Panorama - I want my baby back

[BeyondTheLimitsOfAcceptability]

Anyone watching?

This promoting of the idea that SS want to steal babies makes me very uneasy...

It is amazing the perspective of some who seem to think the best interests of a child are served by compounding the mistake of ripping them from a loving family, regardless of the facts around an individual adoption. Mistakes will be made in any system but it takes people with no compassion or humility to believe that there is a formulaic remedy of just substituting other parents as if one parent is as good as another.

But, hey ho, let's just pretend that continuing the adoption is always in "the best interests of the child". Nice salve to one's conscience.

If you say so, Larry. I have been disagreeing with bigger mackerel than you over the last few days < brushes fly off shoulder >

larry the adoptive parents are just parents for that child from the moment of adoption. They don't have additional rights, if there was evidence of neglect or abuse they could have the child removed for exactly the same reasons as a birth parent could.

The reason adoption is felt to be best for the child is that from the moment of the adoption they are told that these are their parents and will always be their parents. This is why its felt to be a more stable solution than foster care.

AF,

Mazeltov!

However, my comments were not entirely aimed at you. This is a thread to which anyone is entitled to post their opinions. I was quite shocked watching the Panorama and imagined that this could happen to ANY parent and how they might feel.

I have posted my opinions as have you. Others (believe it or not) are also entitled to post their opinions.

Children are generally placed with prospective adoptive parents for 6 months-2 years before a final adoption order, the process can be terminated for any reason prior to the final adoption order so saying that a child could have been adopted for one day is rather disingenuous larry.

DS had been with me for 2.5 years and I was the only parent he had ever known when our order was granted (although our situation was unusual) but the majority of children by the time a final adoption order is granted will (depending on their age) have already bonded with their adoptive parents and have been with them for some time.

There are adoption processes where the idea is to try to place the child back with birth parents who can prove they can parent adequately where its possible that adopters foster the child for 6-9 months facilitating contact with birth parents and living in the knowledge that at any time the child could be returned and they are still prepared to bind with that child knowing its a possibility that it might be in the childs best interests to be returned. Is that really giving adoptive parents more rights than birth parents

Sooner or later (and legally its deemed that that point is when the final adoption order is granted) there has to be a line drawn and children have to live their lives in stability which one set of parents.

"The reason adoption is felt to be best for the child is that from the moment of the adoption they are told that these are their parents and will always be their parents. This is why its felt to be a more stable solution than foster care."

Imagine if someone took your children away and gave them to someone else and "told them" that they were now their parents. Would you not still want them back? Would they not want to come home, regardless of what they had been told? What would be in the best interests of your child at that point? Maybe several years down the line, their opinions may have changed but, in the real world, this does not change quickly.

I'm sure birth parents who haven't adopted don't understand this, but it isn;t actually any less traumatic for a child to be taken from a parent they've bonded with because that parent is adoptive rather than biological and for it to happen to a child not once but twice would be absolutely unbeleiveable.

I guess DS would have been terribly distressed by it within about 2 months (perhaps even less) of 24 hour care from me and we were far from a legal adoption order at that point so legally it could still have happened.

Kewcumber,

In your case, clearly you are, in their opinion, their mother. In many other cases, that will also be the case. There will also be borderline cases. But why not at least ask the children what they perceive as their best interest? And if they ask for their biological parents that they remember well and want to be reunited with their Mother and Father, is it right for the law to stop that happening?

I am specifically talking about cases like those shown in the Panorama programme, not those of neglect or incapacity.

To be fair, a key aspect that is often considered is whether adoptive parents would come forward at all, if they thought there was a possibility of an adoption being over-turned. It is generally thought that many wouldn't come forward, although some are willing to allow contact for birth families, which can work well for a child.

It is controversial and I'm not sure how I feel about this, as perhaps a slightly healthier view would be to address this issue in training before adopters become parents, because surely if it was something in the best interests of the child, then any adopter should be able to take that on board. But that is just my opinion and concerns are perhaps that there would be more children left in care, which is possibly a sad reality.

larry we don't know that the parents whose children were taken into care had either rickets or that the parents did not abuse them.

