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.

I agree movingon although legally there is no precedent for removing a child from their legal parents because someone (lets be honest who is now going to trust a social workers opinion) thinks they would be better off with a different set of parents.

I think that quite often about a child or two at DS's school - but thats not a legal basis to remove them.

Which is why I think they have to try t0 negotiate the appropriate answer - if its even possible to work out what the appropriate result is.

wow how sad is this, the poor parents to not ever see their child.\seems so wrong.

Nobody who could claim to love that child as a parent should would want them to grow up away from a birth family that lived and wanted them and from which they were wrongfully taken.

Imagine growing up to learn that your "parents" had conspired to keep you away from your biological family after something like this.

I would never forgive them.

You'd destroy the foster and adoption system if the legal system allowed children to be returned.

So this is about what is best for the adoption system, then?

A child must be sacrificed to keep the system pure?

Vile attitude.

I think the birth parents should get custody. It's not like even after long term foster care the child would be just moved straight back home, or to adopters, so no reason it can't be built up to slowly in this case.

As for the legal implications, I don't see it has to have much impact. It would just demonstrate the fact adoption won't be legally upheld if it wasn't legal in the first place. Thus childrens services will need to be more accountable about why a child should go from foster care to adoption.

Of course I pity the current adoptive parents, but their feelings shouldn't trump the birth parents, never mind the childs.

Well said Kew (who as usual says things far better than me)
I have birth and adopted children 2 of each I feel no less terror at the thought of any one of my children being taken. Adopted or birth the notion that one loves more or less is frankly insulting.
Legally they are the parents once the adoption order is granted. It cannot be undone in the off chance something else maybe better.
But there re no easy answers here. No one can see into the future to 'know' what the child would prefer.
What needed to happen was the correct procedure and help to be available 3 years ago.

Good luck to the people who adopted the child because with social media that child will know by the time they're a teenager that they were wrongfully taken from their birth parents who desperately want them back. I doubt they'll see their adoptive child again once they hit 16 and are deemed old enough to choose where they live.

There will certainly have to be intensive and longterm work with the child over the circumstances of his/her adoption to avoid the severe trauma of knowing he/she had been mistakenly deprived of his/her birth parents, any future biological siblings and his wider family and heritage.

The temptation will be to minimise and conceal, and that could be fatal to the ongoing relationship with his/her adoptive parents in the future.

Also I'd imagine the child will sue when they hit 18 for being deprived of their right to family life.

So, at three years of age the child only knows Mummy, Daddy and siblings and she is now to be wrenched from that security back to her birth parents. Presumably she already underwent some trauma in the initial experience of being taken from those birth parents.

I cannot imagine wanting to do that to my child and hope against hope that it will be a gradual and sensitive process. It makes me think of the story of King Solomon offering to cut a baby, over whom there was a dispute of parentage, in half.

'Intensive long term work!' Nothing can change the fact that the adoptive parents know that the child was wrongly removed from loving parents. Sugar coat it anyway you want but every day those adoptive parents are colluding in that wrongful removal.

I completely agree Kew. Personally based on the very limited information we have I would be against removing the child again.

Up thread I have suggested that some sort of facilitated contact might be an option.

I am baffled by some of these posts that completely disregard the relationship the child has with their mum and dad because they are not their birth parents. They still have a parent/child bond.

It seems odd that the child was poorly enough at six weeks for his parents to take him to hospital, but then showed no further symptoms until he was nearly 3 and was diagnosed. Is this medically possible? Surely in three years there would have been some indications of the condition? Or did no one bother to follow up any bruises because he was with "safe" foster parents?

Oh calm down Backforthis. No need for the melodrama and deciding the adoptive parents are to blame somehow. That's just stupid.

The adoptive parents have not stolen child and are not colluding in a conspiracy. They are loving and caring for their child. I suspect they probably feel wretched about the circumstances and feel for the birth parents but they are that child's mum and dad.

They have a bond because they have been in their care for a long time because they were wrongfully removed. If they cared about the child they would make sure contact was gradually reintroduced with the parents with a view to reuniting them permanently.

It is 'almost impossible' to reverse an adoption order. Which seems right.
But in this case, it seems so wrong. What a tragedy that it came to this.
Parents have been told there is ' literally no chance' of getting their child back.
What a sorry state of affairs, eh?

If they cared about the child they would make sure contact was gradually reintroduced with the parents with a view to reuniting them permanently

Why? Not being sarky but just interested in how you have arrived at that conclusion.

The child saw his parents, regularly under supervised contact, for the first 2 years.
Then that was stopped. The child has been adopted. And the birth parents haven't seen their child for the last year.

It is a tragedy. I'm sure well all agree on that :(

It's hardly melodrama. The adoptive parents know now that the child should never have been removed. The child is around 3. Every year from now that the child is kept out of contact with their birth parents is 100% the choice of those adoptive parents and 100% their responsibility. Try explaining that to a teenager.

The adoptive parents have been put in an impossible situation too.

But I still maintain that the child should be with the birth parents.
The birth parents have been wronged.
The child has also been failed by the system.
This is an injustice and thus, work should begin, presumably supervised visits re-introduced slowly, to correct the mistake.

There's a reason that it's now regarded as the best option for the child to stay with their birth family if at all possible. There's a reason that the anonimity of sperm donors was removed. There's a reason that where possible adoptions are open allowing contact with birth families. It is considered the best option for the emotions welfare of the child.

but they are that child's mum and dad.

But they should never have been.

100% their responsibility

It really, really isn't.

I can't believe everyone is so quick to condemn the adoptive parents who have done nothing wrong.

I agree, all four parents should work together now, for as long as it takes, to gently get him back to his birth parents, perhaps with a permanent supporting role in his life for his adoptive parents. That would seem to offer the child the best chance of not being a messed up adult.