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?

Although she'd been bought up since 8 decently and in a stable environment her early years had shaped her.

I think people generally underestimate the role of genetics here and overestimate how much they can " shape" a child by placing them into an educated middle class enviromemt. Frequently the genetic tendencies for impulsivity or risk taking behaviour or seen as
a) all due to a trauma response
and
b) Needing to be fixed somehow

Whereas actually it may just be part of who those people are.

I was adopted as a baby in the late 1960s so admittedly in a very different era with very different arrangements and rules around adoption but I could not disagree with you more strongly. Wherever possible (obviously allowing for safeguarding concerns) children MUST have contact with their biological family. It’s taken me over 50 years to come to terms with being adopted (actually still a work in progress) and I can’t overstate the profound negative impact it’s had on my life.

My DCs were babies when they were placed. They still had a relationship with birth family in the same way they had a relationship with my and DH family. Are you going to say "don't get to know your aunts and uncles because you are a baby and don't know them yet"?

I don’t see how it is fair on 10,000’s of children now have to suffer a life of not belonging to any family, just lingering until they’re 18, then put on their own, my cousin will keep her foster children beyond 18 because she adores them, their father got his two bedroom apartment and never visits so thank goodness.
Many don’t keep the foster children after 18, the government doesn’t issue accommodation, straight to homeless services, it’s disgusting.
Surely they can move on by doing it properly. There is 1000’s of 15-18’s living in group homes because they were never adopted, only option is to return to the birth family. Bang, cycle continues.

I’m not justifying it, only saying that I assume that the specific history of state collusion in forced adoptions is why adoption law is so different here to, say, the UK, and why there’s essentially no domestic adoption. It needs to be looked at, certainly.

From my understanding Ireland is very different to the UK. As you say forced adoptions aren’t really a thing. Children who have parents who don’t consent to adoption will be in long term foster care.

I think the worst thing here is the attitude that when you adopt the child is yours and yours alone. No person is yours. But especially when adopting you need to understand while you are their primary and real parents and family - they do also have birth parents and they are entitled to know about these people and when correct form relationships with them. The idea of ownership over the child - even in the sense of wanting to protect them - has to be dismantled a little. This may be your child but you know going in that they also have birth parents. This makes it different. You don’t get to decide that door stays shut forever.

There’s quite a bit of literature about adopted parents changing names and adoptees sourcing it as a point of trauma. I’m not saying it should never be done, or was incorrect in your case, but taking a child away from its birth mother and changing their identity can never be easy.

I think we need to be careful what we wish for. I think forced adoptions UK style aren’t necessarily a great answer.

Are you adopted? As someone who is I can tell you that I am in no way ‘drawn’ to anyone or anything.

If there is once certainty with adoption it is that nothing is certain. Different children with different experiences, different birth families, different adoptive families. It is never going to be a one size fits all. We also never know whether the choices / decisions are the 'best' for an individual as there is no identical control.
I regularly tie myself in knots trying to do the best thing for my AC. All our decisions are made with their best interests in mind, but you can't always tell in advance what that decision should be.
What is right for one child will be wrong for another.

I genuinely think the UK has swung too far in the opposite direction.
There needs to be a middle ground for the children's best interest.
More and more adoptions in America are open adoption, both biological and adoptive parents can be part of the community.
It will definitely impact on people willing to adopt but I do think it is the best interest for the child, even a yearly letter.

Just piss off with your bigoted crap. As an adoptee, people underestimating me and looking down on me (like you have just demonstrated with your pseudo-science mumbo jumbo) have been the absolute worst to deal with. Far worse than missing any mythical birth family. For your information I was a straight A* student followed by two Oxbridge degrees. Pretty much everyone has something shit or suboptimal to deal with in life and ultimately you’ve just got to get over it or it will control you.

What would be a better one then? Calling it 'forced' adoption is loaded. Many many birth parents have no capacity to understand how inadequate their parenting is. They would never consent to adoption because they're not able to see what is wrong with how they parent or to see the child's needs. If they were able to put their child's interests first they wouldn't be in the position of having their child removed.

