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I'm assuming the support in question relates to education only and not overall support for the adoptive family?If so, my one major point would be to 1) give an adopted child the same considerations as those given to a LAC. They often have the exact some issues and need the same level of support.2) Provide better training to teachers, so they actually understand the effects of trauma that an adopted child is likely to have suffered.3) Realise that adoptive parents are not the cause of their children's problems, but are part of the solution. Stop fighting us and start listening when we approach a school over problems. Sometimes we really do know better than teachers, when it comes to emotional needs and what works and what doesn't where 'discipline' is concerned and we aren't trying to undermine any teachers - we're actually trying to help!

Hi FehrScraper,Thank you for your comments.The discussions are being initiated and monitored by the Department for Education, however the topics being discussed cover all aspects of adoption.Therefore please all feel free to share your thoughts on general adoption support before, during and after adoption.Best wishesOnline Community TeamAdoption UK

I second what FehrScaper has said. I feel very strongly and passionately that adopted kids should have the same rights as LAC kids, and that the parents should have easy access to the kinds of support I see advertised to would be Foster parents.I recently went on a day's course aimed more for foster parents, and was flabbergasted to see the system of support that is in place for them - regular training, respite, access via phone to expert help (and pay too!).A very clear support system should be in place from the start. We were told there was nothing when we first asked for support 18 months post adoption, and Social Services did not listen to us, until we had to virtually threaten disruption. Every step of the way, we have to make a serious case for more support. It would be better if this was understood as being a life long need - certainly until adulthood, where we wouldn't have to fight for help at each phase of our dd's life.I believe that there should be far more skilled/trained social workers in the areas of pre adoption assessment; and post adoption; attachment/trauma. We've met too many who really do not understand the subject. It was not until the school were struggling to cope with our daughter that I feel we were finally heard by Social Services.The quality of support post adoption is crucial; support workers need to be skilled and trained as described above. If the local CAMHS don't have in house help, there should be easy access to a centre of skill/excellence in this field.It is all very well speeding up the process of adoption/matching, but it won't work until a solid package of support post adoption is in place. Modern adoption is quite different from that of the 60's, and the more that this is understood and acted on, the more chances of success we will have with our children.

Birth family should not be able to contest an adoption ones the child is placed with his/her adoptive family. Most kids are years in foster care, let the birth family contest than. Not after the child is placed in the adoptive family. At that moment it is only 10 weeks from the adoption date if everyone is switched on. No child has ever been placed back ones placed by adopters, and 'anti adoption sites' encourage birth family to contest, if only to delay the adoption. It is giving falsh hope for the birth family as well, and does not take them serious really. As at that stage there is no chance they get the kids back.This process in itself is increadeble stressfull on adopters and interferes with attachment. Beside the fact that it is highly inappropiate for adopters to have to 'fight' for a child in court.By getting the process right you give adopters the best chance to start their families stress free, decreasing the need for support later on.

I adopted through Surrey 2 years ago. During the course support was good, and I quite enjoyed the visits from my social worker. Then things gradually got worse. My social worker went on maternity leave, and my little boys social worker moved on as well - so his placement with me started with new social workers, with little background information for both of us. Once placed and after the first few visits, support almost stopped completely. Things were going ok, but no one would have known if they weren't.Then comes the bombshell - social services mistakenly gave my little boys birth parents my contact details. This happened by them giving the birth parents the name of my work website, and from this she found my name, and contact details etc - and with one quick search probably got my address as well.This has led to a name change for me and my son, moving home, having to stop advertising etc (and as a single adopter this was my only source of income). Social Services have done almost nothing to support me emotionally, practically or financially. We lived in the same home for 6 months (at SS request) but I couldn't carry on living with the worry of abduction etc. We now have a new name, new home, and consequently a very confused 4 year old - but at least he is a safe 4 year old! And I am severely in debt with a mortgage on my flat, rent to pay for our new home- moving expenses - the list goes on and no income to speak of. (SS pay me a small amount a week to compensate for lost earnings - less than a days wage per week.)What I do have though is a little boy who I wouldn't be without.

