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I don't follow AUK FB, so I have not seen those posts. I do think it is very challenging to develop your identity when you have next to no contact to your birth family, possibly no memories of them and all you ever get is negative information about them. There is a general tendency to idealise birth families (both amongst adopters and adoptees), eg in thinking birth family members are "naturally" similar to each other, while adoptive parents tend to focus on the negative aspects of their children's birth families. And all that, in times where "identity politics" is everything.

The evidence says children are best placed with functional birth families. If that is not an option, then adoption is best, followed by foster care and lastly by children's homes. These placements have an impact on IQ and various other outcomes as far as I know. Evidence about contact is inconclusive as far as I know. Based on personal experience, I would say it does help with identity, but can add a lot of extra challenges, anxiety and additional trauma. What is the suggested solution if kindship care is not an option (as it often isn't)?

As to being the "baddy": walk a mile in my shoes is all I can say... :-)

I’m not on Facebook either but that seems to be the old messaging around adopters “stealing” children and adoption only being in the adopters interest rather than the children's. What people need to understand is that adoption is the final option - the other options mentioned are always considered first. Of course there’s trauma - there’s trauma even before children are removed and there’s trauma with every move wherever it may be. The system is meant to minimise this with carefully thought out procedures but of course these don’t work as well as they’re supposed to. Then there’s all the grey areas and all the cutting corners - the SWs leaving and different people who have their own agendas which don’t always put children first. The legislation prioritises children's best interest but so often the focus is on the adults whatever their role or relationship. I think acknowledging the trauma is really important as a first step - then providing the resources to mitigate this is next - rather than the suggestion that children be placed in the most convenient or cheapest option

AUK forum moderator here. So sorry to hear you were upset by the FB thread. You're right that adopted people are making their voices heard more frequently - and those who hold the view that adoption is per se a negative thing are particularly vocal. This tension is present throughout the adoption sector at the moment. You are also right that we aren't as active as we should be in moderating our social media channels at the moment, and that is simply down to a lack of staffing. We want our social channels to be a place everyone can express their views, but we also want them to be safe and respectful places. Please do keep following as we have a new digital comms manager starting very soon, which will bring us back up to full strength in terms of moderation and engagement on our social channels.

Thank you AUK, I’m very glad to hear that there will soon be someone in post to deal with online communications.

And thank you Ford Prefect for bringing this to our attention. I had not looked at the AUK Facebook page before but the responses in comments sections are distressingly one sided and extreme.

I am both an adoptee and an adoptive grandmother and I can safely say that my viewpoint could not be further away from the poster on the Facebook page. I’ve had a quick look through and it seems to be mainly one person posting their thoughts and with some lop-sided ‘supporting information’.

It will be very good to have some moderation on the page as there is currently little to no counterbalance.

I'm not on Facebook now but FWIW, I largely avoid adoption Twitter for this reason.

My - not particularly helpful perhaps - reflection is that there are a lot of adults out there who are traumatised by their childhood experiences, and that social media is not a safe place to heal that. It's adversarial rather than therapeutic.

Sadly that means that as adopters (and foster carers and kinship carers) and therapeutic parents seeking support, we have to be careful about seeking safe spaces too. I miss that these boards used to be much busier, for all that they aren't private.

Also FWIW, I have a lot of time for voices advocating for birth families, safe contact, knowledge about identity and life stories in adoption. In these circumstances of funding and support being cut to the bone, I fear that support for vulnerable people in birth families is falling away too, which can't be a good thing for them or for our children when they make contact in the future.