Making adoption work

The act of adoption can be regarded as a happy ending, especially when a family and child have undergone a tortuous wait to find each other. This government is pressing ahead with a number of reforms to ease the adoption process in its determination to increase the number of children who end up in permanent placements. According to the latest figures, there were 4,734 adoptions in 2011 across England and Wales. But those figures are not the end of the story.

“A lot of people think once the child comes into an adoptive family, all problems are over, but actually it can re-traumatise a child,” explains Janet Smith, director of adoption support at Adoption UK. “The child can feel that the family has not turned out as expected, or the parent may feel they can’t be the parent they want to be – that is where extra support can be needed.”

There are no figures available on how many placements break down, although the government has commissioned the Hadley Centre for Adoption and Foster Care Studies at Bristol University to carry out research in this area. Smith suggests that overall, 20 per cent of adoptions may end in disruption, with some placements – such as older children or sibling groups – more likely to break down than others. However, she points out that disruption is a difficult thing to quantify. “When they become teenagers, children may walk out themselves, but that doesn’t mean the relationship doesn’t continue – the family still sees the child as their child and the child still sees adoptive parents as their parents, they just don’t live with them,” she says.

Most children who are placed for adoption continue to experience the neurological, developmental and psychological impact from their early histories even when they are in a supportive adoptive family. According to Adoption UK, 70 per cent of children adopted from the UK care system in the year ending 31 March 2011 had been removed from their families due to “abuse or neglect”. Adoption support services aim to help children work through their trauma and attach to their new family in a positive way.

Services can include financial support, which may help an adopter stay at home to parent full-time; mediation services to help children stay in contact with birth families; therapeutic services for the adopted child and the wider family; and training for the parents. Support groups can help parents and children get to know others in their situation, and benefit from their experience. These services can be delivered direct by local authorities or independent adoption agencies, or commissioned out to charities such as Adoption UK or the Post-Adoption Centre, or to individual therapists or other professionals. Where local authorities or adoption agencies do not provide services, they can signpost families, for example to mental health support.

Alistair is adoptive dad to nine-year-old Alex, who has a statement of special educational needs. A support plan agreed between the placing local authority, the home local authority and Alistair has resulted in a financial contribution for three years of family therapy, which Alistair describes as a “lifeline”.

“Without this support, we would have struggled,” he says. “The placement is going well overall, but there have been some sticky times. Alex needs quite a lot of help regulating his emotions. He hasn’t developed self-soothing skills, so he can get angry easily and his default mode is to think he can’t do things.” The therapist works with them to develop strategies to help Alex become more resilient, and also helps Alistair work through his own feelings: “It is easy to be drawn into Alex’s emotions, to feeling hysterical, and the therapist helps with that.”

Alistair feels he is fortunate in the amount and quality of support he has received, compared with other adoptive families. While local authorities are legally obliged to offer a needs-assessment to adoptive families, they are not obliged to meet any of the needs that are identified. Nor are they obliged to complete a full assessment of need where they are already providing information, counselling or advice. And even where the law requires it, the assessment does not always happen.

‘National scandal’
The government’s adoption adviser Martin Narey says many parents are in the dark. “The law requires that every adoptive parent can ask the local authority for an assessment of their support needs,” he explains. “I find quite a few adopters who don’t know that and are thrashing around for support.” A survey by Adoption UK early this year found that 62 per cent of adopters did not know about their right to request an assessment. Of those that had requested an assessment, only 63 per cent had actually received it, something the charity calls a “national scandal”. Eighty-one per cent of those who had an assessment were identified as needing support, with the greatest need being for therapeutic services, but only 56 per cent said their adoption agency agreed to meet their needs.

The amount and quality of support given varies, not only according to the local authority, but sometimes within an area depending on the confidence or “pushiness” of the adoptive family, the background or needs of the adopted child or the training of the individual social worker assigned to the family. Some local authorities are doing well – Smith cites the Adoption in the Black Country joint venture, and Swindon and Surrey (see box) as good examples. She also praises those councils that established adoption support teams using ringfenced money from the government-funded Adoption Support Grant, available between 2003 and 2006. However, others are not doing so well.

Difficulties can arise when agencies have to work together, as when a child is placed for adoption in a different part of the country, or when social workers attached to a case move on. Despite his own confidence in dealing with bureaucracy and a knowledgeable social worker from his own area “fighting his corner”, Alistair says he had to struggle to get the placing agency to honour the three-year commitment it made to fund therapeutic services for Alex.  

There are no figures collected on how much each local authority spends on post-adoption support. Clearly, cuts are an issue for all local authority services. But Narey says he is not aware of any significant cuts to adoption support services. “I have seen no evidence of investment in post-adoption support being reduced through very difficult times – local authorities have maintained what they have, although it is still not all it needs to be in some areas,” he says.

Elaine Dibben, adoption consultant at the British Association for Adoption and Fostering, sees a varied picture. “There is some evidence of local authorities cutting posts in adoption support teams or having reduced budgets to deliver the services needed by adoptive families,” she says. “However, we are aware that some local authorities have invested in adoption support and increased capacity or services.”

Unexpected challenges
The Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) has proposed an “adoption passport” that allows families to ask for and receive support whenever and wherever they need it. “The support required is often not apparent at the time of the adoption and, as children grow, adoptive parents may face unexpected challenges,” says ADCS president Debbie Jones.

“Adoptive parents, like other families, move around the country making the provision of support more difficult. This means that while local authorities should make adoptive parents aware that they qualify for support at the point of adoption, the circumstances may have changed dramatically by the time this support is needed. What is required is a system that allows adoptive parents to ask for support whenever and wherever they need it, even some time after the adoption process.”

Smith says crucial times for support – apart from at the beginning of a placement – are the teenage years, when children can start to feel different from their peer group and show an interest in tracing their birth family, and ages seven to 10 when “the grieving process begins as they become more aware of what adoption means and what they have missed out on”.

There are no specific training requirements for staff working in support services. “Ideally, they should have experience of working with adoptive families, an understanding of the impact of trauma and neglect on children’s development and an understanding of the need for therapeutic parenting,” says Dibben. Such an understanding would also be welcome in schools, according to adoptive parents.

Adoption UK’s survey found 75 per cent of adopters feel their child’s educational needs are not being met. Looked-after children currently have more educational rights than those who are adopted, with virtual head teachers overseeing their education, personal education planning meetings and priority when it comes to school admissions – although from April 2013, adopted children will also be prioritised in the appeals process for school places.