Adoption In The UK

[Zaune]

The Guardian

In Glasgow two months ago a 14-year-old boy was jailed for seven years for fatally stabbing his 34-year-old foster mother. The incident took place a year ago. In the days leading up to the murder, the boy had been grounded, and his Xbox, mobile phone and laptop – which he used to keep in contact with his natural mother – were taken from him as punishment for his behaviour. According to his foster father, Bryan McKenzie, who had left the family home an hour before the attack, the boy didn't seem overly upset by the punishment. Dawn and Bryan McKenzie were first-time foster parents and were, perhaps, through no fault of their own, out of their depth with the boy. As seasoned fosterers/adopters are aware, there is a fine line when it comes to disciplining children who are already disturbed by their backgrounds, and taking so much from him was obviously inadvisable.

It's a story that constantly repeats itself – placing children with foster and adoptive families who cannot cope with their difficulties – though not often with fatal consequences. Either the social workers underplay the degree of a child's difficulties, or they don't understand the significance, and all too often, a ticking time-bomb is placed within innocent, well-meaning families.

In 2003, the Guardian published an account of my family's experiences of the adoption system. We had fostered Louise when she was two and a half, and adopted her five years later, still optimistic – despite the hell we had lived through already – that all would end up happily. In the early years, she smeared herself with excreta, picked wounds in herself until she bled, attacked anything that moved, and screamed day and night. We told social services that we would not knowingly take a child with learning disabilities because we didn't think we could cope, but we were told Louise was suffering from emotional deprivation, and all she needed was tender, loving care. Back then we were naive and didn't understand the rules. For instance, if we wouldn't "knowingly" take a child with learning disabilities, they just wouldn't tell us. What they also failed to pass on was that she had brain damage from having been battered and had a family history of mental illness.

Completely in the dark and too exhausted to do more than survive, we struggled on, trying to solve problems we didn't know existed, while caring for our other two children, one a year older than Louise, the other a year younger. The people at social services laughed when we wondered if Louise might have learning disabilities and by the time this became too apparent to deny, Louise was our child. That is what social services count on: if the child can be kept with you long enough, you will not want to give her/him up. It doesn't matter that other children in the family are being short-changed; their childhoods ruined while you try to cope with the one who needs the most attention and ends up with all of it. By the time Louise was 16, she was diagnosed with learning difficulties. She was suffering from brain damage, mental health problems and autism.

I wrote the 2003 article in response to a surge of adverts featuring celebrities encouraging people to adopt smiling, but needy, children. Tony Blair was in office, feverishly burnishing his public image by volunteering as patron saint and saviour of little children. Blair's father had been adopted, went the spiel, and it hadn't done him any harm, so we should get everyone adopted. Jane Asher also extolled the joys of adoption to the populace, despite not having any experience of adoption herself.

What has changed since 2003? Well, David Cameron has assumed the mantle of patron saint and saviour of little children, abetted by Michael Gove, who was himself adopted as a baby. What they are ignoring is that adoption has changed from what they think it ever was. For a start, there were never any well brought-up little orphans looking for loving parents. What we had were unmarried mothers who couldn't afford to raise children alone – though many did – and couldn't take the embarrassment and stigma of bearing an illegitimate child. But times have changed. Unmarried mothers are now single parents who have financial support from the state and there is no stigma these days – the "illegitimate" label that once marked children from cradle to grave has gone, and rightly so. What this means is that mothers are far more likely to keep their babies and there are virtually none available for adoption, so couples are encouraged to look at older children instead. And thereby a can of worms opens up.

According to the British Association for Adoption and Fostering, only 2% of the children adopted in the year to March 2011 in England were under one (71% were aged one to four, 24% five to nine). The children available for adoption these days have often been removed from parents who have mental health, drug and alcohol problems. They have most likely been left with those parents until the bitter end because the state believes that children do better with their own parents. By the time these children are removed, they are already damaged by years of neglect and abuse. They are no longer children in need of an ordinary family; in fact often that is the last thing they can cope with, and they are the last thing an ordinary family can cope with. In recent years, a few caveats have appeared in appeals. "Needs extra attention," is one. To prospective adopters, that seems reasonable. Until they've been put through the mill, they don't realise it actually means the life you had may be destroyed.

