No legal aid = baby adopted

[CFSKate]

I saw this on Channel 4 News yesterday, I only saw it part way through, but it went something like this, there was a couple who were accused of abusing their child, they couldn't get legal aid, the court had the child adopted, and then it went to court again and new evidence said there was a medical condition and the parents weren't guilty of abuse, but the adoption is final, they can't get their baby back.

formerly. Birth parents who were legally the parents from the start are at risk of having their child removed incorrectly. And there isn't always a black and white way to prove it was wrong like in this case. Sometimes it's just short term fostering, a few months or years for older kids that leave permanent deep scars. Taking children mistakenly from birth parents is far more common than the rare reversal of adoption. And yet as far as I know doesn't play any part in the decision to conceive for the rest of the population except for those involved. No reason to think adoptive parents would be any different.
The only effect would be more care to make sure adoption was legal and the best choice in the first place.

Ayeamarok, whydoicare, xenia, I really don't think you give good arguments for keeping the child with the adoptive parents.

Also, many of the ppl advocating returning the child to the original parents have expressed huge sympathy for the adoptive parents. What they are saying is that they believe it would be better for the child in most circs to be with their bio parents and this is widely believed by professionals also. If the child had been fostered, the arguments about attachment and who should play what role aunty or mummy would not be discussed. The difference is the legal aspects of the relationship not the emotional ones. Adopters often recommend Primal Wound (written by an adopter not an adoptee) and this is exactly what this is about, the fact that adoption itself is widely understood to be a trauma and that trauma has been healed in the past by children being reuniting with their bio parents.

The feelings of people who adopt are not being marginalised.

I wouldn't adopt, Xenia, so I am the wrong person to pose that question to.

Xenia, yes I would. No hesitation.

Give up your children because someone had messed up a legal case years ago that you had nothing to do with ?

I think if you consider a legal case that involved your children being wrongfully removed from their family to be something that has nothing to do with you, you do not deserve to call yourself a parent

I haven't made an argument for the child staying with the adopters. Just asked that other issues be considered beyond a simplistic "fairness" approach - attachment, responding to the impact on adoption in general, the fact that the adopters aren't selfish for not immediately announcing they are giving their child to the birth family. However, the comments are getting increasingly offensive and judgemental towards the adopters/adoption in general and so I'm going to duck out now.

If an adopter is put off, maybe they are not suited to putting a child first. You do get the adopters are not heroic, superhuman types, they're just people who want children, much like anyone else?

Is it the saintly stereotype of adopters - all Mother Teresas who adopt out of altruism - that is feeding in to the vilification of these specific adoptive parents, on the assumption they aren't rushing to hand over their child?

I didn't assume that was a serious point Liomsa I assumed it was just a bit of smuggery. It certainly made me itch to post something very pithy.

The Primal Wound is not often recommended by adopters it is occasionally. It is one persos theory and as far as I know has not been validated by any research. It can be helpful to soune adopters and adoptees but equally I know other adoptees who think it's a pile of tosh.

If an adopter is put off, maybe they are not suited to putting a child first You do get the adopters are not heroic, superhuman types, they're just people who want children, much like anyone else?

So much like the often used sentance on a threshold statement, "unable or unwilling to prioritise child"

Good point needs

Should there be a question mark after your last statement, NeedASock? If so, no, not very like your threshold statement quotation.

Are you seriously saying that being a normal non-superhuman but adoptive parent is comparable to being parent who is incapable of prioritising their child to the point of it causing serious harm?

Is that what you're saying? There's been so many posts referring to other posts I think I've lost the plot.

How utterly distressing for all involved. If the child is to stay with adoptive parents, the concern would be that they discover the truth when older and are completely devastated. Yet another court case/change of home will be frightening/confusing/damaging
What support will be offered? I believe Surrey's Children's Services were found inadequate by Ofsted after the inspection last winter, which does not bode well. I think everyone can agree that regardless of what happens next, the child will suffer from the mistakes that have been made.

whydoicare, xenia, I really don't think you give good arguments for keeping the child with the adoptive parents

I'm not trying to . Because I don't know the child or the family , so I don't know what's best or what the solution is .