I wish professionals - yes, even Social Services - would understand that love is not enough.There seems to still be a presumption that once a child is placed within an adoptive family everything will miraculously fall into place and from then onwards any trauma that a child will have experienced will easily be overcome. Or even forgotten about. Social Workers - in my opinion - need better training in developmental trauma, the effects of prenatal substance abuse, abusive relationships etc and how this can, and does, affect the unborn child. If we, as adopters, can educate ourselves on this then why is it so hard for some social workers?Adopters know their children better than anyone else and their concerns about their children should be taken seriously. Sometimes it's just about a gut instinct that something isn't quite right - we have to be listened to and not patronised. We do actually know best. We shouldn't have to fight tooth and nail for every little bit of post adoption support. We've been very lucky in that we have an allocated PASW who is very clued up on attachment, early trauma and totally gets where our son is coming from and our package of funding was agreed with no argument. I suspect this is rare but it should be the norm. More openess and fewer euphemisms in childrens reports. What exactly does "busy child" mean? Adopters have to read between the lines and they shouldn't have to. If there's a family history of, for example, ADHD then we need to know - in the same way as we would need to know if there was an hereditary medical problem. Mental health difficulties should be no different. Support and preparation for parents and children when the spectre of school looms. And, most importantly, teachers need training on the needs and difficulties that adopted children present with. They need to understand that their behaviour is not 'naughty' but that it invariably stems from a sense of fear and panic and a feeling of being out of control.Birth parents should not be given so many opportunties to screw up their children's lives. Time and again bps are given far too many opportunities to prove that they are an adequate parent when everyone knows that in reality this simply isn't going to be the case. As traumatic as it may be, removing a child at birth can make a huge difference to how that child will function in its new family. The whole ethos that a child's best place is within it's birth family is deeply flawed and has to be changed.Do not underestimate how much a child will 'remember' about early trauma. The body keeps score even if the memories are preverbal. The legal procedures need to be speeded up. Sometimes I wonder whether those involved become so blase that they forget small children are involved. Adoption Allowance should be mandatory. I adopted three easy to place babies, only one of whom - for now at least - doesn't have significant problems. I've been unable to return to work, we are substantially out of pocket. We don't adopt to make anything out of it financially obviously but when you have a child with additional needs then they cost.

Good afternoon everyone,Just to add to this discussion, there is an e-petition on the DfE website which calls for greater ongoing support for vulnerable children adopted from care.Adoption UK and members of the Adoption UK Online Community have both been very much in support of this:http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/14435Best wishesAdoption UK

Yes please sign the petition which asks the Government to give adoptive children in school the same support system as looked after children. If there are 100,000 signatures then the issue has to be raised in Parliament. We can then all enjoy a day trip to London with our children to support the petition!I feel sad that these questions are all too late for my girls and only now, Year 10, has the school decided my daughter needs a statement. However, with an emotional age of 5 years in a 14 years body, maybe she will benefit the remaining 3 years she has.I also think how "woolly" my knowledge was from Day 1, when my children were technically "looked after" children for 3 years before an order was granted.My eldest daughter, age 7, struggled in her primary school but I now know she should have had a PEP (personal education plan) from her previous school to her new school. I don't know if she ever did as no-one told me!!!!

I support everything already said and would like to add the following.When birth parents have caused significant abuse and there is evidence a plenty I feel they should be prosecuted. Prosecution would then give adoptive parents some protection under MAPPA and would ensure that non contact orders are maintained after adoption. In our case there was a non contact order pre adoption until 18th birthday, unbeknown to us the LA with its adoption application did not bother to keep in place the no contact order . As a result all the adoptive children have recieved secreative contact via facebook from the birth parents, the father who was convicted of sexual offences against the older children but not my daughter made contact with when she turned 16 years of age. She went for face to face contact with him unbeknown to us(disappeared for one week) and then was sexually assaulted by him, two years down the line the case has been dropped by the CPS as my daughter has mental health problems and was not considered a credible witness. Her case should have been reviewed as a serious case review but this was never offered she was failed by the system from every angle.Secondly post adoptive children when they hit 18 years have incredible difficulty transferring from CAMHS in to adult mental health. They will be viewed by the adult teams as personality disordered and as a result teams are reluctant to work with them. I feel it is so the right time to have youth mental health services that run from 15-25 this would fit with the governments Youth Vision agenda. Thirdly the post adoptive child should have the same rights as LAC leavers and be cared for up to the age of 25 years as needed.Please also do not forget kniship carers who have the roughest deals of all.Fourthly I would also like to see specialist counselling services for adoptive parents, most of us end up with vicarious PTSD and end up in adult mental health services. The knowledge of adult mental health in relation to the adoption triangle is poor and though they are sympathetic they are not skilled enough to manage your presentation.Lastly when the child hits 18 the adoption allowance stops and all the benefits stop, but the complexity of maintaining the adult adoptee remains and you still can't return to work if you are the stay at home parent but now your income has halved. Finally I would like to see public employers like the NHS recognise the trauma that caring for damaged children causes the parent. I have held down very senior posts in the NHS by the skin of my teeth if my husband wasn't a stay at home Dad I am sure I would have lost my job. I would like to see public employers have to undertake carers assessments and put in place a support package for carers so that they can take time off without having to resort to sick leave or annual leave. 10 days carers leave a year is OK but it isn't carers leave that is what you want, sometimes it is just an understanding that you may not perform well this month but overall in the year you have performed at an optimum level considering the circumstances of the caring role.