Local authorities don't own up to the breakdown rate in adoption either. Ask and the reply is very likely to be a vague "not much". Some local authorities and adoption agencies have been forced to admit to a rate of 20%, but that isn't the whole picture. Some years ago the Strathclyde region, then the biggest social work area in Europe, investigated the situation. That 1986 report found breakdown rates rising from 16% for children placed at age five, to 60% at nine and over – that's six out of 10 children adopted going back into care. And that report counted three years as a successful adoption, which doesn't take into account the fact breakdowns also happen later than that. The author of the report, Sandy Jamieson, former assistant director of social work in charge of childcare, reviewed the figures twice in the early 90s and found the situation had not improved, and indeed had possibly got worse. There is absolutely no reason to suspect that other areas of the UK have achieved better results.

But one thing that has changed since 2005 is that adopters are increasingly prepared to fight back. Social services are destroying marriages and lives, trying to get problem children off their books. It feels as though they will use any means, and that legal action against the local authorities concerned is the only thing that might stop them.

Chris and Jane are both officers in the Metropolitan police, and have four children, who were aged 25, 22, 12 and nine when the couple decided to adopt. Jane had worked in child protection for six years, and they had both been involved with the Scouts, the PTA and every other child-orientated organisation you can think of. They made the decision to adopt because they "wanted to make a difference". Five-and-a-half-year-old Suzie was presented to them by social services as "bright, bubbly, no shrinking violet, a perfect match for your family". Suzie's arrival, more than five years ago, was "an explosion". Jane describes a child who was scared of everything: "She would cower under her bed and was terrified of ordinary things. The TV scared her." Suzie's behaviour began to escalate into constant violence and aggression: "Every waking moment was chaos. It was like living in a war zone. Her school couldn't cope with her either.

"She seemed desperate to be loved, but couldn't take love, couldn't manage relationships at all. Other children didn't want to know her because of her behaviour, so she had no friends. She would scream at us constantly: 'I hate you! I hate this family! Send me back!' In fact her first words to us were: 'Are you going to be my forever mummy and daddy? Do you like hurting people?' We had expected emotional problems, but not the total destruction of our family."

At the same time, Jane and Chris were trying to cope with other problems. Their eldest son had a brain tumour and needed surgery, but Suzie was causing hell. "There was no help," Jane recalls. "We asked social services, but they did nothing. We were left to cope alone. Gradually we became isolated because other people don't want to put up with her."

Jane had a breakdown and still there was no support. Then came an incident in 2010 that still haunts her. "Suzie attacked me," she says. "She was screaming: 'Go on, punch me, you know you want to!' I wanted to annihilate her, I wanted to kill her and I didn't care if I was arrested. I raised my arm to hit her, but something stopped me. Even so, I couldn't go near her for two days. I called social services but once again they did nothing. I didn't adopt her to hate her or to harm her, but that's how it was."

On Mother's Day 2011, Jane had a second breakdown. "I just snapped. I got up, packed my bags and left," she remembers. "By now I was terrified of Suzie and just wanted to disappear for ever. I drove through the Highlands of Scotland for eight days, then boarded a ferry for the Isle of Lewis. I saw a police car and they flashed me. Chris had reported me missing. I didn't stop and there was a pursuit. It went on for over an hour – I even evaded roadblocks – and ended with them boxing me in, smashing the windows, dragging me out and handcuffing me. I was strip-searched and thrown into a cell for 21 hours. I wasn't even allowed to wash. When Chris arrived, he was allowed five minutes with me. I pleaded not guilty and the psychiatric reports confirmed I was ill from stress. In the end, I was given a complete discharge. Afterwards I was put on medication, but I still have panic attacks."

At the age of 11, Suzie is now registered as disabled because of her mental health problems and is also on medication, but her special school is still struggling with her, and with puberty fast approaching, her situation is certain to become more difficult. Chris and Jane felt so strongly about how they had been misled that they approached a solicitor to try to sue the local authority, but were advised by counsel that they wouldn't win because of a 2004 judgment of a similar case. In that instance the adoptive parents had won, only for the local authority to appeal. The judge allowed compensation, but only from placement to the time the couple found out what they had not been told about a boy's violent behaviour. Thereafter they kept the child instead of handing him back, and the judge decided they would not be compensated from the adoption date – they were effectively penalised for not abandoning the boy. The judgment stated: "If there is to be a duty of care, the professionals should be addressing their minds to their first consideration, the welfare of the child throughout his childhood, rather than anything else … we would not hold that it is fair, just or reasonable to impose on professionals involved in compiling reports for adoption agencies a duty of care towards prospective adopters."

