Our family is in crisis, the system is broken, and we need our story to be heard. We’re calling for systematic change in the way children and families are supported through the adoption process and beyond.
Two years ago, our family were the faces of a National Campaign to encourage people to adopt a group of two or more siblings. We visited Downing Street, had a short film on BBC iPlayer, were in the Guardian and were interviewed on two local radios – a campaign we fully supported, that had our hearts. But today our family’s reality (along with hundreds of other families), is one that’s facing Adoption Breakdown.
We desperately don’t want this, but we are caught in an impossible situation within a broken system that offers very little real support. We have been consistently failed by Social Care, Children’s Services and the LA, with departments that don’t communicate and hold separate budgets. No meetings are held to discuss the overarching needs of the child, to pool departmental resources or knowledge, or provide assessments.
We have three adopted siblings. Whilst all our children have ongoing trauma. it’s our eldest who is suffering the most. Undiagnosed as he’s still on a never ending CAHMS waiting list.
Very few UK primary school staff are trained to help children with trauma, so unfortunately many adopted children end up in schools which not only fail to meet their needs but exacerbate their trauma. Our LA recognised there was no setting appropriate for our eldest child at Primary and so provided a budget to learn in a way that more suited them. We were left to unpick a mess after 4 years of schooling but then after three years of home education he was able to thrive.
All this changed when at secondary school admission age the LA advised that funding for learning at home would no longer be an option. Was the trauma repaired? Absolutely not. Had circumstances changed, other than they were coming up to Secondary age? No. Were they no longer thriving and progressing in the bespoke environment that we had created for them, were there questions around what we were doing?
Not at all. Our child was thriving, but this world was about to be shattered with yet another change, another bureaucratic decision made by one team within the LA.
The school we found was for vulnerable, neuro diverse children with behavioural challenges who couldn’t cope in a mainstream setting, some of whom were known to Social Services. Getting into this school was a whole other challenge. Our child re-entered the system, but the two siblings were now at home being educated – a sense of continuous abandonment, unfairness and shame was most certainly felt.
Alongside our eldest starting this specialist setting in the September of 2021, the decision was also made by Post Adoption (but naively agreed by us) that our eldest should have Life Story work. This work was to be conducted by our Post Adoption Support worker, but it meant that funding previously used for therapy at the well renowned Beacon House was now to be redirected to pay for the Life Story sessions. I’m still unsure why this is even the case – since we were allocated a Post Adoption Support worker anyway who had always previously made regular visits to our family.
Life story work consisted of fortnightly visits to our home, where myself, my partner, our eldest and our Support Worker went through a process whereby ultimately our eldest was given all the details that made up the story of how they went into the care system, and we became a family. Remember at this time, there was no therapy service in place to sit alongside and help them process this scary information at the age of just 11. After the final session they were given a book that contained all the information they had been given – the neglect they had endured, the physical abuse they had witnessed, and the drug and alcohol misuse and prison sentences of birth parents – all of which was far above the ability to of our child to cope with.
The combination of having this information, alongside starting a secondary setting, was clearly too much. The behaviour spiralled. At this point they were going to school still but would come home and disappear for hours at a time. They were only 12 but by now had become physically abusive to us, vaping, stealing, even setting fires. The times that they were at home became increasingly violent and unsafe. We had to call the police on our child multiple times and made regular trips to A&E. They stopped eating, they were self-harming, threatening to hang themself – they were clearly clinically depressed. We were crying out for help whilst watching our family collapse around us. We were told that our concerns would be escalated to CAHMS – more than 6 months on we have had just an initial assessment by CAHMS. We were asked by Post Adoption and our now allocated emergency Social Worker what help we required, but we were never able to access anything like respite care, nor were we ever told what help was available to help families close to break down. We were just repeatedly pushed from one department to another, with nobody wanting to take ownership for what was happening. We were allocated a mentor from a team called ‘Solutions’, who met with our child once a week for several weeks and chatted about possible ways to help with the violence and anger. The emergency Social Worker was only supposed to stay with us for around 30 days, but as yet no more permanent Social Worker has been allocated as there are non-available. We were put on a Child in Need Plan but again no resources have been allocated/provided as it seems there is nothing else anybody can do. It has been recognised repeatedly that we record and voice our concerns and that we are doing all we can from our end.
In September our child refused school. We listened and removed them. For two months we had a grace period, and it was like we had our child back. With that, the contact from various services disappeared- we were no longer high priority- apparently, we were fixed. But two months in and we were back in that sliding devastation. The violence re- started, with them threatening to kill themself and us, going into great detail about how he’ll slit our throats or chop us into tiny pieces. We are trapped in an impossible situation between keeping our younger two children safe and condemning our eldest to a mapped-out life of a residential care home under a Section 20 order, probably followed by time in the prison system or rehab system – take your pick.
We fight constantly for our family to stay together but we have other children to consider. I do believe that if we hadn’t adopted, Social Services would have intervened on their behalf because of the level of violence and chaos within our home. We have even discussed selling our home, living separately, and keeping the children separate to allow our eldest to stay out of a care system and enable our younger two children some normality of a childhood. We would do anything for our children if it might work. At the point of Adoption Disruption, the only thing I do know is that with my eldest child going into the care system it will allow my younger children to experience a life without violence, it will stop them from being scared on a daily basis and will minimise the secondary trauma they are now experiencing.
We have the love, we are trauma informed, we have the means to home educate in a very bespoke way, we have the ability to facilitate any way of learning and experiences that will enable our children to flourish but we are crying out for more help and support. Our eldest child needs psychological assessments and 1-1 support, we all need some respite.
It is shocking, we are in crisis and there have been no actual quantified attempts between any department to work together, no ability to ‘think outside the box’ to enable our family to stay together. Nothing to prevent a child’s life from being further unequivocally damaged.
I have read countless stories over the last six months of adoption breakdowns. I see that once a placement breaks down the funding is available via a different department for a full-time carer, psych and medical appointments, relevant assessments to establish any underlining concerns, counselling 4 times a week, specific educational requirements and so on, so why is this not accessible to us now?
I also read how negative these environments are. How vulnerable children together will create additional problems, how things like smoking and drugs are prevalent, how they have left a caring loving home with people that love them and are desperately trying to get them help and are now with different support staff who work shifts and don’t really know their needs but have a job to do. If only just some of those things could be put in place now to prevent us from losing our child. To enable then to have a chance in life. To prevent the younger two siblings from losing their sibling. To enable the five of us to be safe within our home but stay together. To prevent the future of our family from being destroyed. To stop them from becoming another statistic in a broken system. One that spends millions on a campaign to encourage people to adopt sibling groups but nothing to maintain those families and keep them together.