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.

Thanks, Mary & Sigma. I didn't word my question well. I remember our SW saying that AOs are very rarely made on medical evidence alone and I wondered if this is actually the case.

There is no way I would relinquish my (adopted) DD if a miscarriage of justice was found to have occurred. I would facilitate contact, under certain conditions, but would not give her up; it would be a betrayal of her.

If medical evidence is clear then that would be sufficient for a final care order which would lead to an adoption order. For eg. Baby perfectly normal, left in care of parent in hospital, 1/2 ,later has brain damage from cerebral haemorrhage. CCTV evidence showed parent going into room with baby. Court found that parent had shaken child.

The problem is when the medical evidence isn't clear or can't point to a clear cause. Then the courts have warned that you need to be very careful. If the medical evidence is not clear you will have to have evidence from other sources to support an argument that the child has suffered or is at risk of suffering significant harm - for e.g. - is their violence, drug abuse etc in the home.

Proceedings cannot be made public unless the Judge orders it - see for example the judgments in the Minnock case recently. But increasingly judgments are published. We really do need to see the judgment in the care proceedings here.

Thanks, Spero.

Just to check with everyone saying the adoptive parents need to 'hand the child back' no questions.

If you discovered your child had been accidentally swapped at birth, and you've been bringing up another child for 5 years. Would you be happy to just 'hand them back'?

What if your birth child has subsequently died as in infant, so you wouldn't get 'your' child back in return?

I think this is a terrible exceptional case. I hope the birth and adoptive parents find a way through it. But exceptional cases make bad laws, and AOs need to be final for the security of the children.

I don't think they should hand the child back no questions, but yes I do think that's the end result that's best. But if the birth parents hadn't been forced to hand her over in the first place the situation wouldn't have arisen. And while I do pity the adoptive parents, the childs best interests, which I think is being returned, supersede all the parents rights.

sorry i don't have time at the mo to read the whole thread but as someone who has always been very keen to adopt the original post does really worry me. I was under the impression that children are only placed for adoption once every avenue for legal appeal etc has been exhausted. This seems to be the only sensible approach and if that means giving more resources to the legal system in order to speed up proceedings then so be it. There's easily enough money in this country to do that.

I know some amazing foster carers who have 10+ children - birth, adoptive, fostered-and-stayed-part-of-the-family, SGO. People like that are incredibly rare, and they would be the first to say that there were dozens more children who 'passed through' over the years.

'Adoption' is firstly 100% commitment and love, and that can't be 'ordered' by legal status. But legal status can give parents and children the security they need to develop commitment and love, whether their children came to them by birth or not.

The trouble is, children can't be kept in limbo indefinitely. Long term foster care and children's homes both have a place, but are not a good solution, only sometimes the 'least worst' solution. As is return to first family. As is adoption.

The time I couldn't see my DDs, and knew they were unhappy with the family member they were placed with, was the worst time of my life. I was in pieces. Just as one set of parents is going to be in this case . Only adoption gave them and me the security to prevent that ever happening again.

Lurked - as you do not know the child in question or either set of parents, you cannot assert what is in the best interests of the child.

The thing is, first family can challenge the making of the adoption order. And you can't apply for an adoption order until the child is placed with you, and has been with you some time (I think 3 months with the agreement of the SWs, a year without their agreement?).

So there is no way of being sure that, if things are going well, you will get an adoption order BEFORE the child is placed and you develop a relationship.

A case has been in the news recently where a family member had a child placed with them on a SGO, and has now been accused of causing the child's death. So placement with extended family is not necessarily the answer either .

Of course, that security meant that all their fear and pain and anger that they had been bottling up suddenly got expressed. Frequently. At length. Directed against me because they felt they could trust me. It was a compliment, but VERY backhanded

ipaid well of course I don't. I'm using the reasonable assumption both sets are equally capable of being good parents, and that there's quite a lot of evidence about that being seperated from birth parents, whatever the reason for good or bad, does cause a whole range of issues on a varying scale of severity in adult life.

ipaid well of course I don't. I'm using the reasonable assumption both sets are equally capable of being good parents, and that there's quite a lot of evidence about that being seperated from birth parents, whatever the reason for good or bad, does cause a whole range of issues on a varying scale of severity in adult life.