The UK system is very far from perfect but I can't see how children languishing in FC never hadving a proper family of their own, as in Ireland, is better. Or babies being close to sold to wealthier people by poorer people, as in the US and other places. Or surrogacy, where there are no checks or safeguards on the purchasers of the child. What is a better system for children who cannot safety grow up with their birth family than the system we've got?

Many of the people who make these kind of rules have zero lived experience of having a birth child let alone an adopted one. They will point to research which is often a paper based on a limited survey.

Give it 5 years and they will change the rule based on new research. Meanwhile thousands of kids will have missed the opportunity to be adopted and have had to remain in foster care.

There is no ‘rule’.

Can you point out the name and source of the rule you’re talking about?

Thanks! The voice of common sense!

@MissDoubleUthat's why a huge part of training adopters is about life story work. You can't get through the process if you want to deny a child's past. That doesn't mean that regular face to face contact with birth family is the right thing for every child, particularly as the threshold for adoption is so high and usually about serious aafeguarding concerns. For my son, his birth mother didnt even engage in letterbox contact.

Adoption in America is often financially driven - adequate parents giving up their child because they can't afford to raise it. Also America is a much more religious country than the UK, so there are elements of social disapproval of single mothers, young mothers, the 'undeserving poor' that don't often come up here. That's very different to the adoption landscape in the UK of children who have had to be removed for their own safety. You're not comparing like with like.

I personally have never met an adopter who would refuse to do letterbox, it's expected. I also know several adopters who promote and facilitate contact with birth siblings. I do letterbox twice a year and have never had a reply. I'll do it til my youngest is 18, that's what I've agreed to do so I do it with no expectation of anything back.That's very different to starting from an expectation that all adopted children would benefit from direct contact with birth family unless you can prove otherwise, which seem to be the direction of travel at the moment. My DC would be in danger of their birth parents knew what they look like or where in the country we live. There is no safe way birth family could be 'part of the community' they are a risk to my children's safety.

A poor US teenager giving up a baby is not alike to a UK adult entrenched in drugs and criminal violence, you can't expect the system that is ok for one to be ok for the other.

There is huge resistance from services to name changes. The theory is that the name given by birth parents is the only thing that children who are severed by law from their family of origin own. To be fair to the OP, though, I actually was asked to change my AD1’s birth name as it was/is so outlandish as to be highly traceable. I moved her middle name to the front and then added a middle name of my own. With AD2, I incorporated birth family’s middle name into a longer middle name of my own.

There is no ‘rule’!

The term “forced adoption” is commonly used and I can’t see how it isn’t accurate. If you take a child off someone without their consent and terminate their parental rights “forced” seems fairly appropriate. It’s a dramatic act. The state are forcibly removing the child.

I don’t there’s anything hugely wrong with the Irish system as is. Children are not languishing without a proper family, they often in long term placements with families while having some level of contact with their bio family. Two girls I know wanted to be adopted and they were when they were teenagers with consent of bio parents. I do think one model could once childen reach secondary if they want to be adopted and bio parent doesn’t consent that is something a court could weigh up. But I don’t think a starting point of removing children from parents with no contact should be a starting point.

I’d never heard the name before, but the list of baby names every year is always fascinating (to me!) All names were/are made up, but of course there are class aspects to names and perceptions about life chances which adoptive parents are perhaps more sensitised to. In reality money/access/support overcomes all of that, but not necessarily the identity issues that might arise.

Why will the children who remain in foster care 5 years from now not be able to be adopted?

I agree that changing names can be a source of trauma. My surname was changed to a highly unusual and ugly sounding one. I endured sustained and relentless bullying at every school I attended because of the name. No doubt some people will jump on the bandwagon and say kids would have found something else but the name handed them something on a plate. Once I left school I'm sure it stopped me being shortlisted for jobs. I changed my name back to my original and rightful one once I was legally old enough and it made my life so much easier.