'I gave back my adopted baby'

[LetThereBeRock]

I've just read this article from the Guardian about a mother who gave back her adopted son because she didn't/couldn't bond with him.

I'm planning on adopting in the near future and I'm curious to know what others think of her story.

Apologies if this has been discussed already.

Cory - I think you are absolutely right that the orphanage must have been better. The Romanian institutions were inhuman. And indeed some people will be more predisposed to resilience, perhaps?

Rutter is very interested in comparing brain damage in those neglected in institutions and those neglected by their parents, to see if the two are comparable.
Perhaps it would be even worse for the latter given the instinctive expectations of a baby towards its Mother?

I think this sort of reasearch will prove to be a changing point in child protection. [lives in hope emoticon]

I am NOT getting into any further "debate" with you JH - I know from the past it is totally pointless and not fair to hi-jack posts like this, with trying to elicit any sense out of you. I regret having succumbed to responding to you in this thread and will not do so again.

I too was wondering which post of John Hemming was nonsense, but I guess we'll never know.

I just want to point out that what Rutter says about attachment problems not beginning until a baby is six months old is WRONG. The wiring of the brain begins in utero, and so much damage can be done by the time a baby is six months old. And I post from experience.

To be fair he doesn't say neglect prior to six months has no effect.
What he says is that of the children whose brains he scanned, the ones who had been in an institution in Romania past the six month mark were more likely to have irreperable damage to the brain. And that though those children may have had loving care and doing well, subsequest brain scans showed damage remaining.

Of the children who had suffered neglect from birth but had been removed prior to six months, the brain scans showed generally otherwise. Rutter certainly doesn't go on to say that the neglect had no effect, just not the effect he was testing for.

I'm no scientist but I should think that neglect and abuse on a child for any period will cause some damage. The amount of damage and its repairability ( is that evem a word?) will depend on any number of factors including length of time, level of abuse and personality if the child, I think.

And I am sorry, for your obvious hurt bythesea. Damage to children is something we don't take seriously enough.

With no experience at all, I was interested to read an article about adoption breakdown. But I was deeply uneasy about the big 'happy families' photo on the front page. I felt the author was right to leave out/change so many details of 'Dan''s story, but it made the story feel much more prurient and less useful. I felt both sad and sorry for everyone involved, and very angry.

I would be interested to know the relative level of adoption breakdowns between the US, the UK and other countries. I've always understood that the US and UK could be considered as being at opposite poles in terms of adoption policy, but from the figures I've seen here there seems to be much less difference than you would expect in the breakdown level. I'd like to hear more about how those different policies work for the children, either in cases of breakdown or where the adoption continues.

Nananina, difference between you and me is that I gave an honest and open response to the main point of this thread, which is about the woman who dumped her adopted son.

You chose to use this thread to make an unpleasant attack on the credibility of another poster. Not big, nor clever, nor in the spirit of MN, IMO.

The vitriol directed at JohnHemmings, when he has dared to point out flaws in the SS system, is deeply worrying. It really does seem as if some feel they should be accountable to no one but themselves.

Yesterday at 7.20pm Tim Yeo MP did a speech about as he called it: "child kidnapping" by social workers. It is in hansard:
www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmhansrd/cm091125/debtext/91125-0022.htm
Page down to 7.20pm.

The system in England is on an aggregate basis a complete mess. That does not mean that there is no good practise, but there is a mass of practise that simply damages children.

A lot of this arises from a mathematical error made in the calculation of the adoptions from care performance indicator.

Your case does not compare to what happens in England. I am referring to the adoptions where children are removed from families who wish to keep them - in my view frequently wrongly.

Just to clarify for others why I am saying that JH's views about attachment disorder are nonsense. In spite of the fact that he is is a scientist he has managed (as has been the case in so many other instances) to distort/confuse Rutter's research on attachment difficulties. Litchick clairifies what Rutter is saying in her post of 25thNov and BytheSea you are so right. JH consistently fails to grasp the point that insecure attachment difficulties are not caused by the birth parents inability to meet the baby's needs, from the moment of birth. There is also evidence that a baby can be distressed by adverse things in utero.

JH also states on this thread (and on numerous other occasions) that what he calls RAD is caused by a child being removed from his parents and placed in the care of the local authority. This is just not the case, babies and children are removed from parents where they are not safe and have either been harmed or there is reason to believe that they are at risk of significant harm and the decision is made after a lengthy court case by a judge NOT a social worker. In these cases it is inevitable that the child will have an insecure attachment pattern with the parents because he has been abused/neglected and has learned that adults can't be trusted and the world is an unsafe place.

I would not deny that removal and placement in care often does little to reverse the emotional damage that has been caused to the child by his parents or caregivers, but it is not caused by the removal. This is a ridiculous notion - it's like saying that a child is born with cerebral palsy and later hospitalised, and then saying that the hospital is the cause of the CP. Not a particularly good example but can't think of one at the moment.

JH likes to peddle the view that what he calls RAD (I would be interested to know what he understands by that term incidentally)is caused by SSD because it supports his theory that social workers are child snatchers who just want to snatch children from innocent parents and get them adopted and then the poor children have RAD! Sorry but this is complete and utter nonsense.

AAs far as JH's post about Tim Yeo and his comments about "kidnappers" he sounds as unhinged as JH to be honest. I have read the whole thing and I think the most telling sentence in Tim Yeo's account is "I am not qualified to assess the suitability of parents to parent their children" - quite so. He talks of the mistakes made by SSd in tthis case but there are a serious of comments in the account that are fundamentally inaccurate. For instance he talks of social workers "giving evidence" to an adoption panel. Social workers don't give evidence to adoption panels and it is not the remit of the panel to decide whether a child should be removed. It is the job of the panel to decide on whether a child should be placed for adoption IF the court is minded to make a Placement Order as they did in the case in question. Also the Adoption Panel is a multi disciplinary panel and contains representiaves from education, health, legal services as well as county councillors and independent members, so wrong there too Tim Yeo.

