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?

Fortunate to not be in foster care, not fortunate to have unsafe birth parents, obviously.

Where did that poster say she was talking about 4 decades ago? (1970s was 5 decades ago by the way...)

Nd is genetic so yes, it would have been there. But you might have done worse for yourself if growing up in an unstable environment.

This is such a romanticised view of it, adoptive parents aren't super human.
There could be any number of reasons for the lack of contact, not least because the adoptive parents have two sets of social workers to appease, new nursery to settle the child into, new routines, finding out their likes and dislikes, more settling, contact with old nursery teacher, contact with medical professionals... I'm sure you get the drift and can now understand why contact with the foster carer falls down the list.
Contact with the foster carer will likely have been phased out, and don't forget that the foster carer likely has other children to look after; the foster carer will also be part of the child's story and contact information kept for future use if they wish. Many get invited to milestone birthday parties or weddings, but a good foster carer will understand that they did their job when the child is adopted, that may be the end of the story.

I can do maths!

There is a focus on trying to keep families together because there is a lot of research that shows that children fare better when they grow up in their own birth families, even if these families aren’t great. Many children in foster care will be reunified with their families. Only the worst cases will go on to have a court ordered adoption.

Being removed from your family is also a trauma. Being adopted is traumatic, even for a baby. So that’s why those decisions should be made in the interests of the child and not any adults involved.

Honestly your suggestion that kids should be whipped away and adopted harks back to the old days and this didn’t always end well for children.

Anaesthetist going through final stages of fostering approval. I'm initially doing respite for severely disabled, then a few yrs post cct will do long term fostering. From my social worker I've been told kids don't go for adoption at all over the age of 3 unless as a sibling group as people only want to adopt very small babies. Over that go into long term foster care where family contact is 1-2 a year max but often never. The benefit of them being in fostering rather than adoption is they'll still get state funding which you don't get with adoption so I can put all the money in a savings acct for them for uni etc

If abortion rates have plummeted, it's probably because nearly every couple can now get pregnant if they want to. You can get fertility treatment with no invasive assessments and almost immediately, without the challenges that come with a traumatised child who may well also have disabilities such as FAS. Even if you absolutely can't get pregnant, surrogacy is now fairly mainstream.

There are also many crossover traits between ADHD and attachment and trauma related difficulties. Even a baby removed and placed at birth will grow up with trauma so there are dlways variables at play. It is very hard sometimes to tell what the root cause is for some children. When it is combined with alcohol and drugs in pregnancy or patchy birth family history it's even harder.

Agree with this. If it’s beneficial to be in contact with the birth family, they should be fostered. Adoption should be for those cases where it is not beneficial for the child to be in contact with their birth family.

I’m so sorry to hear this.

I wonder about this title, is it “ruin the chance of adoption for so many children” is is
actually “ruin the chance of adoption for so many who want to adopt children.”

It shouldn’t be controversial for the starting point to be contact with biological parents.

I can’t see how any child could come through adoption without being negatively impacted in any way. Ongoing contact may have challenges but so does wondering about your biological family. There isn’t a one size fits all approach.

And historically adoption has been a dirty business - the Irish babies being sent to America etc

While some biological mothers genuinely can’t raise a child or don’t want to, there is also a sense that mothers are seen as too poor/lower class to raise a child and the child would be better off with a middle class family who will take them to Brownies. And in some ways they would be but it’s very complex.

I was adopted at birth and agree with you! It is very important for a child to understand that they are adopted though (cannot understand why anyone would try to hide that) and for them to be able to ask any questions they want and contact the birth family as an adult if they wish to. Personally it never bothered me to be adopted, nor did it impact my relationship with my parents.

It actually hurt me deeply that my birth family weren’t more enthusiastic about staying in touch when I met them. They were just too young, if they had been unable to care for me for more unfortunate reasons I’ve no doubt it would have impacted my self esteem and confused me if I saw them as I grew up.

However…
it was important for my sense of self to know who they are, who my sisters are, it’s been so important to know that I’m glad they didn’t raise me! It would have been awful to be left wondering forever.