What I am doing is questioning the certainties stated by so many posters on this thread

eg the adoptive parents have it easy , they are 100% responsible for this, the child should be moved ASAP, the child would not be traumatised by being moved again, the child will bond with the parents instantly , this will have no effect on adoptions, this will be better for the child as a teenager , this is what all adoptees who have been in this situation would want

Not one person has presented any evidence to support any of these views that they state with such certainly about child and family they have never met.

No I'm not I'm just saying that adoptive parents are not unlike a fair few other parents. Just human beings with failings and perhaps different views on what prioritising their childs welfare actually means.

For example some parents may feel that in this circumstance the best decision to prioritise their child would be to place higher value on his/her need to grow up knowing that he/she was with biological parents who did not harm him/her in any way and knowing that the law protects people from serious injustice

Others may feel that it's a priority to focus solely on the current attachment.

Pilgrimage - I was NOT asking if you would adopt. I was asking if you would do what you say these parents should do - give up your three year old child to others because of a legal mistake that had nothing to do with you ?

Formerly adoption entails taking past legal and emotional history fully on board.

It is just not responsible to enter into adoption with the attitude that any aspect of your child's history will ever be 'nothing to do with you'.

No parent, by birth or adoption, can ever responsibly take that attitude to any aspect of their child's life.

Which, of course, throws up more 'wild cards' for adoptive parents than for natural parents.

Xenia, I would have to if I was made to, just as this child's birth parents had to.

I am not stating for a moment it would be easy for them or that this is something I think they 'should' do but in terms of the law, in terms of what I feel 'should' happen it is, I believe, the best course of action for all concerned.

Ive not read anything as depressing as this thread in a long time, and I live depressing.

adoption entails taking past legal and emotional history fully on board.

Yes. And what I know of my children's 'legal history' is that a placement order was granted before they were placed with me and an adoption order thereafter.

Given that I live in a functioning first world democracy and not a tinpot banana republic that ought to be as much as I need to know about their 'legal history' given that I'm not actually party to any of the rest of it.

Unless you'd like to publicly fund adopters having independent legal advice and investigative powers to satisfy any potential adopters that an appropriate threshold had been met, which frankly, I think adopters are soon going to have to insist on.

What I know of their 'emotional history' takes me all my energy each and every day to try and help them deal with.

So yes, thanks russian, feel free to tell us wicked adopters how to suck eggs.

What's depressing about this thread is that people are conflating forced and wrongful adoption with adoption with adoption.

What has happened to this child should never happen to any child - wrongfully taken from its rightful, legal, loving parents and given away to anyone else.

That should never happen to any child.

It should not be for the state to conduct what amounts, morally, to a kidnapping, and then state that it's a done deal and it stands because the force of the state is such that it can break families apart at its will.

To support the permanence of a wrongful and forced adoption is to say that no parent (birth or adopted) has any right to consider themselves as such if agents of the state decide otherwise, even if they have no reason for that decision.

This adoption and the conclusion of the criminal case which exonerated the rightful parents of this child took place within moments of each other.

The arrogance of a legal apparatus that would allow a family to be broken apart forever on the basis of its mistake without taking even the most basic care of whether there had been a mistake before proceeding is staggering.

It is a woeful injustice that has been done to this child, and its rightful parents, and their wider family, and any future children they might have.

It is not some administrative or judicial error in the past that should now be brushed under the carpet so the power of the state to determine parentage can be rightfully respected.

The state stepping into families and removing children is characterised as a necessary evil, always conducted reluctantly. And that should reflect reality.

But here the evil was not necessary and the appropriate reluctance was not in evidence.

It was known within minutes that this adoption had been made wrongfully, and yet people are arguing that it should stand.

Utterly bizarre.

Bizarre to say that reversing adoptions made in the course of miscarriages of justice are just normal adoptions and should be respected just the same.

Nobody should respect this kind of overweening state power.

Unless you support the state having the right to come and take your children from you forever for no good reason, then you can't support what is being done to this child.

I still think about the poor mum being interviewed yesterday and only being allowed to refer to the wee one as 'the child'.

According to another article, the child was only adopted earlier this year. Previously, the parents were allowed supervised visits and the child referred to them as mummy and daddy. FFS this child should be returned to the birth parents, I don't know how anyone could argue otherwise. The adoption was unlawful and amounts to kidnapping. How can this be allowed to happen?