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?

I agree. Imo, there's some similarity with the old model of sperm donation where children were often not told and when they did discover parents were often angry they might want to know more about their bio dad.

If you can’t live without complete control and being a sole parent and only family then adopting can’t be for you.

Well said.

I feel like you are shooting the messenger here as I DO support contact. But many adopters here have given valid reasons why they can’t. I also hate all the rhetoric about ‘ownership’. People own pets. They do not own children. I do not own my children. But I do have the legal right, within the framework of safeguarding laws, to parent my children how I see fit. Adoptive parents are the UK’s most vetted parents. The process is lengthy and gruelling. It is not for the feint-hearted. Nor is parenting children born addicted to drugs and alcohol and living with the lifelong brain damage caused by said addictions. I’m not defending adoption. I don’t generally speaking think it works. I don’t think that adoption in its current format will exist in two to three decades. I think we will revert to ‘institutions’ where trained staff can rotate shifts of therapeutic caregiving to meet the needs of society’s most harmed and vulnerable children.

A tiny point but do you think children leaving foster care go back to their birth family? I assume you don’t actually think that but it seemed an odd thing to say. Your last paragraph also seems to imply that foster homes are not loving, which is no more true than it is of adoptive homes.

Sorry, I was more referring to what you’d said about the OP having the legal right. I note you did say you support contact.

Im am sorry I don’t mean to be insensitive as you sound as if you have been through it.

It's interesting the points made about names.

My birth mum chose my first name, and my adoptive parents liked it, but my dad liked another name more.

My mum said she decided to call me the name that my birth mum had chosen, as they decided that they did like it - plus of course, it was connected to my birth mum as her choice.

My middle name then became the one my dad would have liked/chosen instead.

I think this was a perfect solution and I prefer the name my birth mum chose.

Names are obviously very important and personal, but i do understand how sometimes adoptive parents might want to choose a name that they want but honouring a birth parent's choice should come first IMHO.

Yes,I don't think anyone here, even in posts I see as unfair, has said that adoptive parents shouldn't be called mum & dad. And surely most would agree that adoptive children need to feel safe & settled with their adoptive parents?

In most cases contact post- adoption is not recommended. In the cases where it is recommended, it is only a recommendation and they would not decline a suitable adoptive family on the basis that they didnt wish to facilitate direct contact.

As adopters we always (unusually?) write first for letterbox. That way BM has something to reply to, and receiving our letter gives her the prompt.
We also send good quality photos from non identifiable locations or holidays.

Exactly this.

I am glad I was able to experience being a normal child with a normal family. I didn’t have to have contact once a month with Joan or Fred or Wilma at a contact centre with social workers etc. Or worry if my mum was upset or if Fred was upset.

My family were my family. I didn’t have to mention I was adopted if I didn’t want to. It was my business and no one else’s.

I felt loved, secure, permanent. My family is my family. I have not one doubt about that. I appreciate I was fortunate (I hate using lucky - my family and I were both very lucky - I believe I brought great joy to them too).

If I had been 10 I may feel differently. But with no living memory of a birth family why on earth make my life harder. I don’t need to make Fred and Wilma feel okay with their choices. If I wanted to see them at 15/16 then support me, but if I didn’t (and at 2/3/9 years old - can I really consent?) then why force me from an early age? (I feel the same about abusive parents too following divorce). My birth family either couldn’t look after me or wouldn’t look after me. So I am very glad that was the end of it. My family got me and I got to make proper bonds without the background family chipping in (well meaning or not).

I do feel adult adoptees should be able to access free counselling for life with adoption experienced counsellors. Or at least a course of 10 sessions. Had I been adopted now I would have had extra support as a child - which I didn’t get and in the main didn’t need. Schools for example take ex local authority looked after kids in as a priority for school places. But a generation(s) of adults from the 80s and before didn’t get much assistance and as adults would only get it if they can afford it.

I think those in power/society need to make decisions around the long term care of children who are unable to live with their birth families and fully fund whatever plan they go with. What we have currently just isn’t working and blurring the lines further will cause more trauma to those we are trying to protect.