Yes I definitely agree with you. My parents were foster parents for years. Contact was always very stressful for the children in our house. I would consider fostering myself but I saw the toll it put on my parents having to deal with the parents.Fostering the kids was generally rewarding but the parents were often a nightmare. Some of the parents were angry and abusive about their kids being in care and would come to our house for contact and be very hostile and critical.

I thought the reason most children were available is because they have been removed from their parents care. This all seems odd.
DD has a friend who is adopted along with a half sibling. There are lots of half siblings around. DDs friend has contact with some of them, they are all older and seem chaotic/bad influence. Their mother took a variation of drugs and they all have some issues.

@FerriswheelsKissesandLilacsI really don't think this is the case, although I'm sure ivf success rates have improved to some extent. I see lots of couples on the uk adopter forum who have exhausted IVF. A lot of them are then put off adoption because of the contact issue.

@Oldenoughtoknowbetteryoungatheart thank you so much for sharing that. This is where the current thinking and research comes from, although it is very much case by case. I hope you and your daughter are in a good place.

Contact with the foster parent wouldn’t be about the foster parent. It would be the child knowing their whole life story.

Foster families I would have worked with would have kept life story books for children so they would have photos and momentos to explain parts of their lives that they will go on to not remember fully otherwise. This is all very important in the child understanding their identity. Imagine how unsettling it would be if you lived somewhere between 3 and 5 for example, but you only have flashes of memory about it. Somebody saying, you lived with me, I cared about you, you loved peppa pig and we fed the ducks on Sundays is all very important for the child has they grow up.

Well are they adopting for the right reasons in that case? Infertility is the most awful thing for anyone to go through but adoption isn’t the cure.

Adoption should be about the child not a solution for whatever the adoptive parents are dealing with.

I don't know what this supposed change in rules is but my friends adopted a baby earlier this year and there's never been any suggestion of having any contact with them. It's obviously not in the best interests of that child. If it was, my friends would be putting the child's needs first. If it's in the best interests of the child to have contact with the birth parents, then they should. If the adoptive parents are more concerned about not being interrupted by the inconvenient fact that the child has a birth parent than doing what is in the child's best interests, then it's probably best they don't adopt.

'Adoptive parents ego'? Are you an adopter?

That's pretty much what I meant but more eloquently put. The poster I was responding to made it sound like there was zero contact (or the foster carer would have been deleted out the picture) once the child they had known had been placed with their adoptive family which from my experience, is highly unlikely.

I am a Foster carer of over 20 yrs experience and that is a load of nonsense. Children over 3 absolutely came be adopted and many children who are adopted are way past the baby stage as the while system takes so long. Also we had a long term foster child ( still with us post 18 ). We had 6 contacts a year in place for many years not just once or twice a year and contact rarely stops completely. Also the fees are to enable the carer to be at home full time not to provide a university fund.
And as we foster and adopt the most complex disabled children in our case some financial support is ongoing in adoption as we both have to be at home due to our childrens need for round the click care. We cannot work outside the home..This is called an adoption allowance.
So in short you need a social worker worker who is better informed especially if you are on the point of being approved.

As an adopter it wouldn't have put me off but I was asked if I would consider direct contact with grandparent but said no. The foster parents who knew the family told me the children would not thrive and atrach if ik contactwith birth family..i do know many people who have withdrawn from the process even with letterbox contact. When they became late teens and one grew curious and found parent on Facebook I initiated slow contact culminating in face to face..a relationship began to be built until an explosive incident occurred, more trauma and children never want to see parent again. I thought they were reformed and had taken accountability but were not capable and if had been introduced earlier would have been worse so I disagree with this completely. Mostly though it is the woeful lack of post adoption support that puts people off.

You did the right thing in changing their names OP, the deserve normal names - not you being lumbered with trying to defend silly names. Don't pay mind to anyone saying you shouldn't have changed them. They'll be grateful as adults.

You did the right thing in changing their names OP, the deserve normal names - not you being lumbered with trying to defend silly names. Don't pay mind to anyone saying you shouldn't have changed them. They'll be grateful as adults.