one of the hardest things is being required to take time off for therapeutic parenting that is longer than the stautory adoption leave period. More financial support needs to be made available for adoptive parents to facilitate thistherapeutic parenting by extended paid adoption leave. Furthermore variations in the tax codes for working adoptive parents could be used to enable families to save more so if one parent is working that individual can optimise the amount of cash s/he has. If patrents can stay at home longer/work part time then they may be more available to help schools to welcome and nurture adoptees, many of whom are beset by the fear of being 'left' at school.

I think the support needs to start a long time before a child is even placed with their new parents. Pre-adoption training is still nott good enough. I have been through it twice, once before I had my children (and I thought it was fantastic), and then again to try to adopt a second child (I realised how much was missing!). The current process of 5 or 6 days in a row at the beginning of assesment is wrong. Prospective adopters are just not ready to take it all in at that stage. I would personally like to see 10 sessions, spread over 6 months. Plus training after approval/before matching. Parents need to know how to parent therapeutically BEFORE their children arrive instead of going through months, sometimes years of searching for support and answers. I wasted 2 years on trying lots of different parentsing techniques because I didnt actually know or understand why my children were behaving the way they were.Although Attachment was covered on my preperation training, this was a long time before I had my children and of course I was wearing very bright and sparkly rose tinted specs! On the 2nd prep course I attended, as an experienced adopter, I was so shocked to see the complete lack of awareness of the other prospective adopters. Many argued that attachment was 'an excuse for naughty behaviour', and refused to believe that adoption would be any different to parenting birth children. I have nothing against these people but it just proves they were not at a stage to listen. Furthermore I would like to see the following areas improved in terms of support;For each social service department to have a dedicated 'family support worker' who is highly experienced in attachment to be available to support adoptive parents at any stage after placement.For adopted children to have the same status as looked after children within health and education. However I believe this should be an 'opt-in' system as some adoptive parents do not want their children constaly labelled as adopted. For CAMHS to have dedicated, specialist workers in adoption and for this to be easily accessible for adoptive parents. Increased training in attachment and trauma for all those working with children; teachers, nurses, GP's, social workers etc.. I would like to see this training added in the teacher training and social worker degree as mandatory. I am sure I will have more to add at a later stage....

I think that whatever support is already out there in terms of training & support groups should be open to all adoptive families regardless of their geographical location.It is crazy that support cannot be accessed in neighbouring LA's. They should not be allowed to exclude people outside of their patch and should co- operate a lot more with other La's.Barge

Schools need more trainingChildren should have the same 'rights' as LAC in all areas, school, dentist etc etcContact - direct or letterbox is not always in the best interest of the child, it makes it difficult for them to settle and belong in a new family, it is an area for further research into the impacts.Adoption allowance should be made easier and open to more people, esp single parents, I would have had maintanence from an absent father!

