Cameron's adoptions idea

[2old2beamum]

Our fantasic PM has decided adoption procedures must be quicker. Many of my friends and I have adopted several children with disabilities (we have adopted 8 sadly 3 have died) With the savage cuts proposed I am concerned children with disabilities will be left to stagnate in care costing far more than on benefits. (1 DS cost £5000/wk in residential care 1994)

Someone up thread said that medical problems will not usually result in a child being adopted.

Tell that to my friend who has moderate Learning Difficulties who has just lost her 8mo baby.

Ultimately, she was refused the support she needed to keep a baby that she lives with all her heart, was growing well, well fed, clean and tidy and not neglected.

SS's reasoning? The level of support she would require to help her manage her finances and housework now, and to manage helping her DC with hone work etc once it hit school age would be 'prohibitively expensive'

Try telling HER that they don't take DC's away on the basis of medical issues. Her contact (which was unsupervised overnights btw) was stopped the instant the adoption order was placed.

My friend is now talking about killing herself because she can't even look at a photo of her baby without feeling like her body is going to break into little bits. (Her words).

SS, certainly in our area, will readily help with certain issues, but as soon as the level of support needed to keep the DC's at home starts to approach the cost of adoption proceedings (which it can and does in the case of parents with significant disabilities), they withdraw ALL support and start adoption proceedings.

This is well documented in my local area.

I know a person who was told they were the most expensive case on the books by a social worker. I fail to see how that kind of pressure helps a situation in any way.

It will be interesting to see how the £££ balance out if post adoption support services get what's needed.

I believe that more on Megan Cootes will be in tomorrow's times. Similar to the case referred to by CouthyMow, but the family could afford to spend a few months in Spain.

I know I sound like Matthew Wright, but fat cat tax avoidance breaks and bankers bonuses......anyone?

Put the money where it is needed at a grassroots level ffs. They can have their bonuses when they get this country back on it's feet. If they don't like it perhaps they can make space for someone else with a modicum of social responsibility to step in.

The amount of families struggling under this financial pressure, doesn't take Einstein to work out this is just the tip of the iceberg.

It's heartbreaking that we are spending billions of pounds on bankers while families are being destroyed for the sake of proper, decent, effective support. And children are being taken into care - which we know often means no care at all. 20 different placements a year, arriving home from school to find a social worker on the doorstep telling you you are moving, workers in children's homes telling girls who are being exploited by paedophiles that they are slags...

This is the story about Olivia Cootes in The Times
www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/magazine/article3450199.ece
(behind the paywall)
Equally important is the following judgment about the treatment of two children in care (published yesterday)
www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2012/1689.html
Note in the latter case that "permanence" was achieved through the use of Special Guardianship Order. Hence from the government's perspective all boxes were ticked.