Lurked, some would assert that it is the act of separation from primary care givers that causes the issues, not the act of spa ration from birth parents per se

The same people would assert that a further separation from adoptive parents with whom a child has formed an attachment would therefore 'double' the issues, not 'halve' them.

Toko, I know of cases where adopted children have been harmed by their adoptive parents.

It's easy to forget that humans are just humans some are not very nice, it does not mean that an entire group of people should be judged by the negative example.

I know you weren't saying that, but would you have made that comment about the family member is it had had been an adoptive parent?

Jenny.

Some would also quite understandably look at the difference between several types of risk and the likely impact of all of those and see if any thing could be put in place to limit the risks reduce them and or what was the worst likely risk, before they got into a this or that arguement.

Needs

I have absolutely no idea what your post means.

lurked, you're paying no heed whatsoever to the fact that has been pointed out by several PPs already which is that all the moves that have already happened will have had at least some effect on child, possibly really quite serious effects that may cause serious issues such as disordered attachment, anxiety and other things. Moving him/her again will only compound these issues and placing him 'back' with birth parent ps certainly won't 'fix' any of them.

That's why most adopter's on this thread keep on saying none of us know what's in best interests of this child. Because we don't.

You really can't underestimate this.

Or what Jenny said.

Did I really just use an apostrophe in a plural?

fewer care proceedings because SS just don't bother to get involved. It isn't my impression that there's only budget to give more support than we give here - in fact my impression is there is less support.

In Ireland they are still (despite constitutional amendment) far less likely to remove children permanently and have them adopted.

To an extent that is hard to justify.

Relatives of mine are long-term foster carers of two little sisters, both removed as babies, both addicted at birth.

There is some talk of possible adoption one day, but I think they would have been adopted by now (by my relatives, who would adopt them in a heartbeat) in the UK.

Currently they have regular supervised "contact" with parents who either don't show up, or are wasted when they do :(

The parents have their expenses covered for these visits.

I wouldn't be holding Ireland up as any kind of example.

And yet bizarrely, Ireland is the place that Ian Josephs sends a lot of the 'mums on the run'....

But I think they are getting a bit fed up with this from what I have heard.

To clarify, this family member would never have passed the assessment process for adopting.

But because she was a paternal family member of one DD (they have different fathers), a lower standard of care was accepted.

I also know adoptive parents/guardians who are from extended family and I can see are the best possible parents for their children who are also grandchild/nephew/niece.

There is quite a body of evidence that lower standards of parenting (obviously a subjective judgement) are accepted from family carers, because of the benefit of remaining with the first family. Which I completely accept - the question is where the balance lies. Especially when the children involved have experienced serious trauma. For most parents 'good enough' parenting is good enough. But once a child has some sort of additional needs, then additional parenting skills are also needed.

Sorry, for most CHILDREN 'good enough' parenting is good enough...

I too have seen one case of parenting from an adoptive parent (not british and not assessed in the UK) so dreadful that it resulted in a criminal conviction so I'm more aware than most that adoptive parents are not perfect.

I've also met adoptive parents whose parenting I don't agree with (and I know A LOT of adoptive parents)

I think it's fair to say however that adoptive parents tend to be more stable and balanced and able to deal with the issues that tend to come with adopted children than the birth parents (and dare I say it often then their extended birth families).

But thats hardly surprising - the kinds of issues that often create the soup of chaos that some of these children are born into would on the whole be weeded out as part of the assessment process. Drug abuse, alcoholism, poor parenting themselves and a chaotic lifestyle etc.

I don't take any particular pride in this Needs because if you put a whole bunch of birth parents through an assessment process you'd also end up with a bunch of parents who are more able to cope with a wider range of problems. And believe me you need it in about 60% of cases in the ong run (and frankly about 95% of cases in the short run)

tokoloshe - there was a very interesting comment from the judge on that case which hit the papers a few months ago. DO you remember the one that was all "our blue eyed blonde child was stolen because we smoked"?

That case was published (I sometimes think that the people who have the most to lose with less secrecy though I agree at this point there isn't much choice) and the facts of the case made it abundantly clear that the smoking thing was the tip of a very large iceberg. But the judge did comment about how the state cannot intervene because it thinks the parenting isn't good enough. The state is not allowed an opinion on the quality of the parenting only if the child is at risk of significant harm (I might not have the wording right). In other words good enough is indeed good enough.