We have long term foster care for children with a plan of ongoing contact with birth families. The unpalatable truth is that is incredibly expensive and foster carers are leaving in droves. The shift towards expecting adopters to fulfil a similar role without training, support or resources is resulting in the dramatic drop in adopters coming forward. Like the op, my heart breaks at the thought of the many children who now won’t have the stability and permanence of adoption and the many who will inevitably experience multiple moves and children’s homes due to the lack of foster carers. It is a national disgrace.

And I am glad I was given up for adoption. If I ever met my birth family I would say ‘Thank you. My childhood was wonderful. My family is amazing’.

If I ever think of my birth mother I just hope she has had a fulfilling life and is at peace with her decision. I wish her all the best and genuinely thank her for her choice. And I have never had adoption counselling. I recognised that I was at peace from around 13/14 (so old enough to process, dwell on my history, have knowledge about adoption).

I agree. I was adopted because my parents thought they couldn’t have kids. So they ‘chose’ me. Then they found out they could have kids and I have siblings 😁. And now my siblings have nieces/nephews etc. I like my story. I have a story.

Awful that the feelings of people who wouldn’t/couldn’t care is put as a higher priority than a family getting a longer for child and a child a stable and permanent home. To allow bonding to occur.

I have fostered too. Going through the foster mill as an adult is nothing like being an adoptee in my opinion. So much about making notes and arse covering and remember they are NOT your child so you cannot do x,y,z. I fully understand why but I also understand why a rebellious teen or child who is angry and upset can end up feeling unloved and uncared for. And as for the numerous vulnerable girls in care who have been victims of rape gangs. It’s clear the authority are doing a very poor job. A closed adoption with a family life would be far better than that surely? Knowing how many girls are victims of rape gangs, actually hunted down by rape gangs who know they are vulnerable. Why are the authorities not doing everything they can to get children adopted? It’s clear the care homes CANNOT protect the foster children.

Once again it’s about the rights of adults not the needs of kids. Kids need stability, security, permanency, protecting.

My understanding is that the majority of foster children are now removed rather than relinquished (as single motherhood is no longer taboo). So if adoptees aren’t coming forward. And children remain in care moving from home to home. Then surely closed adoption (no contact with birth family until 18) is the best solution? The alternative is a childhood in the care system - how can that be better?

To clarify, I was oy talking about face to face contact. We do letterbox, which neither birth parent has ever replied to. I do think that isn't fit for purpose. People with low literacy levels and now people brought up in a non letter writing era are unlikely to reply.

I've often wished there was a system like the nursery type set up, where you could upload updates (photos of that's your thing) and they could leave comments, like a private message board that social care could monitor.

There is! And it’s being rolled out!

www.cypnow.co.uk/content/news/digital-life-story-tool-to-roll-out-across-regional-adoption-agencies

"I am glad I was able to experience being a normal child with a normal family. I didn’t have to have contact once a month"

Good point. My DDs (placed age 5) absolute top priority at primary school age was being like everyone else. She hated SW visits and was extremely unsettled by them. She hated that she'd had another last name which occasionally got used by officialdom by mistake. Belonging and being 'normal' were massive to her.

"Had I been adopted now I would have had extra support as a child"

Sadly this is not the case and causes a lot of difficulties for all of us. The enhanced pupil premium was helpful in primary but in secondary school just got dumped in a pot with all the free school meals pupil premium, and my DC just got discounts off school trips - a nice perk for me but made no difference at all to my DC as I'd have paid for the trips anyway. The interventions I tried to get school to do for DD they refused, they just don't get the needs of adopted children.and because DD appears ok (masks) they couldn't see her very spiky development or how she was struggling.

In terms of therapy it'd be a joke if it wasn't so serious - private counsellors are not allowed to work with adopted DC by law, therapy can only come via the local authority or an agency working for them. I tried to get DD therapy, which we both wanted her to have - our local authority took 10 months to get round to having one zoom call with me then assessed that I needed (yet another) parenting course and that they'd write DD a letter telling her I was getting help with my parenting but not offer her any therapy. I appealed twice, they didn't speak to or meet DD at all and based what they call their 'thorough and professional assessment' of her on reports written by another LA when she was in primary school. I asked whether they'd take their car for an MOT and think the mechanic had done a 'thorough and professional' assessment of it if he didn't look at the car but read a report someone else had written about it a decade ago.

