Archived Forums

Hi, Doris -I'm so sorry to read this.It does seem to often happen that adoptive parents are blamed: you're not alone in that. But, as you say, it's very different looking in from the outside from having to deal with it, day to day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.Going with another agency sounds like a good idea and they should listen to your side of the story.All the best,Corkwing

definitely respond to the minutes and maybe copy in the IRO or the city/county councillor who takes a lead for children's serviceslist bullet points summarising the issuesand list the factors which you feel contributed to the disruptionphone the AUK helpline for support with thishugssuch a difficult time for you why do LAs not shoulder their part of the blame for not doing thorough reports on children, not sharing all essential informationnot supporting you adequately

Really sorry to hear about your experiences.This part of what you said really jumped out at me:"little one had a number of issues. Initially social services were very supportive and gave us strategies, but unfortunately none of them worked. Eventually we were just going round in circles"This is where I have been living for the last twelve years, alongside countless numbers of other adopters.This is unfortunately the reality of many, many adoptions from the care system. And so many adopters end up with children with issues where the strategies don't work and then it's a case of what do you do next.In your case you disrupted and I totally respect your decision.But it is the case that most adopters plough on regardless and so from that point of view, you can see why social services are not happy.It is quite likely that if you take another child, they will have issues and nothing will work there either.So you would really have to convince an agency that this was an extremely severe case of issues which no one could reasonably be expected to live with - otherwise they will just anticipate a re-run of you choosing not to cope and disrupting.Adopted children are prone to all sorts of issues and it's terribly, terribly hard. My two have issues as long as your arm, including autism, learning difficulties, swearing, tantruming (they are 14 and 15 and still doing it), food issues, friendship issues....... My daughter has just sworn in front of my mum because we are not going to see the new One Direction movie today. It is relentless. I have had to turn myself into the sort of person who can cope.Personally, I think your chances of adopting in the future would be improved by accepting that you were unprepared for the realities of parenting a traumatised child and are now in a better place to move forward. I am not sure that quibbling points with the current agency is going to get you there.But there is the outstanding question of whether you think you would be able to cope with another child with another set of issues where nothing works. That's the difficult one.Wishing you all the best.

Hi there - we too have been through a disruption and although the disrupton mtg was 3 months ago, we are still awaiting the minutes. We were also told we didn't need to be at the actual disruption mtg and had a separate mtg instead and was told it was not about blaming anyone. In hindsight we now wish we had attended as from what I heard from my SW they did try to blame us and the FC came out with a whole load of porky pies about us, and of course we weren't there to refute them. Fortunately, our SW sounded like she was very good in representing us. We have been advised that when the minutes come out we are absolutely allowed to refute any points we are not happy with, and we will be doing this (whenever we get them!!!). Your response to those minutes will go on your file so its imperative that you respond so I would urge you to do so. One of the people who posted made a good point, she says "Personally, I think your chances of adopting in the future would be improved by accepting that you were unprepared for the realities of parenting a traumatised child and are now in a better place to move forward". We wrote a lengthy note on why we disrupted and we submitted this to the LA and asked for it to be put on the file. You don't say how old the child was, we went for an older child and felt we hadn't been prepared in anyway, shape or form for this - yes we had done all of the reading, but unfortunately neither the matcher or the SW told us the truth about the anger ands-xualised behaviour, we were naive and totally in the dark. Sigh, it appears this is happening more and more to people. I really do feel for you, we've been through such a heck of a time of it, it isn't easy, but at the same time I completely admire all those adopters out there who carry on and are truly amazing. Good luck with things and if you want to pm me about anything, then please do.