Adoption: live webchat with Oona King and Jeffrey Coleman, Mon, 31 Oct, 1-2pm

[GeraldineMumsnet]

To mark National Adoption Week (31 Oct-6 Nov), former Labour MP Oona King, herself an adopter, and Jeffrey Coleman from the British Association for Adoption & Fostering (BAAF) are our webchat guests this Monday lunchtime from 1-2pm.

There's an urgent need for more adopters and foster carers. In a recent speech, David Cameron announced a new focus on the 65,000 children in care. He said: "This may not seem like the biggest issue facing our country, but it is the biggest issue for these children. How can we have let this happen: we've got people flying all over the world to adopt babies, while the care system at home agonises about placing black children with white families..."

BAAF is urging people to consider offering a secure, loving home to a child or children, especially harder-to-place children, including sibling groups, children aged 5+, and those with disabilities.

Our guests: Oona King has adopted two children, both at 13 months, and Jeffrey Coleman is the director of BAAF's Southern Region, an expert on the issues surrounding adoption and fostering, and a social worker.

If you have a question or comment about any aspect of adoption, or fostering, that you'd like to put to Oona or Jeffrey, please join them at 1pm on 31 Oct, or post your question here.

Thank you.

Those delays really seem heartbreakingly long! You're very welcome to discuss this in more depth with our advise line at BAAF 0207 421 2652 between 9am-1pm weekdays. I'm always very disappointed to hear an assessment delayed by staffing changes or professional indecision, and its just not acceptable.

@MotherInWaiting

Hi both,

I started the process to adopt in 2008, and three years later I am still waiting to be told whether or not I will even be allocated a panel date. This is not through any problems on my part, but due to issues within my local authority adoption and fostering team.

Because of these issues within my local authority, I have had 3 social workers and three times as many home study sessions as I was told to expect. My prospective adopters report is still incomplete. Over the course of the last 3 and a half years, I have sold a property to release savings for adoption leave, changed my job, moved house and had my home inspected twice (once for general health and safety, the second time a poisonous and dangerous plants audit). I have 20 years experience of working with children which I feel would well equip me for some of the challenges of parenting a vulnerable child. My home has been kitted out with cupboard locks, stair gates and various other contraptions deemed necessary - all for this child that may or may not come into my life. The emotional cost is indescribable.

I have friends in my area who have, at the end of similar timescales to my own, been told that they are not suitable candidates for adoption. This has been totally devastating to them after investing so much over so many years.

I feel that a process that takes 3+ years to ascertain the suitability to parent a vulnerable child is clearly lacking in the most basic of common sense.
In my area, resources at great cost to taxpayers have been thrown at myself and others that I know, yet we are still, after over 3 years, clueless as to whether this process will result in us becoming parents. Surely this is wrong on every level?

I am based in the South East. If you would like to contact me off-board, I would be very happy for my contact details to be passed on to you and would very much appreciate any advice or support that you might be able to offer me.

Can I ask a question? Bit confused sorry

Those delays really seem heartbreakingly long! You're very welcome to discuss this in more depth with our advice line at BAAF 0207 421 2652 between 9am-1pm weekdays. I'm always very disappointed to hear an assessment delayed by staffing changes or professional indecision, and its just not acceptable.

@MotherInWaiting

Hi both,

I started the process to adopt in 2008, and three years later I am still waiting to be told whether or not I will even be allocated a panel date. This is not through any problems on my part, but due to issues within my local authority adoption and fostering team.

Because of these issues within my local authority, I have had 3 social workers and three times as many home study sessions as I was told to expect. My prospective adopters report is still incomplete. Over the course of the last 3 and a half years, I have sold a property to release savings for adoption leave, changed my job, moved house and had my home inspected twice (once for general health and safety, the second time a poisonous and dangerous plants audit). I have 20 years experience of working with children which I feel would well equip me for some of the challenges of parenting a vulnerable child. My home has been kitted out with cupboard locks, stair gates and various other contraptions deemed necessary - all for this child that may or may not come into my life. The emotional cost is indescribable.

I have friends in my area who have, at the end of similar timescales to my own, been told that they are not suitable candidates for adoption. This has been totally devastating to them after investing so much over so many years.

I feel that a process that takes 3+ years to ascertain the suitability to parent a vulnerable child is clearly lacking in the most basic of common sense.
In my area, resources at great cost to taxpayers have been thrown at myself and others that I know, yet we are still, after over 3 years, clueless as to whether this process will result in us becoming parents. Surely this is wrong on every level?