OK: so these are ideals, but...1) TrainingMy preparation course didn't prepare me. It wasn't that I wasn't listening or didn't believe what I was told, but it just did not cover the sorts of issues that I would face. I think that pre-adoption there should be a much bigger focus on training.See, for many traumatised children, they need super-parents. People who can be not just parents but also therapists. This is often called "therapeutic parenting" and it is difficult and very, very different. Because it is so different, they need to be trained to do it.And because it is so different and difficult, there should be on-going, high quality training that is free to adopters. At least once per year and preferably twice or more. By experts in the field. It is so HARD to continue doing the things that you know you should be doing and decent training, even if it just reminds you, is such a help.During the early years of the adoption, there should be more frequent training. Whatever you teach in a preparation course, it's difficult to take it in until you have to apply it. So, after a child is placed, you may well need regular training to get you on the right track. This could be at least partly mentoring (see later).Of course, when you go to training, someone has to look after your kids, so you need something in place. But traumatised kids can't always be left and certainly not with a stranger in a strange place. Paying friends or family members to look after them at home?And the training would have to be reasonably local. You can't expect someone from Durham to have to travel all the way to London for a one day course.Possibly Internet based training? A central location with video feeds to regional centres? There is something about coming together in a group, though, that is encouraging and supportive. The Adoption UK annual conferences are a eally good example, but so many people are unable to attend due to cost, distance and difficulty with child care.Ideally each adopter or adoptive couple would be allocated some sort of mentor (like an Adoption UK buddy). Preferably this person would have an advocacy role as well, making sure that the adopters got what they were entitled to in terms of benefits and things like that and also having clout within the placing agency to make sure that their needs and concerns were listened to and acted on. I think the independent reviewing officer is supposed to do that, but I don't see much evidence of it happening.2) Therapeutic support and assessmentEach adopted child should have a very full assessment. Probably one pre-placement and another (or even more) at a later stage as they develop. Speech and occupational therapy come to mind, as well as physical, emotional and psychiatric/psychological assessments. Many adopted children have suffered a horrendous start to life in which they have had hugely inappropriate input at significant stages of their life. Because of this they have multiple issues. We parents NEED to know what they are in order to help and support our children.CAMHS should be subject to the same control as other adoption support agencies: only suitably trained and qualified staff should work with adopted children. Too many parents report therapy that is ill advised, ineffective, sometimes dangerous and counter-productive, provided by people who show few signs of understanding the real issues that come with a traumatic start to life.There also needs to be a huge increase in the number of suitably trained and qualified therapists at CAMHS, and possibly more regional centres that more serious cases can access. We should not have to fight for years for our children to get the therapy and support that they need. Yes, I know there are problems in deciding what support, it's costly, it's difficult to decide which are the priority cases, etc....It should be easier for the parents to get their voice heard. We spent 18 months trying to get rid of the person that we'd been assigned in CAMHS. When the children's guardian finally persuaded her to pass the case on, we moved to someone with whom we clicked immediately. I know this is difficult as some parents will never be satisfied, but there a number who are disatifsied for good reasons and having to fight against bad and ineffective support and therapy ADDS to their stress.3) FinancialOoh, this is a tricky and controversial one! On the one hand, we take these kids into our families and they become ours as if they were birth kids. And birth parents can end up with kids with complex, time-consuming and costly difficulties. On the other hand, we are risking a lot by taking traumatised children into our houses and trying to help them to recover from trauma that we did not inflict. My wife, for example, had to spend 18 months home educating our most traumatised child and has not been able to work since we adopted. This has been a huge financial cost to us, and some sort of meaningful payment would be really helpful. Should we be paid as foster carers are? Probably not. Should we get more than a parent with a Downs Syndrome child? Difficult to tell. I could go all emotive about the child's awful start to life and the trauma that they've suffered, but does that really make them a special case? It may; it may not.Ideally I'd love to have been able to say to whoever is responsible, "this child needs to be home educated. Please could you give us the money that we need to do it properly and not to have the stress of loss of income". You could also argue that, by doing this, we are saving on the school place so maybe should be paid whatever the going rate is for a child in school. He's now moved on to a special school, run by the Local Authority (LA), which costs more per place than Eton (apparently). By home educating him, we've saved the LA a fortune!I think that we should take notice of accepted best practice. This recommends that, during the first year, one parent should stay at home in order to give the child stability and security. I think there is an argument for this being paid. I would say that this should extend until the child is of full time school age - although recognising that full time school may not be appropriate and making provision for that.One aspect of this could be criminal injuries compensation. A number of our children are eligible for this, but no one tells us and it can be very difficult to get the information required in order to claim (see later about viewing the child's files). There should be a fast track, easy process, preferably started off by social services. Or some sort of agency that specialises in it and can provide real support - such as getting the information and filling in the forms and liasing with whoever it is who makes the decision.4) EducationalMany, many issues on these boards relate to education. Our children are hugely stressed and schools are often an ideal environment to heighten their stress. There are lots of people, sometimes noisy, people come in and out of classrooms, the kids require social skills to navigate which our children often don't have, they have to obey instructions... There are a million and one things about sitting a traumatised child down in a classroom that will make them freak out!Ideally there should be much more and more flexible provision for these kids. It wouldn't just affect them: there are other non-adopted kids that struggle within schools and need special environments. But for our county, for example, with secondary schools there are either full-blown special needs schools or standard secondary schools. There is nothing in between. My son is in a special school and maybe doesn't need to be there - or maybe in a couple of years time he won't need such an intensive regime. But he may never be able to cope with a standard secondary school. There is no halfway house for him.Given that's unlikely to happen, educational psychologists, teachers, heads and SENCOs need to be much better informed - or have access to the appropriate information. It seems that many of them don't like us parents telling them what they should be doing; we don't know anyway as we're not teachers and don't know the demands on them and the limitations of their physical structure, etc. So they need someone to help them out. We want to support the teachers, not fight with them!5) The systemWhen we adopted, we had a cosy vision of working together with our local authority for the good or our children. Instead it ended up that we felt we were fighting against them and them against us. And our poor social workers were in the middle!Part of the problem is that no one agency seems prepared to take a lead and, particularly, to put their budget on the line. So you can get passed around between social services, health and education with each trying desperately not to put their hand in their pocket. It's not nice!One thing that should be mandatory is for the new parents to see the files on their children. All of the files. Medical notes and all of the social notes. I remember one head of social services, interviewed many years ago on Woman's Hour, saying that they got all of their prospective adopters to sit down with a paediatrician and go through all of the notes so that they knew the implications. That is fantastic and must have been really helpful to the adopters! We, in contrast, had bruising battles with out LA and have never, ever been allowed to see the files. Yet every adopter that I know of who has seen their files has found information in there that they didn't know and has helped them - whether to just understand more of the trauma that their children have suffered or specific information that informs them about particular behaviours or things that their child does or says. It's frankly unacceptable that, five years into a placement after all sorts of odd behaviours and major fights with the LA, parents find out for the first time that their child has been sexually abused or had a head injury resulting in suspected brain damage. And both of those are genuine examples.All the best,Corkwing

