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If you go to theguardian Facebook page you can find this article and read the comments people have made about it.

What a difficult job SW's have. They're damned if they do and damned if they don't.

I love how so many people have commented negatively about 'forced adoption' when they clearly don't have a clue what goes on. All the support in the world wouldn't have helped my LO's birth parents raise her safely. I met them, they're nice people but they couldn't possibly look after a child. My LO has 2 older half siblings and a full sibling - her parents haven't raised any of them. Birth mom didn't even know she was pregnant, it was only discovered at a routine appointment (she was full term). They were visited at home afterwards and had no electric, no food and the house was filthy. They had no intention of getting anything for the baby. When it was time for birth mum to go to hospital SW arrived to help her get there and she was completely unrousable (but denies taking any drugs/alcohol). At this point the plan was to remove at birth but they still gave them the chance to feed/change her at the hospital. They couldn't even change her nappy with support. They were then offered contact 3 times a week but rarely showed up and when they did were dirty and struggled with even simple tasks. LO usually became really distressed at contact. They moved house during assessment and left no forwarding address. Would it really be in my LO's best interests to be placed in long term foster care?? I think not. If she was upset at contact as a baby I can only imagine what that would do to her now she's 3 and has an ASD diagnosis. She would never be able to cope with the uncertainty of them turning up to contact. She needs permanency, routine and a family that will love her and support her to be the best that she can be and she has got that through adoption. Sorry guys, off my soap box now. I know you lot all get it. This is what I really wanted to say to those idiots on that facebook post but can't risk identifying my LO by putting all this!!

I too would love to comment but you have to use your Facebook account so if you comment, people you know will see your comment and I don't want that.

Wonder if sw would have felt the same had it been baby no 6, 7, 8 etc? When bm continued to get pregnant and despite having more input and support than many adopters get ... she was still no more able or willing to put baby’s needs first?

And have now read the comments. Grrr ... what about the rights of the child to have security, to have permanence. They didn’t ask for any of this. They had no ability to make a choice .... pfft

The letter is exactly what I would write as an adoptive parent to our birth parents. The sentiment in it was very correct I am sure of many social workers. As a concurrent carer of two babies who have since been reunited home very successfully to birth parents I can vouch that if the birth parents are willing the support is available. Re-unification was most definitely not on the cards for the social workers in both our cases but they did their job and offered them all the support and resources they could and both sets of parents bought in, scaled walls and climbed mountains to take their last chance. The support is out there for these parents if they chose to take it but as someone very involved in supporting concurrent carers I can say that very very few of these birth parents are able to buy into it. Their past is just to big a barrier to over-come. Adoption time and time again proves to be the only right answer for the child. Donatella - when you talk about baby number 6,7 &8 - I just wish more money was poured into projects like the pause project which supports these women to take a pause in the cycle of pregnancy and the child removal that many many have got themselves into. In that pause period they are supported to begin to see how they can face up to their past and see how it effects their life today. It allows them to have the confidence to make changes in their lives, not to parent but to live a different lifestyle. If that means they can go on to parent a child in the future so be it. Our birth parents are so very vulnerable, they need supported before pregnancy not during or after.

Our children were in a supported living / assessment centre with their birth parents and siblings for three months. It was the longest stay the LA ever had because they were sure they could teach the bps what to do and then they could leave as a family and it took them ages to realise this wasn't going to happen. It's unfair when random members of the public get to suggest that No one tries to help birth families stay together. My experience is the opposite. Would you believe, our girls were removed for adoption but the older siblings stayed with the bps (only to go into long term foster care a short time later).

The bm of two of mine had ongoing input for 20 plus years. Some were removed quickly, some relinquished, others (she moved around a lot) she was allowed to parent by sws who gave her the benefit of the doubt. By the time those children were removed they’d suffered so much harm they were deemed unadoptable. There was no lack of support but unfortunately she simply wasn’t able to access it. It’s all very fresh in our minds atm having just finished therapeutic lifestory work. I’m not unsympathetic and i do understand that her life wasn’t all roses either but there has to come a point when the needs of the child are paramount.

This is what I feel like posting over at the guardian. Our AD is the middle child of a large sibling group, three were too old to be adopted but have been kept together in foster care, we know they have had seven foster cares in the four years we had had AD. Their case was the worst neglect they had seen in their LA for over fourty years and they still left AD there until she was nearly six. This has left her severely delayed in all areas and will probably leave school with no qualifications. How is this the right choice for a child, where are her human rights when all this was going on. She calls her SW who removed her the great man, when asked why he is great she says he saved us all from the bad place. When we met her at intros part way through the week her F.C. and I caught her cutting name labels out of her school uniform, I asked her why and she said I don’t want this name any more it’s my sad name, my new name is my happy name. Birth parents were supported by sw since the first child was born due to mum being an at risk child and adolescent, then getting pregnant as a teenager. So with each new boyfriend SW got involved offered classes, in home support you name it they offered it and yet each time they failed to carry through what they learnt and with each change of boyfriend the children became more neglected and abused. Please stop seeing birth families as sad people who just need a little support, this is not the case these people either knowingly hurt their children or just don’t care about them. Where is the love for these kids. Signed peed of adopted.

