Many of you may know that there comes a point in the adoption support journey at which adoptive parents begin to ask for things – awkward things – like respite care, therapeutic intervention outside the ASF, or perhaps, to disrupt the adoption. Around this point, social workers who are in place to support us cease being supportive – they become adversarial and accusatory. They cease being “on our side”. They often display irrational adherence to dogma, suggesting that we repeat failed actions while expecting different outcomes. They also seem prepared to attack adoptive parents, and the purpose of these attacks cannot be discerned.
The only explanation – I have been able to settle on is this – adoption social work is a cult.
Cults are never described as such by those within them – of course. But it’s as plain to me as those guys waiting on top of a mountain for the world to end. Some cults have complex or bizarre belief structures – that aliens are coming to save us – not that their leader is a divine manifestation. But the driving belief system of this particular cult is profound and simple. It is just this – Adoption Works.
This drives their behaviour and responses – their careers, their lifestyle depend on it. Their very identity. It is the unshakeable faith – pure dogma. And of course, they’re surrounded by fellow believers, and an edifice of governmental legitimacy that shores up their claims to mainstream truth.
And this is why it cannot be challenged. And why we see such irrational responses when it inevitably is challenged.
Difficulties at school? You’d better go on this course that we usuallly send young, struggling birth parents on, because despite the rigour of the adopter recruitment process, it must be your fault, because Adoption Works.
Can’t get an attachment disorder diagnosis? No, of course, because Adoption Works, so why would we allow a medical professional to sign up to the heresy that it does not?
CAMHS not interested? No – they’re too smart to get involved, better to redirect you to the people peddling the myth that Adoption Works.
Child regularly attacking you with weapons? Go on a different course. Clearly you’re doing adoption wrong, because it definitely Works.
Trying to begin disruption process? Well you can’t. There is no disruption process. We don’t need one – because Adoption Works. In fact, we’d better remove all the adoption social workers from your cases, and introduce non-adoption-specialist LA social workers more accustomed to dealing with feckless parents and incompetent families – that’s how sure we are that Adoption Works.
Actively disrupting this week? Well, we might charge you with child abandonment. You’re the first person to ever do this, so it must be your fault. Because Adoption Works.
Disrupted, finally? Well. We’d better treat you terribly, ignore your parental responsibility, cut you out of communications, mislead your child about your motivations, and denigrate your commitment and skills on paper. We must discredit you, because you are a dangerous heretic – you clearly do not believe that Adoption Works.
And this is serious. It is not a bunch of flat-earthers, just doing it for the banter. This matters.
I think that this cult is absolutely secure internally for the moment – its members daren’t allow the ingress of a single iota of doubt – even that doubt that would blossom into denial. It is also dangerously out of control. But I know a method we can use to tame it. Not destroy it completely, but at least to get these guys to stop staring at the sky, admit that the aliens are not coming, and move down the mountain. Maybe not all the way off the mountain, but a long way down the slope.
We simply need to capture statistics relating to adoption disruption and breakdown locally and publish them nationally. That this doesn’t already happen is one of the most baffling of very many baffling facts in adoption in the UK.
But – that’s all it would take.
The pin prick that would burst the “Adoption Works” bubble and puncture the dogmatic integrity of the cult. Immediately, we can say “it doesn’t always” – with perfect proof, and the debate would end there.
And more than that – this should be the springboard to proper breakdown planning and provision, and thus to actual breakdown procedures that work. We could begin to ask questions like – “it seems likely your LA will have X adoptions breakdown this year. Where will you house them? What practical procedures exist to make the transition smooth and un-traumatic? What steps can we take now to identify those families likely to disrupt, and what should be done to pre-empt or prevent this?”
These questions don’t sound crazy to me – they sound like reasonable questions that government entities in a modern democracy should be able to answer.
Questions indeed that should be asked now – but are not. And certainly, are not answered. Simply because, you see, Adoption Works.
By John Lamb