If you're talking about an older child who doesn't bond so quickly then yes the time frame in which they could be returned with less damage would be longer (and the chances of them having been adopted anyway correspondingly smaller, therefore easier to return).

But we're talking here about babies who cannot give evidence that their parents didn;t abuse them.

Personally I've only come across cases of verbal children being taken from their parents in quite clear cut cases as the child is generally able to discuss to some degree what happened.

Nosewiper,

I think you have made the key point. The absolutism of this law is to protect the adopters and, by extension, the population of potential adoptees (as there may be more adopters if it is regarded as absolutely final), rather than individual children, who (in certain circumstances) could well be better served by being reunited.

I don't like the kind of law that disrespects individual rights in favour of the general right, especially when it comes to vulnerable children.

MD,

"larry we don't know that the parents whose children were taken into care had either rickets or that the parents did not abuse them"

Nor do we KNOW that you are not abusing your children. Luckily, in this country, we have a presumption of innocence.

I would be very interested if you could point me at the kind of case like the Panorama ones where a an older child bonded to their parents has been adopted against the childs will when they can say catagorically they haven't been abused by their parent who have been adopted (with the order having gone through) when a medical mistake or similar has discovered.

We are almost inevitably talking about babies and they will by the time an adoption order is granted have been palced with adoptive parents for longer than they probably were with birth parents by that point.

The fatc that it is a horrendous unjust trauma for the birth parents still doesn;t mean its the right thing for that child.

You clearly don't grasp the very basic principle that a one sided story is just that... one side of a story.

As the medical and sw professionals and lawyers involved in those care proceedings are bound by confidentiality, they are of course unable to produce reams of evidence to satisfy your prurient curiosity.

We do not have a presumption of innocence. What are you talking about? If children come to the attention of ss via medical professionals referral they must take action. What you should have is an open mind and decisions made based on the evidence available at the time.

I was not at all convinced that the parents were snowy white actually. But as I do not have all the facts in my possession, I cannot state categorically that they did abuse their children.

I'd like to Kewcumber, but sadly not able to for fear of breaking court order (I am not a birth mother btw).

I do like opinions to be rather more evidentially substantial than a DM sad face to support them....

MD,

You cannot state categorically that they did not abuse their children but you are happy to hint and imply that they did, despite their vehement denials and new evidence backing them up.

No, I do not have all the facts in my possession. Nor do you. It seems to me that people are very happy to make decisions based on "evidence at the time" but when new evidence comes to light, their mind is not open at all to it.

I think the bar should be set very high to split parents and children up.

larry, it already is

"The fatc that it is a horrendous unjust trauma for the birth parents still doesn;t mean its the right thing for that child."

I agree that, in and of itself, it doesn't. In those cases, very sadly, maybe the adoptive parents should retain the child. What also seems very sad to me is the closing out of the biological family. There are so many family models deemed acceptable today (with step parents etc). Why can something more creative not be done in the interests of the child? The no contact bar one letter per year seems solely in the interests of the adoptive parents.

Sorry, MD was that to me?

have a look at the 14:45 post on this thread

er, so why are you touting their stories as ones of heartbreaking ripping of children from loving families when NONE of us know the truth?

Vitamin D deficiency does not automatically lead to rickets. Nor should you assume that it does.

Poor logic. Woolly thinking. Lack of intellectual rigour.

There was no evidence supplied either way to come to a definitive conclusion. Therefore it was poor journalism of the DM sad face kind.

If you are allowed to look at those parents and see heartbroken innocents, I am allowed to look at them a see possible abusers.

Neither conclusion is relevant.

no no Nose, twas to Larry.

MD,

I don't think you understand the meaning of intellectual rigour. What you should be questioning, were you to have an analytical mind, is, with the knowledge that we now have, can we assume that the fractures, the basis on which these children were taken from their parents, could reasonably have occurred for any other reason than parental abuse. Even if there was 10% chance of the fractures being caused by rickets, and a 10% chance that the rickets were caused by vitamin D deficiency, that means that there was a 1% chance that the parents may be entirely innocent.

Has the whole "shaken baby" controversy not in any sense alerted you to the dangers on relying on 'expert' medical testimony alone?