terribly sad story about wrongful adoption where the birth parents have been proved innocent

[edam]

Today programme look at 2hrs 10mins in this morning had a segment on the case of parents who were accused of abuse, their children were taken away and adopted. Now it's finally emerged that the parents are innocent but the Court of Appeal says the adoption order is permanent and can't be overturned.

I do understand that adoption has to be solid and safe but surely the courts and social services could promote some form of contact between innocent parents and their children?

In what universe does the 'best interests of the child' = refusing to recognise and address a miscarriage of justice? Surely the child has a human right to a relationship with their birth family?

Just makes me even more fearful of SS after the stream of stories about miscarriages of justice and heavy-handed tactics. I would NEVER ask them for help.

If the children were taken away and the reason turns out to be unjust the children should be given back to the parents.

This would be truly awful for the adoptive parents but it is even worse thinking of the natural mother losing the children she gave birth to for what turns out to be no good reason.

The children should have been fostered rather than adopted while the case was looked into.

Well cote - that is about SS not thinking that Fran Lyons is not a fit mother. I am talking about adoptions where adopters have been through a 2 year process to prove their capability to parent. I don't know what the stats are for children being taken into care because the adoptive parents are crap but I should imagine they're quite low - you have to go through rather more hoops to adopt than you do to get up the duff as I'm sure you're aware.

So you admit you were wrong to say "children cannot be taken away if the parents don't want them to go (unless they are abusing them obviously)".

Cote - haven't had chance to read the last few posts but I wanted to ask you why you are referring to the biological parents as the "real" parents? The accepted term is "birth" or "biological" parents, to call them "real" is to negate the very real and strong and loving relationships forged in adoptive relationships. So choose your words more carefully unless you are intentionally trying to wound. One day, no doubt, my daughter will be told by a classmate "she's not your REAL mum". Children learn such hurtful comments from parents like you.

Will respond to other points when I have put my very real and very lovely daughter to bed.

No I don't admit that. I don't really know what point you're trying to make either. In case my post wasn't abundantly clear, unless a child is being (or suspected of being) abused, they will not be taken away from an adoptive parent. Is that better?

Legally, if they give these children back to their bio parents, they will be effectively overturning adoption law. So they cannot. However tragic and dreadful it is.

I don't think I can be much clearer.

Good point ellabella - the term 'real' is offensive I think

Message withdrawn

Happywomble
it's NOT about which parents have the 'right' to keep the kids. It's about where the keds need to be and what is in their interests.

Cote wrote "What we will possibly never agree on is whether an adoptive family is 100% as good as a child's real family. I believe it is at best a second best..."

What a callous person you are. Apart from saying that my husband and I are second best as parents, you are also saying that our daughter is second best. You couldn't be more wrong; no child could be more wanted or loved and she in turn adores us. We are a very lucky, happy family and as good a family as yours is. Possibly even better because we would never imply that another family was second rate.

Is it really news to you that the best thing for a child is to be raised by his own parents rather than previously unknown persons to whom the child has no biological connection and familial ties whatsoever?

You are taking it personally and you shouldn't. I haven't said anything bad about you and your husband, and I certainly didn't say anything about your daughter (adopted, I assume?).

hmm..spice, I think...I can't see how reversing adoption in wrongfully taken children, where families were under the allegations of abuse which did not happen, means that it would change all adoptions...surely, a lot of adoptions happen either because true abuse happened or because the Birthparents do choose to adopt thier child/children out....surely those are completely different cases.
It's the unjust adotions which need to be addressed...and I am not talking about just ripping a child back from their adoptive parents, of ocurse not, that would be cruel...
but maybe different arrangements in cases which are still in the procedures of finding out if abuse happened or not should be made.
I know fostering is not ideal, but tbh, as Fostered children get far more support then adoptive children (from the system now), it might actually be better...
maybe a closer look at fostering needs to be taken, to ensure that fostering can be at least semi-permanent in ways of commitment, similar to adoption but wihtout the legality...not sure if it makes sense...

Oh, Cote, funny you should mention Fran, because I was thinking and wondering how she is getting on now....I hope she and her Baby are doing well...

As a mother myself, if I were the one who had adopted one of these children, and found out their biological parents were the Websters, I couldn't in good conscience keep those children from knowing and developing a relationship with their biological parents.

I don't see how keeping them away from that would be in their best interests, I really don't.

I'd find it wrong to do that.

FairLady - the problem is that if they reverse the adoption order on this particular case, then it will affect all adoption orders that follow it. That's the way the law works. There is a chink, there is precedent and lawyers will try and exploit it.

In this case, the children were adopted three years ago. That means they were probably in care for at least 2 years before that. The parents did not contest the adoption at the time and presumably this new evidence came to light recently.