I support what everyone has said above. I would also like to highlight that children's emotional development is often stunted by the very process of being in the care system, let alone the often very difficult backgrounds that they come from. This results in adopters having children who are a much younger emotional age than their actual age. We work hard to parent them appropriately, and move them through the stages to bring these two ages slowly closer together, but often this style of parenting is not understood or supported by schools and other support services. Support to adoptive families could be greatly improved if teachers, social workers, doctors, CAMHS etc could be trained to respond to a childs emotional age and put in place appropriate scaffolding and support (working with the adoptive parents) to allow the child to cope better. A couple of examples:(1)An emotionally young child may not be able to separate confidently from their parent at the school gates. Instead of the parent being told off for mollycoddling their child, with snooty looks and words like 'we need to be fostering their independence' teachers could be trained to note that for this child, coming in by themselves might just be too much at the moment.(2) A 9 year old in a 16 year old's body is going to need a lot of support in dealing with issues such as contraception. It should be possible for the system to flag these vunerable young people and keep the parents informed/involved.I could go on (and on, and on) because there are so many examples... but I am sure you get my point.Duckling

Ok DofE I met your counterpart clinical advisor from the DOH today on my safeguarding leadership course, they appear to be doing their own thing and you are doing yours around post adoption and LAC . Could the two departments please get together and coordinate your approaches? I would also hope after reading this thread that you could form an expert parents focus group and let us critique your future policy. We promise not to eat you alive but instead we absolutely promise to share our collective years of experience of parenting the most traumatised and challenging children in the country. Our children are truely amazing they have survived lives that most adults would break down over, we as parents learn so much from our traumatised beautiful kids please let us share this with you.If you do not plan on meeting with us face to face please can you summarise from this thread what has most interested you and why so that at least we feel as a collective we have been heard. Many thanks for allowing us to share our views Homerton.

Can't stop adding to this thread, when I worked in CAMHS I worled with three families where the adoption broke down. When I looked at the original home study assessments there were very clear indications that the parents had not in any way dealt with their own abusive histories. Assessing parents as suitable for adoption should be an intensive process that tests the relationships and by doing so can assess the couples or single parent's ability to cope with stress. How physically healthy a couple is important on one level but should not be the overall deciding factor. Perhaps training social workers in adult attachment interview techniques and then matching their attachment style to the attachment style of the child would be more beneficial to the current system which is pretty much Russian Roulette,

