All Voices

My Voice

Throughout this campaign I have expressed a deep frustration about the inadequate support when families through adoption face crisis. I desire change and part of this is a need to find a way to alleviate my sense of failure and inadequacy. But for the most part I am angry at the harm done to children and families when the very opposite should be in place.

Read All My Voice

Committed to Building Change

I am committed to building change in the world of adoption (permanence). This journey has taken me on a rollercoaster of discovery and emotion. I feel the adversity I have experienced as an adoptee, an adopter, and now as a social worker facing biased social work practices as a mother. [...]

Preparing for Child Protection

When requesting support beyond the level of a Child in Need plan, Local Authorities (LAs) often initiate child protection plans for families in crisis. This can be a daunting and emotionally taxing process, where parents frequently feel misunderstood, judged, and unsupported by systems intended to help. This guide provides practical [...]

A Touch On Me

A touch on me Throughout this campaign I have expressed a deep frustration about the inadequate support when families through adoption face crisis. I desire change and part of this is a need to find a way to alleviate my sense of failure and inadequacy. But for the most part [...]

Me as Guest On Adoption and Fostering Podcast With Al Coates & Scott Casson

https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-9gvjd-1689514

An Honest Reaction Fueling Thought

Honest Fuel Please accept my apology for this honesty in advance. In October 2021, I began to raise my voice about the issues surrounding the adoption crisis. Now, three years later, after countless conversations, meetings, events, and emails, not once has anyone disagreed with my perspective or the collective [...]

Open Letter To A Social Worker

Dear Social Worker, Can you think back to the day you were informed about my case, your new case, did you feel excited, overwhelmed, or ready for a challenge? You must have had a quick glimpse, a brief delve into a layer or two of the information in front of [...]

Guide For Social Workers

Children who are adopted are mistreated and abused in the primary stages of their lives and expected to thrive within their forever family. This view is antiquated, and when families face crisis instead of receiving hand holding, empathy, partnership, and therapeutic interventions there is an inclination towards seeking child protection [...]

Fractured Blame

Breakages. They happen, some more frequently than others. After quick consideration of how the breaks happened, the main focus turns to who can fix it, or how can it be fixed. When it comes to families in crisis seeking support from services, questions are not asked about how or what [...]

Our Voices

These are not just stories; they are life experiences, woven with threads of hope, struggle, and crisis, and are written by people broken by the systems that failed them. It is imperative to approach these stories with a lens of kindness and empathy, recognising that behind every word lies a soul bared, a heart exposed.

Read All Our Voices

Annabelle Harris

My Life Changing Involvement With Social Care…. Why I chose to take a step to the side? Because my children’s behaviour was too hard to live with, for them and for me? Multiple incidents a day, support network diminishing, [...]

Florence Walker

I am immensely angry and frustrated. Even this afternoon something happened, and I tried to speak to the children’s home manager and again, I am ignored, treated like I am some annoying busybody with snotty bits of kids who have no training, trying to give me half-hearted feedback on my [...]

Jean Smith

My experience has been horrific. Accused of all sorts by professionals with no understanding of attachment issues. The result is a family torn apart, a child back in care and a broken parent. And still, they don’t listen as I try to hang on keeping a relationship with my child. [...]

Sally Miller

Our experience! We adopted 2 children, although they are not biologically related. She always had attachment disorders due to early life trauma (a pull/push strategy) and challenging behaviours, we attended Theraplay, therapeutic life story work and she’d recently started EMDR, we also attended many parenting sessions over the years under [...]

Alice Lea

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 [...]

Lesley Robert

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 [...]

Louise Brooker

Adoption breakdown is not failure to love or try to do your best for the child. Adoption breakdown is not abandonment, lack of parenting skills, or neglect. Adoption breakdown is in the sad reality that many hundreds of families up and down the country face each year due to the [...]

Rosemarie Lewis

We were misled from the start, a catalogue of errors in the PAR report, a child with FASD, years of asking for help, years of asking for respite, a refusal from CAMHS to even see the child due frankly to funding. Finally, my health and my partner’s fell apart, respite [...]

Other Voices

There are many professionals, friends, family members and beyond who walk beside us, who see the damage done and want their own voice, who can empathise, and understand the anger and frustration we feel. There are also those with contrasting views, and they also need to be heard. The more talking, the more listening, the more thinking the more likely change will occur.

Read All Other Voices

Jenny & Rosie – Festive Koala 5

This is hard to write. As I reflect on the complexities of my relationship with Rosie, one episode still stands out in my memory, burned in with shame and humiliation. Christmas 2021. As Covid just started to loosen its grip on our lives…..read more Festive koala

Guide to Allegations

This collection offers perspectives from parents on allegations made by their children, who have endured trauma and adversity, leaving a lasting impact on their lives. Sadly, parents caring for children with trauma symptoms often encounter extremely challenging behaviours, which can deeply affect family dynamics. These views reflect the shared experiences [...]

Jenny & Rosie – Scary 5

“Do you want me to break your knuckles?” It’s not a question I’m often asked. Had I bumped into one of the Krays? Switched on Peaky Blinders? No. This is what Rosie said to me the other day in response to my request (for the third time) that she clear [...]

Jenny & Rosie – Who is Safeguarding who? 4

Another new school, another panicky call from a teacher in the second week. Rosie has been indiscriminately (and forcefully) kissing other kids apparently and all their safeguarding alarm bells are ringing….,read more..

Jenny & Rosie – When your Hand is not your Hand 3

Answer: when it’s attached to your terrified daughter. Why is she so scared, walking through the car park into Waitrose? Because before she came to us, aged four, she had moments of wandering around the streets on her own. Read more……. When your hand is not your hand

Jenny & Rosie – Roadhog 2

What would Lewis Hamilton do, I sometimes think, on the 25-minute drive to school. Would he, entirely used to gripping the steering wheel and blocking out any distractions….read more Road Hog

Jenny & Rosie – Traumarama 1

This is a blog about being mum to 11 year-old Rosie; half tiger, half lawyer, adopted by us when she was 4. Only the names and disguising details are made up. Bad jokes and gut-wrenching sense of guilt all my own….Read more Traumarama

The Trauma Experts Voices

In our journey as adopters in crisis, we are not alone. Alongside us walk trauma experts, who have not only worked with us but have stood by us, sharing our frustrations and lending their support. They wish to be heard also to ensure that the central issues plaguing adoption crisis – the oversight of childhood trauma and the misconception that love within a forever family is sufficient for healing.

Read All Trauma Experts

The Social Care Voices

Some social care professionals recognise the limitations of current approaches and advocate for a more compassionate and holistic strategy. Blame and shame have no place in effective social care. Rather than casting judgment, these professionals advocate for a collaborative approach that seeks to understand and address the root causes of these specific familial challenges.

Read All Social Care

Social worker 2

I have worked in social care for many years and have been faced with responding to many families at point of crisis. This is often when parents are at the end of the road and feel they have nowhere else to go and no more options left for them. The [...]

Social worker 1

As a social worker I have faced many issues with processes for those children who have been adopted and that after adoption services are absolutely lacking alongside specialist support for parents around trauma, managing behaviours linked with trauma. I believe anyone in the adoption process should have access to trauma [...]