You cannot keep children in foster care indefinitely. It's horrible for the children. My friend's child had to be taken out of her foster home because they found she was kept in a playpen 24/7 and wasn't able to walk properly as a result. Foster parents get paid and unfortunately a lot of them do it for the money, not because they like children.

Yes expat - I would definitely make contact with the parents. I would want my adopted child (not that I have one) to have contact with its bio parents if possible - I think that's got to be best

'The parents did not contest the adoption at the time and presumably this new evidence came to light recently. '

We don't know that definitively because of the secrecy in the family courts.

They also couldn't go public without being thrown in jail.

Sorry but the majority of adoptive parents DO keep in contact the birth parents. I write a letter every year to my DC's birth mother, which is incredibly hard knowing how it must make her feel.

All local authoriites have post-adoption teams who act as an intermediary between birth and adoptive families and would assist in setting up contact if wanted. The adoptive parents of the Websters children will have a hard choice but they are best placed to assess the effect on their children.

The contact agreements are voluntary but most of us honour them because we want our children to have a relation, not a stranger, to contact when they grow up should they choose.

spicemonster...than fostering has to be re-assessed....maybe fostering for these of cases has to be done without payment, but for the love , but they still should be given the support...

I realise the whole precedence thing....but, I still don't think that it would affect automatically all adoptions, just adoptions in those circumstances.

Oh, and the reason why the parents didn't contest may possibly was that they were shitscared...they may well not be the most intelligent people, possibly...and obviously follow advice blindly, so, it depends on how good a lawyer they had defending them, etc...
Also, sadly, I have got this very horrible feelign that often whatever you do will be construed wrong, depending on how SS etc...want to see it and what opinion they have come to conclude...
Certainly in Fran Lyons case and Sally Clarks case that had a lot to do with it...(and yes, they were differnet cases, etc...)

Expat is making a very valid point...it's somehting I have tried to consider, what I owuld do...and I htink I would feel very similar, that I owuld feel it would be terribly wrong to keep the children away from their Birthparents once they have been cleared...

So, basically, the question is, in a case such as the Websters (not ALL adoptions, obviously, but in cases like theirs, which are not unique): the adoptive parents take precedence over the birth parents.

The adoptive parents wouldn't like it if the shoe were on the other foot.

Yet some feel the birth parents should.

No, the children take precedence. And the people who know them best are their "current" parents. I would be surprised if those parents didn't want to open up some kind of contact, but as for giving them back? Is there a chance the children might feel a tiny bit rejected? Or might they feel rejected that the birth family didn't want them back. It would be hard to say, that's all I'm saying.

Explain shoe on other foot, by the way, I'm not quite with you.

like blithedance says, I think the majority of adoptive parents are quite keen to keep in touch with the birth parents.

It was reported that the parents didn't contest the adoption but that may of course not be true. Also as SS had decided they had abused their child, whether the Websters had contested the adoption or not, the adoption would have gone ahead.

The more I think about this case, the more that I think it is such an unusual case that it actually doesn't tell us anything very useful about the way that such cases are decided. There are two quite distinct issues here too which seem to be getting conflated in a very unhelpful way - firstly, the transparency over SS decisions, the supervision that individual SWs get and the number, seniority and qualifications of people involved in a monumental decision such as taking children into care permanently. The second is adoption law and whether and if adoptions should be reversed.

On the first issue, I think the majority of the posters on this thread are probably in agreement that there are some serious concerns about the way that SS deals with these issues - to my mind, the baby p case is simply the reverse of the same coin.

However, on the second issue, I am strongly of the belief that adoption decisions should not be overturned. It seems to me to be a fundamental right of both adopted children and their parents that this should be the case.

No, no the children don't take precedence, because tbh no one truly knows what's going to have been in the child's best interest years down the line in cases like this.

And the one who knows one's interest best is oneself, for the most part, in matters such as this.

'in the best interest of the children' is being used by the state to condone their despicable actions and their continued kidnapping of children in some very disturbing instances (such as Fran Lyon).

It needs to stop is all I'm saying.

No more secrecy in the family courts. No more adopting these children out in record time to meet targets. When people are used as targets it's never a good thing.

blithe, as we are talking about misjustice cases, teh scenario in teh first place would be, that children were removed from their Birthparents who were loving, etc...and that is apparently o.k.. if they are under investigation for abuse, because, somehow that makes them love their children less ..., but it's not o.k. to take the Kids from equally good adoptive parents...
because the Kids are of course not at all damaged by been taken away from loving Birthparents, they would be far more traumatised by being taken away from their adoptive parents...
...it really doesn't make sense...what a warped sense of justice is that...

Well, adoptive parents feel the same as birth parents, that they shouldn't have their children removed.

So why should the birth parents simply back off and not fight for their kids the way any parent would just because three years has gone by?