I dont want to detract from whats been said at all as I agree with it.The KEY things are HONESTY related about adoption matters and then about UNDERSTANDING and PROVISION. KEY MESSAGES from me!These are functional families that are host to dysfunctional children.Systems exist for families who are dysfunctional- not for ones like ours- we dont tick boxes easily. We need a new system that links with the LAC one but is different recognising the way we become parents and our losses etc.These are traumatised children- whatever their legal status (LAC, SGO, Adopted etc) and will need life long support and will continue to be vulnerable adults into their 20s and 30s needing parental involvement at a level far beyond what "normal range" parents expect.Files and information on children are routinely witheld for reasons of data protection when this is detrimental for the placement. its only 10 yrs in with threat of LGO we got ours which included vital information which would have been so helpful early on eg- why they are scared of broken glass relates to a violent incident.When talking about adopted children from within the UK systems particularly we are talking about deeply traumatised children who are easily stressed and highly anxious. Shame based methods of working with these children are not going to work out well- they need de-escalating and calming down to respond best.Placing siblings with trauma bonds is common practice and must be stopped. Assuming contact is positive when they have faced horrific trauma and are retraumatised by contact is poorly understood. Its supposed to be about the childs needs but is often about the Birth family.Placing children with no therapeutic assessments and support is also common and they will WILL need these things. Parents newly placed with children are unlikely to be told the level of difficulty to expect or what to do about it and this must change to do something about the dire disruption/ breakdown rates.Good workers in SS and NHS and education do exist and do excellently when they work WITH our families and really support us when trying to achieve funding and resource. OFten without budget but with kindness. They get burned out quickly. It seems the ones that are prepared to tow the party line and cover the backsides of the LAs and services stay- The ones that lie and still sleep at night stay...The main things to change for me are:1) Culture change in the SERVICES in general from fierce budget protectionism to wise spending and genuine collaborative working with voluntary and government services. So afraid to spend on the wrong thing they don't spend or take appropriate action.2) The defensive, abrasive attitude of service "providers". Locally you are looking a 2 years of complex legal appeals to get near a educational statement and then you will have to appeal to have a named provision that isnt mainstream school. A statement on emotional needs is almost impossible.3) Lack of training and awareness of complex repeated trauma and its long term effects in adoptive children in adoptive parents (because of lack of initial training and awareness.) This means that when their children cant respond to "normal range" parenting the adoptive parents feel failures and dont know that these things are because of their childs brain wiring damages and need specialist parenting and supports.4) Lack of public/ media/ professional awareness that these are traumatised children who require specialist parenting and robust supports from the off. There is a misconception that as long as the child cant cognitively remember they will be ok or once adopted it will be fine and its just not true. that earliest, non verbal repeated trauma has life long ramifications. The evidence is there and is plentiful. (van de kolk, margot sunderland etc)5) Early intervention programmes with families who have repeated SS/ NHS/ Police attention in a wrap around way of micro managed support daily/ wkly level management of home/ life/ health etc and one team to deal with a mother and child pre birth, during and after. Fast tracking into care and then best decision when there is poor capacity to change.6) There is no post adoption support here really- only seeking to blame adopters and putting you through child protection when you need support the most. This is because there is no way for any access to funded support for adoption placements. 7) We love our adoptive children and are experts in our own lives. We are often judged by those who have no understanding of living in extreme circumstances with seriously traumatised children. We need care too. some children are too traumatised to do well in any family- they are trapped in fear and mental/ emotional health issues because of severe traumas early in life and its too hard for them to manage in a family safely. Our adoptive daughter has this level of difficulty and there is no provision specialist in adoptive children like this.9) Community groups training for guides, rainbows, scouts, churches, youth clubs, gym clubs, after school clubs and childminders- they need basic training in traumatised children and what to do about it in a non shame based way.10) Honesty. Honesty. Honesty. There is such a witch hunt culture in services that mistakes cannot be learned from so we go through horrible times of having to challenge blatant lying to cover up things.

At the moment, despite our tireless involvement with our adoptive daughter within her specialist placement, we get no adoption allowances for her yet we remain her parents, maintain a place for her here, provide clothes/ visits/ presents etc. Its been a heck of a battle every time for funding as corkwing says because the services like nhs, ss, and education pass the buck ever onwards. In the end our MP was our only way to bang the right level of management heads together to fund the placement and even then its been very hard indeed to get them to fund this despite undisputed evidence that she needs this level of support.One more, vital thing- specialist therapies/ supports.If our Blossom had been a) placed without her brother and b) got the serious level of therapeutic help from specialists in early trauma BEFORE adoption or even at adoption at 4 yrs old we have been told we and more importantly she could have avoided all this.NHS services locally have a strong criteria, often refusing adoptive children, with a long wait and not the expertise needed when you get there! It took YEARS of battles with a most reluctant LA to get Blossom even seen by someone who had the level of training and expertise (tavistock clinic trained) who immediately rang alarm bells about the level of needed therapeutic support. It took a further 2 yrs of challenge to get this level of support and 3 serious incidents of harm to others. Then it was too little, too late.This must change.