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.

According to this - no you can;t.

www.compactlaw.co.uk/free-legal-information/adoption-law/can-adoption-orders-be-revoked.html

I am slightly horrified that people are under the impression that a parent can chose to revoke an adoption order. Adoption gives you exactly the same rights and responsibilites as a birth parent has. It's not just as simple as changing your mind and sending them back.

Those adoption which do disrupt tend to happen after a great many years (apparently 7+ years most common and most commonly in children of secondary age). From a brief review of the Bristol stufy they seem to be saying that the research they did indicates a 1% adoption disruption rate in most groups with 5% if the child has been taken into care over the age of 4, also significantly higher rates in those children who had 3 or more moves prior to adoption.

Which having seen the effect on a move to a young child I can quite beleive that several moves could quite easily result in a child incapable of being in a family setting.

This was certainly true of my friends child.

Just got to the summary:

Between April 1st 2000 and 31st March 2011, 37,335 children were adopted and of these 565 were known to have disrupted post order and information was available in the database.

Don't worry if your child has special needs and ring them, they take the opposite stance!
It's your problem, not theirs!

I imagine it's quite demoralizing being a social worker :(

Kew, your link goes on to say "However, a further adoption order can be made to remove parental responsibility from the adoptive parents". It doesn't say under what circumstances.

(I don't generally recommend doing legal research online btw )

I too am horrified at the idea of it, given the given the use of the phrase "forever family".

Didn't someone post a link about a women who had "given back" her child because the child had medical problems she couldn't cope with, though? In all honestly I found that pretty horrifying. Although I am also not confident that the news story was the whole story so wouldn't give 100 per cent credence to it.

I am slightly horrified that people are under the impression that a parent can chose to revoke an adoption order. Adoption gives you exactly the same rights and responsibilites as a birth parent has. It's not just as simple as changing your mind and sending them back.

I think a lot of people are under the impression that any parent could go and give their child up to social services if they really couldn't cope.

When I worked for the LA you would be surprised at the amount of parents who did try and dump their kids in the office when they were having dreadful weeks

The Uk is the only European country who practices forced adoption, it is wrong and as long as it continues, there will be these kind of tragic unnecessary cases.

I feel for everyone in this case, the adoptive parents, the biological parents and the child, however, in my opinion, the biological parents and the child have the right to be together, they should never have been torn apart.

Their rights, in what is clearly a miscarriage of justice, should supersede the adoptive parents rights.

There are no winners in this case in this tragic case.

The Uk is the only European country who practices forced adoption,

No it isn't this claim was refuted earlier in the thread

EVERY European country has a mechanism for adoption without parental consent. But we are the most enthusiastic users of adoption and we need to ask why. We also need to ask more searching questions about why adoption orders are not revoked if there is a miscarriage of justice in original care proceedings.

www.childprotectionresource.org.uk/we-are-not-alone-every-european-country-permits-adoption-without-parental-consent/

Spero, thanks for your response - if you were advising a couple in their position, and you were confident that there had indeed been a miscarriage of justice, what would your advice be? And how would any court action be paid for

I would apply to discharge the placement order or revoke the adoption order. Adoption orders can be revoked but it is vanishingly rare. suesspiciousminds.com/2015/08/11/revocation-of-adoption-order/. I would argue breach of Articles 8 and 6 of ECHR and point out that the child's welfare requires a proper analysis of the impact of adoption over the child's entire life. We cannot simply assume that the child's best interests are met by leaving the child with adoptive parents, although for some children that might be true. But we need a proper assessment of THIS child.

In relation to the meeting in November, do the attendees get to contribute to the debate? Can we provide you with our comments and at your discretion you could advocate our proposals?! I am kidding. Actually, no I am not... afaik, there is discussion afterwards and questions taken from the floor. I do not know to what extent you have to have your questions 'vetted' in advance but if I do get a ticket and there are particular issues people feel strongly about, I am happy to try and raise them - let me know.

Sorry forgot to ask the question about how court action would be paid for.

they MIGHT get legal aid. If not, they could try paying a direct access barrister which might be cheaper than going the solicitor route. They could get a referral to the Bar Pro Bono Unit.

But for a case like this I imagine there would be loads of lawyers queuing up to offer their services for free because, to be cynical, this is a case that would generate a huge amount of interest.

Yes, in the UK, in 2013, over 3,020 THREE THOUSAND AND TWENTY children were adopted without parental consent, i.e. forced adoptions.

In Germany in 2010, 250, TWO HUNDRED AND FITFY children were adopted without parental consent.