Sorry @Popcornhero As a teen I would have hated the fact you and they could ‘talk about me’ via an app or you could give them my photos. (I don’t even post photos on SM). I’m not a rescue dog, whose old owner needs updates 😁. My mum and dad and sibling and grandparents were my family. I didn’t need the birth family updating - it’s none of their business! I am a stranger to them and them to me.

The thought of SW monitoring my birthday pics or what I’m doing or my blood relative (who I don’t know from Adam) looking at my special moments is bloody awful! I think I would feel a bit violated and like I have no control over who sees my pictures and life.

I’m sure other kids may like it but consent is so important especially to kids who were taken into care - an act they may not have consented to. A child cannot consent to this recording of their life on an app for strangers to see. What if the old family are child abusers? I wouldn’t want child abusers to have my special pictures! Yuk!

A birthday card or letter maybe. But I am so very glad I did not have this to contend with. And I would be seen as a successful adoptee, degree, professional job, mythical MN high salary etc, married, kids etc.

Awful - if the birth family and social workers can access this - as per my comment above.

I was not a rescue dog. To me it feels like paying £30 a year to get a few pictures and updates of a dog at the rescue centre or a penguin at the zoo. My life really is none of their business! That went the moment I was adopted. I really think giving my birth family access to private photos of me as a child would suck. They have no right to access me and my life. It’s private and I should have the right to a family life that is private and my story not public info for strangers via an App!

@nothingcomestonothing

yes I read adoptees children cannot have counselling except by specific people.
My parents didn’t get any extra cash/pupil premium etc. My friend pushes for her foster child’s pp to go on examinations for sport/music outside school! They pay it!

I apologise I have gone off topic with this post.

A post above stated ‘’I don’t think that adoption in its current format will exist in two to three decades. I think we will revert to ‘institutions’ where trained staff can rotate shifts of therapeutic caregiving to meet the needs of society’s most harmed and vulnerable children.’’

This is terrifying and heartbreaking. Do people really believe this?

The same trained staff, social workers, local authorities, police, counsellors that ignored rape and torture gangs who targeted so many children in foster care?

What analysis has been done on how being raped and tortured has harmed children in care? And what affect did not being believed have? And what affect did it have on the girls when it has been shown to have been covered up by the authorities and police to protect the rapists? What compensation will the authorities pay for the harm they have caused? How many have been affected? Maybe that is, in part, why some children are so harmed that they need specialist therapeutic trained staff on a rotation shift pattern. It’s shameful what ‘trained staff and authorities’ have covered up.

Had the girls been in a family home with a family that believed ‘that’s my daughter’ (even homes with no contact to the birth family), maybe a few of these girls would have been protected properly.

I am surprised by several things on this thread. But the thought that in the future adoptees will be being placed in institutions and looked after by shift workers is very sad. It reminds me that people still stigmatise adoptees, that they are broken. Imagine saying similar about disabled children or disabled adults or any other group of people.

Social workers allowed girls to be raped and then covered it up! I’m not sure a series of therapeutic shift workers are better than a loving family who couldn’t have children and wants to treat the child as if they were biologically their own. A child needs to form a bond with an adult, a family home is the best place to do that.

But hey at least in the institute the biological family can get an update via the MyStory App knowing their birth child is still okay and got a bit more than their daily gruel allowance on Christmas Day (after shift 2 team finally arrived at the institute after a night out on the piss). It may even allow birth mother to say to herself that life would have been better for the child had s/he not been taken into ‘care’.

Fully agree @Ahappyplaty whos taking these photos, on what device, where’s the storage and control over who sees them, saves them?
who stops them being screen shot and sent on?
are the adoptive family getting told they MUST send these photos, or to invite sw to family things to take them?
Its pretty ridiculous given the lack of support to adopters post adoption, yet sw will have capacity to engage with this for the benefit of the birth family who couldn’t/wouldnt care for them in the first place.

Names should be changeable - all depending on the age of the child and the name itself.

