National Adoption Week: Live webchat with Adopt a Better Way founder Francesca Polini, Monday 3 November 12.30 - 1.30pm

[KateHMumsnet]

Next week is National Adoption Week, and to mark it we're hosting a webchat with Francesca Polini, Chair and Founder of adoption support and advocacy organisation Adopt a Better Way.

While adoption rates have risen over the last few years, Adopt a Better Way take the view that the 67,000 children living in care in the UK would benefit from even quicker adoption routes, given the often poor outcomes for children living in care.

Adopt a Better Way aims to change the adoption process, and Francesca will be joining us to discuss how she believes this could be achieved to the benefit of the children concerned. Francesca founded Adopt a Better Way after adopting her first child from Mexico.

Please do join us live on Monday 3 November from 12.30 - 1.30pm to talk about all things adoption-related; as ever, if you can't make it then, do please post your questions in advance on this thread.

Thanks
MNHQ

@Lilka

Can I have another question since there aren't many of us here?

Francesca, what would you say was the most important adoption issue your charity are currently campaigning about/focussing on, and how are you trying to effect the changes necessary in this particular area? Thanks!

Hi Ilka,

nice to hear from you again. At the moment we campaign to break down the barriers between Boroughs so that children can be placed across them, to make the adoption process faster once children become available for adoption so that they do not encounter more neglect, finally to improve post adoption support for parents to help them through the difficult challenges of becoming a family where there are children with history of neglect and/or abuse. Please do get in touch directly if you feel any of this is relevant, thanks!

@FamiliesShareGerms

Francesca, what are your priorities as a lobbying charity? Ie what two or three things do you think would make a substantive difference to the outcome of both the children who are adopted and the parents who bring them up?

(Parent of a birth and adopted child here, as background - we have fortunately not needed to access post-adoption support, though that's more luck than much else)

Hi there FamiliesShareGerms,

nice to hear from you. Our key areas of work are mostly around making the process smoother so that children get into families as quickly as possible once they are available for adoption. We also campaign for breaking down barriers between Boroughs and improve post adoption support. It wold be great to hear from you if you feel you can support any of them. Best wishes with everything.

I agree, this hasn't been very focused

I meant I agree with madrigals about the remit of this webchat

@Madrigals

Is the problem here the remit of the webchat? The remit was stated to be 'all things adoption related'. Maybe it should have been focusing on the private members bill or specific issues in how to make domestic approval faster?

Hi Madrigals

We decided on the remit of the webchat - and in hindsight it does seem like it might have been too broad. I think we wanted to be able to understand and help address concerns from as wider group as possible - for example potential adopters, adopters and those who know families adopting.

It seems like there are at least two issues here - immediate concerns/ frustrations/ emergencies and advice needed on where to go to get real help, and longer term possibilities to improve policies and practices.

We'll look at developing content and support on these areas, but please let us know what else you need and we'll see if we can get it!

@FamiliesShareGerms

Which areas of adoption policy have you succeeded on changing? And conscious that this talk is due to come to an end shortly, what info do you want from the combined experience of Mumsnet?

Hi FamiliesShareGerms,

as we are running out of time I think the best thing if you wish to know more is to write to me directly on [email protected]. However we are looking to work with the mumsnet team to see how we can have a longer term thread that focuses on building on the huge amount of experience and passion of the mumsnet community that no doubt, coupled with ours will ensure we can achieve our goals in this area.

Hi All

Francesca is heading off now - but very keen to keep the convo flowing. Please do post here. We'll also keep and eye to see what resources we can develop.

Best

Katie

Apologies if I dominated this web chat, I wasn't expecting all my posts to be answered. I've never taken part in a web chat before so I'm not sure of the etiquette.

YouAre - I thought you were fine

Hmm, I see there wasn't an answer to the question of what impact they've actually had on anything. What were they hoping to achieve by this web chat, I wonder?

I missed the webchat but have just caught up and I have to say it appears to have been a total waste of everyone's time.

it was Jammy.

the thread OP says 'support and advocasy'.

didn't see any of that.