Adoptions without the consent of the parents are not possible in France, Greece, Luxembourg and Spain. They are rare (practiced only exceptionally) in: Cyprus, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Romania, Serbia, Switzerland and Canada. In some countries which proscribe adoptions without the consent of the parents (for example, in Russia), the child can be given up for adoption if his/her parents are unknown, legally incapable or if their whereabouts have been recognised as unknown by a court. They are possible in Andorra, Croatia, Estonia, Georgia, Germany (in 2010, 250 children were placed for adoption without the parents’ consent), Hungary, Italy, Montenegro, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden, Turkey, and the United Kingdom (in 2013, 3 020 children were placed for adoption without the parents’ consent)

I too am horrified at the idea of it, given the given the use of the phrase "forever family"

Horrible phrase I never use it. Adoption is as much a forever family as any other family no more no less. You can remove PR from an adoptive parent for the same reasons as you can a birth parent - as far as I know there are no special rules that hold adoptive parents to a different standard of parenting to any other.

To be fair I'm hardly giving you legal advice based on googling and there is a barrister on this thread who is quite capable of correcting me if I'm wrong.

I have Spanish friends who would have something to say about holding up Spain as a shining beacon of best practice when it comes to permanence for children.

I'm pretty sure we can come up with a better system than we have without replicating the worst of other countries.

You missed Ireland Tram

They are possible in Andorra, Croatia, Estonia, Georgia, German, .... Hungary, Italy, Montenegro, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden, Turkey, and the United Kingdom

So not just the UK then Tram?

That is an extract from an EU commission report, it didn't mention Ireland surprisingly.

Didn't a few UK families run away to Ireland to avoid their kids being taken into care, don't know what the outcome was.

Maryz, Tram can't be Ian. He 'doesn't know what the outcome was'.

See? Too clever for us by far.

spero, if you're still around, say a prospective adopter decided they wanted legal representation because they didn't want to find themselves in a position like this case, or the other recent one where the AO wasn't granted because a family member turned up, what would their legal person actually be able to do?

Could you hand a CPR to a lawyer and ask them to check it would be safe/sane to proceed? That the COs and POs were safe and that there were no other options/family members available? Would a lawyer working for prospective adopters be able to get any of this info? I'm guessing not about the CO/PO at least.

So really what I think Im saying is that there's no legal route for an adopter to take to try to ensure they don't end up in a really crappy position?

If the adoptive parents were concerned about the best interests of the child, they would allow a staged handover back to the bio parents IMO. I don't know how anyone could keep a child knowing that the reasons for the adoption were unproven. They may well have only had the child for 18 months, not for 3 years, as that is how long ago the child was adopted. The child will have some memory/smell of the parents if they had contact up to the adoption.

The fact that contact seems to have stopped after the adoption (when I understood it could still continue with the adopters agreement), shows that the adopters will probably not do this.

I hope the bio parents get an excellent pro bono solicitor and get their child back. I don't know why this cannot be challenged legally as it was a wrongful adoption and the allegations against the parents on which basis the adoption order was made were not persued.

I hope they shout it from the rooftops and it is kept in the news. This is something so awful, that we should all be furious about it. At the very least the child will know it was fought for.

So really what I think Im saying is that there's no legal route for an adopter to take to try to ensure they don't end up in a really crappy position

But the fact that a final care order has been made, approving a final care plan for adoption SHOULD be all the reassurance they need. This SHOULD be clear evidence that the child's welfare over his or her entire life has been carefully assessed and weighed and the decision has been made that sadly, his/her birth parents can't provide the necessary care.

However, if something then happens to derail that final care order this can leave the adopters facing applications to discharge a placement order or contest the adoption order. I am not sure what, if anything, could be done to given them advance notice that this might be a possibility.

It seems that adopters still are NOT given full and frank information about their children, probably because the SW is afraid they would be scared off if they knew the full story.

I had a very depressing chat with a group of adoptive parents recently, who had found their posts on the support forum of an adoption charity deleted because they were making the new adoptive parents anxious and 'putting them off'. These are parents who now have to face seeing their children in LA accommodation because their behaviour has got too difficult to contain at home, due to the emotional difficulties their children have, arising out of abuse from birth families/birth environments.

Didn't a few UK families run away to Ireland to avoid their kids being taken into care, don't know what the outcome was

Ian Josephs sent me a video a few months ago which was taken by a young 'mum on the run'. She filmed herself running down a country lane with her two year old being chased by Irish police. She was then wrestled to the floor and her child pulled from her. Utterly horrible. The impact on that child will probably be life long. Running doesn't solve your problems and the people who encourage parents to leave are irresponsible and positively dangerous.

For e.g., anyone still waving a flag for IJ needs to understand that he gave money to Marie Black to leave the country in 2012. She was convicted of child sexual assault in the summer of this year. He doesn't think he did anything wrong in giving her money.
www.childprotectionresource.org.uk/helping-parents-leave-the-jurisdiction/