I am based in the South East. If you would like to contact me off-board, I would be very happy for my contact details to be passed on to you and would very much appreciate any advice or support that you might be able to offer me.

@JeffreyColeman

This is an excellent question. Most children who are adopted have endured neglect or maltreatment pre or post birth. So there is always the probability of significant support issues arising. The adoption support REGS 2005 enable adopters to ask for reassessments of their adoption support needs at any time . This is a legal obligation that adoption agencies have to respond to. Problem is adoption support is still a post code lottery and needs significantly more resources e.g. no long waiting lists for therapy.

[quote SallyDon]
I would like to ask Jeffrey Coleman and Oona King about the support available to children and families post-adoption. Many children, including my own, adopted from the care system are profoundly affected by past neglect and abuse and yet the education and mental health services don't seem equipped to support, or to even understand the need for support. The all-pervading myth is still that these children's problems are 'solved' once they are placed.

What hope is there to provide a robust package of support for our children?

Wouldn't better support save money over the longer term (reduced adoption break down, lower school exclusions etc)?

Thank you.

[/quote]

Perhaps the biggest problem we face is that in Britain we spend our money on attempting to pick up the pieces once a child's life is shattered, rather than spending more modest sums on giving an adopted child the chance of success. The figures are staggering. It costs £290,000 per year to place a child in a residential theraputic centre, but 'only' £15,000-£50,000 per year to provide the treatment you're talking about; treatment that will help traumatised children recover and lead normal lives within loving families. I feel very strongly that families such as yourself are not receiving the support they need and deserve. Not only are you giving children the love they never previously had, you're also saving the government a small fortune. It's shocking that in return you don't get the help you need. Have you seen the BBC documentary "A Home For Maisy"? You probably have, but I urge everyone to watch this film to see how ridiculous and unfair the current system is. I'll be campaigning to change it in Parliament...

The short answer is yes, the process should be quicker second time around. However, the new assessment needs to cover the impact on you and your family of having become adopters as that is a new issue. But generally it should be a more streamlined assessment as you're now experts!

@InWithTheITCrowd

Hello. The current process for 2nd time adopters seems extraordinarily long, and too full of red tape, especially considering the fact that ss have already approved the adopters once (often relatively recently). Are there any plans to make the process easier and quicker for 2nd-time adopters?

I am an Independent Reviewing Officer and so review the care arrangements for children who are Looked After by the Local Authority.

I am interested to know how you think that Care Proceedings could be speeded up? I regularly chair reviews for children who have been the subject of proceedings for 12-24 months.

We absolutely have to be fair to parents and children to try and re-unify if possible, but these sorts of timescales are heartbreaking, and can make it much more difficult to then find adoptive families.

I think that the general public is often suspicious of the motives of LA's, adoptive parents and the courts, and, to be honest, the press (think Daily Mail) and the likes of John Hemming do nothing to dispel the myths of Children's Services being 'Baby Snatchers'.

@thefirstMrsDeVeerie

Can I ask a question? Bit confused sorry

Of course you can, thefirstMrsDeVeerie...

Ok, looks like I can

I am a kinship adopter. We fostered and then adopted our great nephew. We encountered a great deal of resistance from some sectors. It was very hard to get financial support to make the adoption viable and we felt squeezed into a system designed for non-family adoptions.

This made the process far more stressful than it could/should have been. Are there any plans to change this? Given that families are supposed to be the first port of call when a child is taken into care. WHY is it so difficult for interested family members?

Thank you

What do you think is likely to change? We've had Loughton's statements, and the Narey report (most of which made sense to me), but telling off social workers for being too PC (as some undeniably are) seems to me the easy part. The important, and harder, bit is to invest the significant resources and absolute political will needed to drive through radical change in the system and in the resources that support it.

Right now it seems to me that this country's attitude to adoption is like an intensified version of its attitude to motherhood generally: strong on waffly sentimentalised support, damn short on real practical support.

Your religious beliefs are part of you and part of what you will bring as adoptive parents. They will not be seen as a disqualification, however being an adopter also requires you to respect a child's emerging identity and sexual orientation.
You will need to be able to cope with whatever the future brings in these dimensions. You're entitled to be protective of your child's moral welfare within reasonable limits. Sometimes very fundamentalists or extreme religious groups may struggle with the idea of tolerating a young person with a gay orientation. The national minimum standards for adoption requires adopters to support their children's development and to be tolerant of differences of orientation.

