sad.

On the other side of it, my friend knows other people who were adopted who would never have wanted to meet their birth parents and who it wouldn’t have benefitted.

I think it needs to be case by case and it’s very difficult. My friend feels like if a birth parent can be a positive in their life, they should be involved and that if a potential adoptive parent isn’t willing to do that if it benefits the child, then they aren’t fully suitable for adoption. I can’t possibly imagine really, I only listen to my friends views and experience and it’s been really difficult for her.

I also find your post a bit distasteful. You also comment on the birth mother going after money.
I work with mothers who have had their children removed due to addictions. I think if you spent some time with them you would be a lot more compassionate. I also was a foster carer for 9 years.
My thoughts are that ultimately the children will ALWAYS want to go back to their birth parents and you are going to make a rod for your own back by stopping contact and will pay for it in the teenage years.
I appreciate why you don’t want birth parents on the scene but I think you should put up with the uncomfortableness now rather than face much more turbulence later.

Of course lots are fine and adjust really, really well. I didn't say this is something that affects every child. But it does affect a significant enough proportion that it's something that would be adopters/foster carers should be informed about and be prepared for. To me that's all about being ready to handle whatever (if anything) the child needs support with rather than having a false expectation and then struggling because you weren't prepared. That's setting everyone up for a fail.

How do you stop it though?

Many people with teens who in theory have no contact until 18, discover their teens are instigating contact (or being contacted) we'll before 18 without the support or informing the adults in their lives supporting them. Often in dangerous ways

I mentioned above my youngish teen (13) had been doing the starting steps of searching out birth family, which we only discovered on a routine device check despite having a very open stance on it (Dw had herself searched for her own birth parents)

We would rather do some form of contact together in a controlled way pre 18, then wait and either he gets to 18 and it's a complete free for all, or he gets driven underground and does it in a dangerous uncontrolled way alone in his bedroom making risk decisions alone at 14.

In an ideal world I think my wife wasn't ready until she was mid 20s but there was no telling her that and she sought hers out easily with half of the Internet that's available now

Facebook.

Junks’n’ drunks are as possessive of their DC as they are neglectful. They’re also really good liars.

They don’t have insight into why the children were moved and often feel sorry for themselves. Very sorry.

They want DC back to finance & look after their addiction, for their own care needs and as useful assets.

DC are an easy catch.

What makes you imagine that making children maintain contact with parents so incompetent that the courts have removed their children from their "care" will do those children any good at all?

I also feel like it's important to sustain some level of contact (direct or indirect) from a medical standpoint. One of my friends has just gone through years of testing to find out she has a hereditary long term health condition, but because she was adopted in a closed adoption she doesn't have any up to date medical information on her birth parents. She found it extremely difficult dealing with the fact that she likely could have been saved months of invasive tests, having to come out of work etc before they found out what it was and how to manage it properly if she'd had that info about her bio parents as their health progressed.

I know a nice couple who adopted. They each had children of their own but wanted one together.
They adopted a girl about 8 who had a traumatic start in life and was taken away by SS.

Couple gave her a nice life. Access to things she wouldnt have had and a stable upbringing.

When she grew up she was abit wild. Kept getting pregnant etc as her birth mother had done.
Although she'd been bought up since 8 decently and in a stable environment her early years had shaped her.
The adoptive father eventually died, the mums still alive, they did their best, I think the daughter drifted though and got back in touch with her birth family.
I dont know precisely what the relationship between adoptive mum and child is now. Last time I heard they hadn't seen each other fir a while.
Such a lovely couple. Gave her a home and where nice people. It was a case I think of sometimes you cant expect a child to grow up like you, if you dont get them until later in their life, when their experiences have shaped them.

They can end up being more rough like their birth family.

Courts don't always force this though - I work with lots of kids where there is no contact or is strictly letterbox and info given to bio parent is very filtered to protect the child's anonymity. It's usually led by what's deemed to be in the best interests of the child in their specific situation. Not all parents who's kids go into care are incompetent or abusive.