I honestly thought we were ALL going to get the answers we were looking for.

HQ why didn't you get someone from an official government adoption agency?

appreciate the charities around but as chariies cant officially DO anything what was the point of THIS?

mind you, even someone from an official place would prob fob us all off as well.

disabled, elderly, and now adopted/adopters....another waste of space according to the government.

You are I thought it was me hogging the chat! you were fine.

not a lot of people though, maybe because of the time of day it was.

very surprised the posters on the adopton site didn't see this.

The only good thing about this thread has been the empathy and support from other posters, even though its terrible that we are all doing a good thng giving children a home, love nurturing and a sense of identity and family, not for a medal or knighthood, simply because we love them.

and this the way we are treated by the 'support' agencies.

its disgraceful.

I just read through most of this and think adoptakid has a great idea if mumsnet could get someone who has some authority from the government who could explain how people are expected to adopt and then have no back up and support.

Is all the money going into matching/advertising/recruiting adopters? That's about as useful as buying a nice car and then not having any money to put petrol in it! Actually a million times worse of course .

The webchat didn't make good reading to look through and I think mumsnet would be excellent if they really could get someone official on here. What's the best way to ask for that type of thing? Just send them a message via Contact us?

Just sent off my email to mumsnet, asking if they can get a webchat with someone from the government. I will see what they say.

I feel a bit sorry that the opportunity of a webchat did not go so well. I am sure with the right focus Francesca Polini could have had lots to share.

I wonder if a webchat on recruitment might be something mumsnet tries sometime. I do think recruitment of new adopters is something that lots of people think about but the trouble is from that point of view once you are here on the mumsnet adoption threads you are probably pretty much either an adopter or someone who is really considering it. So anything aimed at recruitment might need to be elsewhere on mumsnet!

ooopse I see it is not in adoption but in live webchats! Silly me. I guess I made the mistake because I recognised a lot of the people on there!

I don't think anyone was hogging the web chat, and if they were it was only to cover issues and queries felt by many many people out there in real life.

I think this web chat was a fail, it just didn't flow and it seemed like all the agency answers were copied and pasted between questions.

Disappointing, but I do think it's similar in many health professions.

I'm not an adoptive parent, but have had friends adopt. Also, with one of my birth children I've had a few issues (developmental) and have been ignored, stonewalled and pushed from pillar to post trying to get help and answers.

I think everyone who posted a question or a comment did a good job.

Hi All

Thanks for all your feedback. The webchat was 'stickied' in the busiest areas of the site with sliders in adoption, but it's an ongoing challenge for us to make sure everyone who wants to see a webchat (on any topic) does see and know it's going on (when there's lots of other stuff going on onsite).

In terms of topics we could hold future chats on - please do suggest and we will try to arrange.

We did have a webchat with British Association for Adoption and Fostering last year, but thought that it might be helpful to have someone 'outside' of the official system to give a different view.

We also had the Minister responsible from Adoption on for a webchat - but this was on SEN (another of his areas). We can certainly look at inviting him back on if that would be helpful.

Thanks

Katie

As far as I can see, this is a very small lobbying organisation who are concerned with getting young babies and children adopted faster .

They know little or nothing about post placement and post adoption support . Their answer is " well if we get the children adopted quicker they won't be so damaged " .

Is this correct ? If so the we chat should been limited to their area of expertise , as other posters have suggested.

If was rather foolish to invite questions on such a broad area when the person concerned obviously knew nothing. It was also rather heartless, as there are many adoptive parents who are on their knees, desperate for help . They will feel that yet again another organisation has said

" Yes yes yes, that's all sounds very hard, but do piss off now because it's not our problem "

Hi Kristina

Yes - I think a more focussed webchat would have been more productive.

Perhaps what we could do is work out what needs to be answered; eg questions about the process for potential adopters, questions about post adoption support for adopters, questions about the overall system for govt. etc and then we can try and get in the right support.