Jane is angered by this, and by the judge's suggestion that "adopters have a trial period to decide whether to keep the child", as though children are defective used cars that you just return after a test drive. "In our case," says Jane, "when the papers were disclosed, you wouldn't believe the number they had 'lost'. We learned that the mother was a serious offender with mental health problems and there had been severe neglect for years. Suzie had been going into and out of care all her life and her difficulties had been known about. They just didn't tell us."

For Jane, the system is "appalling, soul-destroying and makes no sense. Where was their duty of care to Suzie when they placed her with a family without knowing if they could cope? She was severely let down by them. We were so low at one point, we talked about divorce. Where would it have left Suzie and our boys if that had happened?" The couple are investigating other legal avenues. They feel strongly that the legislation must be changed to ensure full disclosure of a child's difficulties, plus support after placement. "The only reason I go on is because I have to believe it will all be worth it. We have all suffered so much, I have to believe it wasn't for nothing."

Modern adoption is always difficult. Sometimes it brings happiness, and sometimes it ruins lives. Until something is done to sort a system that is clearly flawed and not fit for purpose, there needs to be an end to the call for faster universal adoption.

Fucking hell.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Jesus Christ. This is not a hard thing. Kids exposed to constant stress and violence experience the little fact that the connections between their amygdala and frontal lobe atrophy. The frontal lobe never gets the heads-up (no pun intended) from the rage/lust//fear/want emotional center of the brain that it is about to signal other parts of the brain--it only gets the information after the fact from other said parts and has no chance to send contravening signals to those parts, and thus there is reduced impulse and emotional control. Older children who have been "in the system" for a while due to neglectful and abusive parents and have been bounced from foster home of variable quality to foster home of variable quality is going to have issues.

How the fuck can they get off describing a child who's Fight or Flight response is set to Yes as "bright, bubbly, no shrinking violet". No shrinking violet maybe. If by "no shrinking violet" you mean "cat who is terrified of and hates the vet, and everything is the vet". Jesus christ.

You dont even have to extend their duty of care to the prospective parents, just the child. A family who has no idea what they are getting into is not a good place for that kid. They will end up not getting better and then growing up to be a danger to themselves or others. The only proper place for children that badly off is a full time psychiatric care facility that is run properly, well-funded with low live-in-caretaker-to-child ratios, and staffed with pediatric psychiatrists full time until such time as they are emotionally stable.

[Simon_Jester]

This sort of thing is probably also a big part of why we hear so much about parents in First World nations adopting babies from Third World countries. Go to India or sub-Saharan Africa and I suspect you will still be able to find a lot of small children who were raised by decent human beings and are psychologically healthy, but who cannot be supported and are put up for adoption. Such children are much rarer in the developed world these days, which is good. But that also means that if you adopt a child from a developed country the odds that there's something messed up in their head, which is bad.

[Zixinus]

What can be even done with such children? Because, and I realize this is an utterly horrible thought, my first reaction to reading how the child reacted was "she needs to be put down". Of course, I wouldn't actually dare say such a horrible thought, nor stand by it in any way, but that was my honest first reaction.

What can be done with such children? Can they be helped? Or is their fate to be stuck in a mental hospital forever?

[Zaune]

The only proper place for children that badly off is a full time psychiatric care facility that is run properly, well-funded with low live-in-caretaker-to-child ratios, and staffed with paediatric psychiatrists full time until such time as they are emotionally stable.

Oh, yeah, that reminds me! There was a second article on the related subject of children in local authority care, but I didn't post it at the time because I didn't want to create too big a wall of text. Here:

Too many children are being forced to leave foster care or residential care at 16. Even if they hadn't already had difficult lives, they wouldn't be ready for independence, as you can see from looking at any other 16-year-old. Charities that help in this circumstance say kids often arrive without the slightest means of looking after themselves, without birth certificates or National Insurance numbers, having been allocated totally unsuitable, ramshackle accommodation miles away from their foster homes or anyone they might have known or relied on during the "cared-for" period of their lives. Why would a local authority be so heartless? Shouldn't kids who have been taken into care expect the local authority to act in loco parentis, in its truest sense, as if it has a meaningful, protective impulse?

These questions are thrown up periodically – in adult social care as well as in children's care – and it always goes like this: local authorities or similar statutory agencies aren't doing enough; a major charity calls on them to do more and supports the argument with chilling case studies; it's a story, until something else happens, and then it's an ex-story.

We don't have a particularly strong tradition, in this media trajectory, of asking what happened to the money. You can be sure money is being spent – it costs between £200,000 and £300,000 a year for residential care for a child, and £30,000 to £60,000 for foster care. Why is it so expensive? (For comparison, it costs £30,000 to keep someone in a low-security prison for year, and £30,000 to send someone to Eton.) Who gets the money? It's a long story, but the answer emphatically isn't the carers or the foster family.