I think the major problem here is the same as always. Social Services cannot divulge reasons for the removal of any child because of confidentiality and this is how it should be. Tim Yeo has no idea in reality why the child was removed - all he has to go on is what the parents tell him, and parents in these cases are I'm afriad going to distort the facts to their perceived advantage.

I wonder why Tim Yeo and JH don't write directly to the Judges in these cases of so called "kidnapping" as they are the ones who will have made the final decision. Are they afriad to do that I wonder?

Sorry for long post and yes another rant I am sure but who cares............

Oh and thank you SO much Edam for putting me right ...........I see now, it's OK to call people derogatory names as long as you don't make adverse comments about posters on MN. Nobody else does such a thing now do they..........please don't bother to answer.

Obviously there are situations where babies can be harmed in utero and at an earlier stage than 6 months.

What Rutter found, however, is what he said in respect of children rescued from the Romanian Orphanages.

I don't have the research to hand, but there is research that demonstrates that each change of placement for a child causes some trauma. That includes the placing of a
child in care.

I accept that at times this needs to be done, however.

What is important about the Rutter research is that it demonstrates that the bad outcomes from some of the Rushton research are likely to be caused entirely by the care system itself.

That is not something I expected.

From what you are saying the birth mother could have changed her mind. That does not apply to forced adoptions in England.

Tbh I think that all this snatching babies for adoption targets rates up there with the diana was murdered and Elvis lives on conspiracy theories.

yes of course social services make mistakes, predominantly because they are under funded, under resourced and under an incredible amount of pressure, both from management, from the media and apparently from the public at large. Whatever they do is wrong. Leave a child with parents and you get tragic situations like baby p. Take a child away and they are accused of snatching the child to fulfill an adoption target. They can't do right for doing wrong.

Tbh I think that given JH is posting here under his rl name and given he is a public figure then his views are fair game for criticism on a public forum.

actually jh I think that SGM said that in Canada the bm can change her mind. I don't think she said that this particular bm could have changed her mind esp given two previous children had been forceably removed for adoption.

I think the point made (and am sure sgm will correct me if I'm wrong) was that in Canada babies are removed from the hospital straight to their adoptive home thus the disruption is less.

I would imagine that if the birth mother changed her mind say, after eleven months, that some attachment issues might arrive if the child were then placed back with her.

attachment issues might arise even..

"Back to the original topic - I think it's a pity that the Guardian chose this particular mother to draw attention to adoption breakdowns because I don't think she came across well and it is easy to see why people are feeling negatively about her. I think they should have chosen a UK case and one where there was more humility expressed (for want of a better word) but I can't imagine parents who have had adoption breakdowns will be queueing up to have their story told in the paper."

yes, that's it EXACTLY.
I was screeching at the article - another bad, self-indulgent article on the front of Guardian Family, by self-serving, attention-seeking women. Such a serious subject, but this woman told the whole story in terms of 'me me me', not the child. The problem is that i don't think Guardian Family look ofr important issues and resarch them, they take articles offered by attention-seeking loons like this!

I do think the Guardian article was one of the worst examples of adoption disruption to write about.

Many families suffer a lot of trauma through the process. Regardless of my criticism of the system I would not wish to understate the problems these families face.

Quoting from Alan Rushton's research:
Two recent UK studies have delivered disruption rates and further information on the character of continuing placements. The Maudsley sample of children adopted from care in middle childhood and followed up to an average age of 13 (n = 99) showed that 23% of placements had disrupted (Quinton et al, 1998; Rushton & Dance, 2006). Of the continuing placements, nearly half were recorded as a positive experience by the adopters, but in 28% of the placements there were substantial difficulties even after 6 years in the adoptive family. These adoptive parents reported being challenged by continuing developmental, behavioural and social difficulties. In the Selwyn et al longitudinal non-infant adoption
study (2006), 17% of placements disrupted and only two-fifths of the children followed up at an average of 7 years after placement were found to be free from behavioural problems. Both of the studies indicate that adoption can provide a stable home for the majority of the children although many problems do not disappear rapidly after placement and so the need for support may continue for many years.

Wannabe - I agree that I don't buy the notion of thousands of children being 'snatched' into care.
I worked in the care system for over ten years, day in day out as a lawyer, and the thing I thought more often than anything else was 'why the fuck have social servise waited so long.'
On the very rare occasion a baby was removed, the evidence, was normally overwhelming. As the child's lawyer if I had felt it was otherwise I would most certainly have appealed.

I am sure there will be some miscarriages of justice - in any legal system that will be the case - but mostly I saw children being damged by their parents and then often being damaged by the care system too.

JH -we are in complete agreement I think, that the rate of breakdown of adoption is atrocious - and let's not go there on foster care!!!
I am also hugely critical of the care system in general. The state is purportedly the parent of these children and lets them down in an appalling manner. No other set of children have worse outcomes. I accept that many of these children arrive in care so badly damged that it is hard for the state to succeed. But I do not accept that it is impossible.

However, where I will never agree with you, is that the answer to this problem is for the state to intervene less. That's to mu mind a cop out.
We're failing these kids so let's leave them with their parents who have already failed them.
That to my mind has been the recent policy and has failed dismally.

I don't get it really, surely the day you take the child home it is yours just as if you pushed it out yourself, well that's what I thought anyway.