For the want of appropriate, timely and professional support (that wasn’t a post adoption social worker coming round to craft or bake for an hour!!) our family broke down. We were left to flounder for months after saying we were desperately in need of more help as a result of violent and coercive behaviour (Child on Parent Violence) from our child – they were already aware of the situation. It took five months for a post adoption social worker to contact us after a half hour meeting and a further year for support to be forthcoming. By then it was already too late, our child would not engage, and a desperate situation was made even worse. It has had an appalling outcome for our child and an appalling outcome for the rest of the family.
For the want of appropriate and timely support when we asked for respite, because we were so desperate, our child is now accommodated under Section 20 and is no longer in the family home. Not to mention that is costing the taxpayer an absolute fortune! For a fraction of the cost, appropriate professional help may have saved our family. Our child has now had numerous placements as foster carers, social workers and placement staff have not been able to cope with them and their behaviours. I feel our child has been let down by people we were told were there to help when we started the adoption process.
The trauma caused by the impact of our oldest adopted child’s violence has had a hugely detrimental impact on our youngest adopted child, who not only witnessed it themselves on an almost daily basis but was also subjected to it from time to time. The constant police visits and ongoing threats of violence and the coercion have also had an impact.
The secondary trauma caused, not only by our adopted child’s violence but also by the treatment of us by Social Services has had a huge impact on our mental health. We have been made to feel that we are inadequate and have been treated as if we were the people from whom our children had originally been removed because they were unsafe, rather than the people who were judged by Social Services to be marvellous enough to be able to adopt them and parent them therapeutically and had done so for 11 years.
We have been gaslighted, patronised, condescended to and lied to & about. The amount of lying and back covering for inadequate and often unprofessional work from Social Services is horrifyingly widespread. Complaints elicit non-committal responses and further lies and thus we lose the will to stand up for ourselves.