After 20 years of outsourcing, the bulk of children's homes are run by private companies, with money sucked upwards into one or two private equity companies, GI Partners or Bowmark Capital or Baird Capital. Two-thirds of fostering provision is controlled by the private sector. Only 11% of children's homes are run by charities; the third sector started off quite big in children's care, as you'd expect, meeting local-authority contracts by spending their own reserves. Eventually, though, the private sector underbid them, and they went bust or moved into other services.

Having whittled down the competition, the private sector became eye-poppingly expensive: £200,000 is actually a low estimate, based on overall spending of £1bn on 5,000 children in care. In 2009, it was leaked that CastleCare, which runs 40 homes in Northamptonshire, was charging £378,000 a year for a residential place. This would be money well spent if the care was brilliant, but it isn't. Only 2.5% of children's homes have an Ofsted rating of "outstanding".

For that kind of money, you could send them to the moon; instead, children are sent to wherever the companies across the chain can make most profit. This makes sense of what would otherwise look like perverse, bordering on cruel, decisions. Companies buy homes where properties are cheapest; this could be many miles from the child's local authority; even if it's just 20 miles away, that's still far enough for the child to lose contact with the placing authority (not to mention anybody they may have known, their extended families, their teachers and their friends).

In 2011 Greater Manchester councils placed more than 1,000 kids "out of borough" – "dumping", as some experts call it – but also received children from other authorities. In all likelihood, the number of children in residential care in the area remained the same, but the difference was that links had been severed between the child and the social worker.

Sometimes local authorities commission responsibility out to one another, and sometimes they just keep their fingers crossed and hope they get time to do it themselves. By the time the kids are adults, they may not have had direct contact with their social work team since they were placed in residential care. It puts significant pressure on the local services of wherever they have been placed if you tot up the cost for health and mental health services, police, school interventions, the constellation of agencies that have to get involved when children in care aren't being properly cared for. But apparently this is what efficiency looks like, spending £200k-plus a year to wash problems out of your own area, so they spring up 10 times more expensively somewhere else.

At the end of this period in "care", then, why are kids and young adults moved miles away from their foster homes? Why are 44% of 16-year-olds who leave care still not in education, employment or training three years later? For the same old reasons – because housing is found wherever it's cheapest.

The cheapest house in the UK went on sale this week, for £750, in Stockton. That's also where a huge amount of asylum seekers' and post-care housing is – I know, wild coincidence! It's quite a saving, but mainly for the contractor rather than the government. Where housing is cheap, the local economy tends to be sluggish, and unemployment is generally high. Brilliant. Now you have a young person with no roots, no money and no realistic prospect of employment. I don't know why we don't just cut out the middle man and send them directly to jail.

It's reasonable to talk about the morality of having a profit motive in this sector at all. You shouldn't run a home for a profit. But before we start on any of that, we need to scotch the idea that private-sector involvement has made any of this any cheaper.

[Zixinus]

Well, that's utterly terrifying.

[Mr Bean]

Well, that's utterly terrifying.

£200k a year is £547 pounds per day... £45 pounds per hour. That must be some amazing child care(Reads further) oh wait... it's not. Man considering my mother raised me on the equivalent of 21k£ per year for the both of us I must be all kinds of crazy. And she is all kinds of crazy.

[madd0ct0r]

fucking hell indeed.

I actually lived in one of those dumping areas for a while. Not pretty.

Part of me wants to take a good business idea and go into one of those areas and run a startup. I was going to point at Create, liverpool as a good example but they've gone bust: http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/ldp ... -30973084/

[Minischoles]

It's not surprising, Local Authorities are corrupt as fuck, those they flogged the care homes off to are probably their golf buddies.

£378k a year for one place is outright robbery, you could send every kid to private school for that.

What's even scarier, is those kids getting dumped are now going to be getting less help from the government as the Tories ruthlessly cut benefits across the board and the testing for mental health has been sold off to a private firm that is busy fucking over people already on benefits by assessing them poorly.

[Kaelan]

It doesn't help that everybody wants to adopt a baby, and not a child who's been messed up by the system. Let alone the amount of rings you need to jump thru unless you're a 'professional' foster worker or organisation.

The entire system needs a root and branch overhaul, but I doubt anybody has the will or nerve to undertake it (or risk any of the potential political backlash).