@BartletForAmerica

We are Christians and hold mainstream Christian views regarding, for example, sex outside of marriage, and would be very interested in opening our family and adopting children. However, I've heard that we wouldn't 'pass' the selection process because we hold those views and would bring up our children teaching them these values and hoping that they would become Christians too.

Are my concerns without foundation?

I agree we need more resources- more and better trained social workers ( they should be the courts experts, not loads of independent specialists) more court time available a wider pool of adopters, and greater budgets for therapy and financial support. But I am uneasy with the Narey reports sweeping conclusions. Adoption is a very individualised and personalised service for children, and can't be subject to breathlessly quick timescales all the time. But it does need to be more streamlined and more sensitive to the needs of adopters. Hope that doesn't sound like sentimentalised waffle!

@hester

What do you think is likely to change? We've had Loughton's statements, and the Narey report (most of which made sense to me), but telling off social workers for being too PC (as some undeniably are) seems to me the easy part. The important, and harder, bit is to invest the significant resources and absolute political will needed to drive through radical change in the system and in the resources that support it.

Right now it seems to me that this country's attitude to adoption is like an intensified version of its attitude to motherhood generally: strong on waffly sentimentalised support, damn short on real practical support.

@seenbutnotheard

I am an Independent Reviewing Officer and so review the care arrangements for children who are Looked After by the Local Authority.

I am interested to know how you think that Care Proceedings could be speeded up? I regularly chair reviews for children who have been the subject of proceedings for 12-24 months.

We absolutely have to be fair to parents and children to try and re-unify if possible, but these sorts of timescales are heartbreaking, and can make it much more difficult to then find adoptive families.

I think that the general public is often suspicious of the motives of LA's, adoptive parents and the courts, and, to be honest, the press (think Daily Mail) and the likes of John Hemming do nothing to dispel the myths of Children's Services being 'Baby Snatchers'.

There seems to be too much too-ing and fro-ing between the courts and the panels, with both often blaming the other, and the courts will regularly force postponements because there simply isn't the court time available. That tells me it's not enough of a priority, and it has to change. I think we'll get some movement now, as we did when the last Government made a fuss around adoption (2000-2005), but the problem is as soon as the foot comes off the pedal, it all slides backwards.

It should become less difficult for family members to adopt, if the government puts resources into its existing policies. Family carers- connected persons-should be approached first when parents are failing. Adoption should be one of the mainstream options for family carers because the commitment built into adoption is more important than possible distortions in legal relationships because of kinship adoption. Families can take these things in their stride but family carers often get involved in emergencies, when they've made no planning or financial provision to take on this kind of commitment and the government must ensure they receive realistic levels of financial support.

@thefirstMrsDeVeerie

Ok, looks like I can

I am a kinship adopter. We fostered and then adopted our great nephew. We encountered a great deal of resistance from some sectors. It was very hard to get financial support to make the adoption viable and we felt squeezed into a system designed for non-family adoptions.

This made the process far more stressful than it could/should have been. Are there any plans to change this? Given that families are supposed to be the first port of call when a child is taken into care. WHY is it so difficult for interested family members?

Thank you

This is a very good question. Legal delays must be drastically reduced without sacrificing procedural fairness. It can be done. You need more judicial continuity more, more court time made available, restrictions on the rights to brief endless independent experts and really stern timescales. This may not please the Daily Mail who will no doubt discover the cause of unfairly treated birth parents, but it would be in the interest of children.

@seenbutnotheard

I am an Independent Reviewing Officer and so review the care arrangements for children who are Looked After by the Local Authority.

I am interested to know how you think that Care Proceedings could be speeded up? I regularly chair reviews for children who have been the subject of proceedings for 12-24 months.

We absolutely have to be fair to parents and children to try and re-unify if possible, but these sorts of timescales are heartbreaking, and can make it much more difficult to then find adoptive families.

I think that the general public is often suspicious of the motives of LA's, adoptive parents and the courts, and, to be honest, the press (think Daily Mail) and the likes of John Hemming do nothing to dispel the myths of Children's Services being 'Baby Snatchers'.

@JeffreyColeman

I agree we need more resources- more and better trained social workers ( they should be the courts experts, not loads of independent specialists) more court time available a wider pool of adopters, and greater budgets for therapy and financial support. But I am uneasy with the Narey reports sweeping conclusions. Adoption is a very individualised and personalised service for children, and can't be subject to breathlessly quick timescales all the time. But it does need to be more streamlined and more sensitive to the needs of adopters. Hope that doesn't sound like sentimentalised waffle!