I knew a midwife who delivered a baby that SS took immediately, But the birth parents got to name her. They gave her a ridiculous, tragedeigh of a name, with the specific intention that they could 'find' her later on social media etc. The rules apparently at the time were that any adoptive parents would not be able to change the name.

Reader - the birth parents were not suitable people to ever find that child.

I believe that the courts can order a change now.

@Ahappyplaty I recognise that you have your views, but would your feeling that "they don't have the right to see photos of me" apply to an aunt who lives overseas and you've never met/only met once as a baby? Because that's the kind of relationship we're talking about - a relative you see rarely but who's interested in your wellbeing.
Also, though you say you have never been interested in meeting your birth family, would you acknowledge that lots of adopted teenagers - and we're talking nearly 20 years of this happening now - contact their birth family through social media and it's better for this to be supported when they are young enough to not want to be rebellious? Rather than age 14 without telling their parents?
I say this as the parent of a newly 14, but very immature, adopted child who has lots of questions about his birth family. He doesn't have social media but that's all it would take for an unsafe meeting to happen, as many adoptive families have found.

I don’t believe this will happen, or if it does it will happen in cases of very extreme behaviour for children who are a risk to themselves or others. It certainly couldn’t happen in Ireland given all the many issues we’ve had historically with mother & baby homes.

This is a very good point.

@drspouse A printed photo sent to Aunty Joan overseas who was my mums lovely aunt maybe they shared Xmas’s together when my mum was a girl. And grandma and her sister Joan were always close as girls. Yes I would be fine. I presume they know her and have spent time with her.

Adults who were deemed incapable of looking after a child and presumably have no prior relationship to my family are strangers. I really don’t want a load of random people to have my photos. Maybe they will share them with others, maybe they won’t - we don’t know them from Adam. Maybe they will doctor them, or hand to a peodophile new boyfriend or post them online themselves. Maybe the new partner will laugh at me or my mum and dad or my siblings. Maybe they will say my dress is ugly or my cake is awful. Or they would have pierced my ears by now. Maybe they will print them off and frame them and treat them with respect. Maybe they never bother to download the app. They are my images of my life. I do not see the people as relatives. They have no right to my pictures or my information unless I choose to share them myself when I know the risk of giving them that data. They are not my family. I have a right to a private family life. I have no desire for them to get weekly/monthly/annual updates about what I have been doing. Just like I have no right to get a weekly/monthly/annual updates on their life and what they are doing well/not so well.

Imagine if we told parents who relinquished their child that they had to update their child via an app every week/month/year about their accomplishments (and failures) and the child could choose to respond or ignore at their leisure.

I would hate to think my birth family have lots of my pictures and school reports etc. Just like I don’t want my ex to have my current holiday photos. It’s my story and I choose to share my story with those I want to share it with.

And I’m saying that as an adoptee who genuinely wants her birth mother to be at peace. I honestly hope she’s had a fulfilling life. But my photos and story are not hers. They are mine and my families.

How is a child self esteem affected knowing pictures and notes are sent but birth family never reply?

As for apps and photos. There are consent forms for schools and sports clubs to take photos. Who’s consenting or are adopted parents expected to take photos and if not they cannot adopt? If so that’s not true consent. Their home may be the best place for the child but they cannot say no to sharing pictures. What if old birth dad is a paedo? And photoshops the pictures to sell?

Honestly I think society has lost all common sense. We care more about the rights and feelings of incapable parents and grooming gangs then the children in care.

The child’s ability to bond, develop loving relationships with primary caregivers is the goal. This enables successful friendships, education, employment, their own family. This is the priority not Apps and making sure birth parents aren’t sad.

@drspouse i agree in the world of SM it will be far harder. I was always told by my family I could meet my birth family and they would help if I wanted to do so. I do think it’s harder now. Although tracking down old school friends can be trickier than I thought it would be. But I didnt need a monthly contact App as a reminder that they are out there. Months would pass and I’d think ‘oh I’m adopted’. Sometimes I thought I’d dreamt it! It really wasn’t a daily thought and I was told from the start I was adopted, no one hid it from me.
I hope you find a way through it and I wish you all the best. I know my views only reflect me and I very rarely post on adoption on MN but I would be seen as a good adoption example.