I read it and the comments just emphasised how incredibly naive the public are about adoption today. Our adopted daughter Blossom has had a baby in the last year. I gather that her baby is in foster care somewhere. Ultimately I hope baby is adopted and stands a chance. I’m very sure that she would gleefully tell the sw how terrible her adoption was but it simply isn’t the truth. She was neglected and horribly abused in her birth family who she regards as hard done by saints. It’s her world view but it’s not actually based on any facts. SW tend to be light on facts and lots on their instinct... sigh so you know, this has an impact on vulnerable young adopted mothers and the stories their removed children are then told. I’ve also learned that social care and social workers do themselves lie. Our kids aren’t stupid and twig this and so it must be tough to believe anything that comes from them. In our children’s cases they were left for far too long with a ‘well known to ss’ family for over 20yrs. Well, family loosely because they were well spread out and never lived altogether. Birth mum never stood a chance of meeting the (reasonable but for her impossible) demands of so many children and what social care required. The practice of bouncing kids off the CP list and adding on others from the family was a big part of my kids neglect. As seasoned adopters we are often told that cases as bad as ours don’t happen any more. From reading these boards this seems to be another lie. I did mention it with my adopted son Partridge and he said this. ‘I’m glad I was adopted and I’m in a good family like you and Dad who love me. But I wish I didn’t have to have been adopted. I wish that we had had help when we started in our new family. Until there is proper help that social worker needs make sure There’s help.’

I have always noticed that the Guardian has a naive approach to adoption and often promotes the ' forced adoption ' argument in its articles. I avoid reading such crap as it gives me the rage. The public on the whole fall for this drivel and have no ideas of the reality of adoption. Of course soc services cannot respond or defend themselves due to confidentiality so it is never a balanced argument on a complex situation. As a fc and adoptor i have yet to meet a birth family who can admit to any wrong doing. In their eyes they have never put a foot wrong and it is all the fault of those awful sw who snatched their children from their loving arms and the bossom of an idyllic family. The birth parents of my little one are a case in point. They have had all their children removed due to neglect and the court papers are horrific to read but they are still posting on " soc workers stole my child .com " or whatever those type of websites are called to berate the sw who destroyed their happy home etc . It defies belief tbh. The truth is so massively distorted it is unrecognisable . I have concluded that such people are actually capable of convincing themselves of their own lies and really do feel a huge injustice has been done to them

I do wonder whether these people have any idea of what constitutes neglect, abuse etc? Maybe it needs to be spelled out a bit more directly. It doesn’t mean forgetting to brush their hair occasionally...it means things like not supervising your toddler and allowing it to fall out of a second floor window ... and worse.

True Donatella. Though i know in our case the sw was v straight and did keep it v simple to explain what was expected but all to no avail. We were fostering our little one at the time so did get a good overview of the support that was given . It is sad but for whatever reason some birth parents are unable to prioritise their childrens needs above their own despite loving their children. I do not understand it and have given up trying to work it out as it makes my brain hurt ! Going back to the letter in the Guardian i well remember when the sw rang to tell us that the placement order was granted at the end of care proceedings that had been ongoing all the time he had been in our care. We had always wanted to adopt and took this little one knowing we would ( hopefully ) be able to proceed with adoption if the placement order was given . The sw fully supported that plan throughout so we had a lot to gain by him being released for adoption but despite that we ( both my husband and I ) wept buckets after the sw call . The sw was no better and was in pieces on the phone because we all knew how devastated mum ( in particular ) would be. It was horrible and i dont think people realise what a tough job child protection soc workers do. I am full of admiration for them personally and wouldnt want to do their job for any amount of money !

I think people can feel empathy and outrage over individual cases where they know a lot of the facts and the terrible damage done to a child - such as Baby P - but cannot generalise this to create an understanding that would cover many other cases - I think it’s so hard for people to understand that there are many children who experience such horrendous abuse and survive - it’s hard to accept that these things go on. It’s a bit like that with immigration cases too (my DH is an immigration solicitor) that people feel outrage for individual cases publicised and will sign petitions but at the same time feel that human rights legislation needs repealing and is being abused People need to understand the degree of abuse possible to understand why children are taken into care at birth. They are not stolen and then handed over to adopters (as we know) but BPs are still given every opportunity to prove things can be different this time - undergo further assessments and so on - and meanwhile the child may be subjected to a poor quality of care (as my son was) with changes of foster carer and many different people involved in his care as well as contact with BPs 3 times a week. None of this was for his benefit - the only thing that was to his benefit was being removed from a dangerous family situation and placed with a permanent family. This was a positive successful example of the system working to protect the child - successfully but still damaging