[quote hester]
What do you think is likely to change? We've had Loughton's statements, and the Narey report (most of which made sense to me), but telling off social workers for being too PC (as some undeniably are) seems to me the easy part. The important, and harder, bit is to invest the significant resources and absolute political will needed to drive through radical change in the system and in the resources that support it.

Right now it seems to me that this country's attitude to adoption is like an intensified version of its attitude to motherhood generally: strong on waffly sentimentalised support, damn short on real practical support.

[/quote]

You're right - there's a lot of sentimentalised waffle but precious little to help children in the care system, or the families that want to adopt them. Still, I do think we'll see an improvement (not remotely enough or as quickly as I'd like); the current push is to spread best practise from the 'good' local authorities to those who are doing less well. This will help. If it could be coupled with a reduction in delays in the court process, I think things could improve. I'm a bit more of a supporter of the Narey report, I think he said some very important things, but I also think he's had to miss out an important thing, which is that we need a national approach (ie national adoption agency) to sort out a national problem.

@JeffreyColeman

The short answer is yes, the process should be quicker second time around. However, the new assessment needs to cover the impact on you and your family of having become adopters as that is a new issue. But generally it should be a more streamlined assessment as you're now experts!

[quote InWithTheITCrowd]
Hello. The current process for 2nd time adopters seems extraordinarily long, and too full of red tape, especially considering the fact that ss have already approved the adopters once (often relatively recently). Are there any plans to make the process easier and quicker for 2nd-time adopters?

[/quote]

This is a good point - I was shocked when it took longer to adopt my second child than my first! If 'normal' mums discovered their second pregnancy was going to be 12 months instead of 9, they'd probably get a shock too! I think this is quite a "quick win" area for improvement; it wouldn't be too difficult to reduce aspects of the family assessment procedure for second-time adopters.

My friends have 1 son of their own and 2 years ago adopted a 2 year old boy. They live in a 2 bedroom house. Since then the rules have changed and if you already have a child and want to adopt a child of the same sex you are excluded if you only have a 2 bed property. Their story is a massive success and the two boys have bonded like true brothers should. The change in rules that will exclude families like mine seem ridiculous. Your thoughts please?

There are no automatic disqualifications of adopters on grounds of health. If one member of a partnership has a risk of an illness reoccurring that must be assessed in the context of what the other partner or their support network can provide. Many adopters have cancer in remission and indeed struggle with many other health issues. There is no research that relates health to parenting capacity. Also I can say that health issues do not in my experience affect placement stability in adoption in any way at all.

As to assessment timescales, at the moment there is a two moth gap for the information period, and six months for preparation and assessment. I think in many cases these are excessively long timescales and could well be shortened. But you need the trained social workers and preparation groups ready and waiting as soon as you apply.That's not quite the case at the moment. I do hope you apply.

@robbieheald

I'm not a mum as I'm unable to have children after surviving cancer 9 years ago. However I have frequently thought of the love and security my husband and I could give to a child. Naturally it's important to ensure children are placed with appropriate families, but the timescale and stress that must go with the process worry me. Hence my question is are the times scales and overall adoption process to be within scope of this review? And when should it be completed by?

How recently did those rules change, nicolamary? Two years ago we were approved to adopt a child aged 0-2 into a 2 bed flat with an older child already living there. We adopted just over a year ago, though by then we had moved into a bigger place (thank god!).

Could it be that we were allowed to proceed because we were adopting a younger child? (She was just under 1 when she came to us.) Or is this local variation?

When we adopted I know that our social services dept only had enough money to approve a fixed number of adopters per year, irrespective of how many children needed to be placed for adoption.

Could some of the delays be helped by better funding of Children's Services?

Hester, I think it's a local variation. I rang our local authority recently and because i have a 4 year old girl already and we live in a 2 bed property I was told we couldn't even receive an information pack as an adopted child has to have his or her own room.

We have enormous difficulty in this country speaking sensibly about race and difference. The research evidence for the outcomes for trans-racial adoptive placements ( mainly American research) is that such placements are very successful. Therefore, I think its entirely right for the government to encourage greater flexibility in matching children with adopters who are available and waiting. I think parenting capacity is much more important in adoption than issues culture, heritage and ethnicity. Of course a good parent will empathise with and really value all aspects of their child's identity, and in adoption you can never forget a child's dual connection with two families, yours and the biological family. But too many children are denied adoptive placements because of our anxieties and confusions as professionals around this issue.

@Littlezaltz

Hi Both. Interest declared: I'm an adoptee. My question is a two-parter: 1. Do you support the Government's policy to support mixed-race adoption? 2. Do you think it's odd that it's taken so long to introduce this policy, given that "White" children from different backgrounds (Spanish, Greek, Italian etc.) have always been placed with "White" parents who may not share that particular background? Has something changed about the way Government thinks about race and nationality? Or is it just about numbers? Thanks.

@Thingsfallapart

Hi Oona, I would be really interested in your views on how prospective adopters of different ethnic backgrounds can be supported to avoid where possible issues around negative self identity and self esteem that may arise if adoptive parents do not have some experience of the culture that their children are from? Also on a personal note, your Mum taught me for the last 2 years of my schooling and the last two years before her retirement, and she almost singlehandedly changed the course of my life. She remains to this day the greatest teacher I have ever come across and when I graduated from both my BA and MA inside I dedicated it to her. (Also your lovely brother gave up his free time to help me with my maths GCSE.) So a massive thank you to her

Hi there,
As you know, I was a mixed-race child brought up by a white mum. So, given my mum was the best mum in the world, I could never see the logic in telling a white couple they couldn't adopt a black child. I said this often in the media, and then started to be contacted by mixed-race and black kids who had been adopted in the 60s and 70s by white parents. They all said they loved their parents, and their parents loved them; but that they had basically ended up with identity issues that stayed with them for a lot of their lives, and were problematic. So I've changed my views on this somewhat: before I would have said it's not important whether you place a black or mixed race child with a white or black family. Now I think you should place them with a family that has a similar background IF THERE IS A FAMILY WITH THAT BACKGROUND AVAILABLE IMMEDIATELY. If not, it can never be more important to prioritise ethnicity over a child's right to have a family. As an aside on this, it's funny when you ask people who rant about the 'PC' nature of social workers denying black kids a white home, "so would it be right to place a white child in, say, a black British Sudanese family?" They often start to splutter...

But on another subject, you have to let me know your name so I can tell my mum about you - I was speaking to her on the phone just as I arrived at the Mumsnet offices to do this webchat! Honestly, you can't imagine how many people have told me (with incredible sincerity) "your mum changed my life". My mum had an incredibly hard life herself, various bouts with depression and all sorts of other things, but she ALWAYS made life better not just for her own kids, but for every child she taught. She's my role model!

Thanks for a terrific range of questions, we're promoting adoption and fostering this week of course. Please go onto the www.giveachildahome.co.uk website to find out more about becoming either an adopter or foster carer. Or please ring our helpline 0800 652 9626 which is open from 8am-8pm this week and office hours for the remainder of November. There are 1834 children waiting for adopters on the Adoption register. 996 of these are sibling groups. Please consider if you or someone you know can make a commitment to these children. Thanks Jeffrey Coleman

@JeffreyColeman

We have enormous difficulty in this country speaking sensibly about race and difference. The research evidence for the outcomes for trans-racial adoptive placements ( mainly American research) is that such placements are very successful. Therefore, I think its entirely right for the government to encourage greater flexibility in matching children with adopters who are available and waiting. I think parenting capacity is much more important in adoption than issues culture, heritage and ethnicity. Of course a good parent will empathise with and really value all aspects of their child's identity, and in adoption you can never forget a child's dual connection with two families, yours and the biological family. But too many children are denied adoptive placements because of our anxieties and confusions as professionals around this issue.

[quote Littlezaltz]
Hi Both. Interest declared: I'm an adoptee. My question is a two-parter: 1. Do you support the Government's policy to support mixed-race adoption? 2. Do you think it's odd that it's taken so long to introduce this policy, given that "White" children from different backgrounds (Spanish, Greek, Italian etc.) have always been placed with "White" parents who may not share that particular background? Has something changed about the way Government thinks about race and nationality? Or is it just about numbers? Thanks.

[/quote]

Yes I think it's right to make this policy more flexible (see also the answer I just posted above). But no, I don't think much has changed about the way the Government views ethnicity. It's just clearly wrong for a child (any child) to be denied a family, and then languish in the care system, on the basis that the proposed family is the wrong colour. It's an area that needs thought though; the ideal situation is usually for a child to be in a family where their relationship to their parents is not continually questioned. As a child I was constantly told "that can't be your mother," because I'm mixed-race, and my mum is fair with blue eyes. It irritated me. But can you imagine how much that might damage a child who may already have huge feelings of loss about their birth mother (and father)? It's one more issue for an adopted child to deal with, and you have to ask yourself, how many issues is it fair to load on one child? So as with everything with adoption, I think it's always a bit more complicated than at first sight.