We are very glad to welcome a guest post by Clare, Shannon and all the people in the “Adoption Disruption UK” support group.
I met Clare a few months ago on Twitter. Clare and Shannon, her partner for this project who lives in Canada, met via the Facebook group “Adoption Disruption UK” where they forged a friendship and shared their adoption breakdown experience.
We believe adoption breakdown is an aspect of adoption not talked about and often kept too quiet. Many adopters who are going through the experience or struggling with their adoption don’t know where to find support and emotional help. We hope this post can be of help to all those people, and it can be a starting point for a more open talk about the struggles and thrives of adoption.
Are you ready to have your family life sabotaged every day? Are you willing to keep fighting for support for your child and get nothing in return? Are you happy to not be listened to or believed by the authorities? If you can answer “Yes” to any or all of these questions, then continuing with the adoption placement may well be for you.
However, if your very last ounce of resilience has gone and your belief systems have been shattered, you probably find yourself in the position of considering ending the placement. We understand – this is not a decision which you are going to be taking quickly or lightly.
Adoption disruptions and family breakdowns are the areas not really covered in any pre-adoption training, not portrayed in the happy “forever family” images on adoption marketing materials, or indeed on any television or media programmes that we have seen. Adoption nowadays is not the same as when girls “got into trouble” and the child was put up for adoption so as not to bring shame on a family. The children who are placed now are traumatised human beings whose needs have not been met, who do not know how to be parented and often do not know how to attach. Disruption as a potential outcome from an adoption placement has to be seen as a reality and should be explained up front as such. None of us adoptive parents enters into adoption thinking a disruption will take place or wanting it to, but the fact is, adoptive family breakdowns do happen and this is a global issue, not one just confined to the UK.
Expectations and excitement levels are high on both sides when a match is found, but would placements be better if a child (UK cases) was placed with an Adoption Support Fund “budget” pre-agreed and pre-approved alongside a parenting plan to match the child’s established needs? Would placements be less at risk of breakdown if they were always “foster to adopt”? Should the words “forever family” be replaced with “growing up family”? If phrases like these were used instead, then neither the child/ren nor the adoptive parents would feel the same pressure to “make it work” and could try to get on with building the family unit in a much less pressured environment. Maybe, any subsequent breakdown might then not be so impactful.
We all know the adoption application process is tough, but building the family is tougher, surviving living with children who do not know how to attach is heartbreaking, and, making the only decision possible for everyone concerned is devastating. But, it doesn’t stop there, the aftermath, grief and loss of a family breakdown is hugely traumatic for the adoptive parents who thought adoption would give them the family they so longed for or who wanted to add to their existing brood or wanted to be able to change a child’s life for the better.
When the placement ends and your family unit has been broken and the child or children have left your home, the only way to describe it is a mix between (a) when you know you have ended a relationship for the right reasons but you still want to know how the other person is, what they are doing and if they miss you, and, (b) as if someone has died. Some people have experienced great support, kindness and empathy from their family and friends following the family breakdown, others not, leaving them isolated. In addition to losing the child/ren, along the way, some people have also lost friends and family members who could not empathise or understand.
Adoptive parents are left feeling anxious, with high levels of stress, guilt, concern for the child, loss, grief, anger, frustration. We have to start rebuilding a new life which we never thought we’d have. We feel disappointment and huge sadness it didn’t work. We think about our children every day.
Adoption breakdown stories (well, they are not “stories”, they are real people’s real lives), are all different but also all so very similar. We are members of an online support group and amongst ourselves, we’ve shared what some of the reasons are which caused our adoptions to break down and discovered that the breakdown can happen from as early as during the Introductions stage, right through to 10 years or more post-adoption order, and at any time in between. There are so many reasons for adoptive families to break down – lack of support from the authorities, “new” medical diagnoses that were not provided in the child’s paperwork, lack of therapy for the child, false allegations by the child and involvement from the police, the child becoming beyond parental control due to drugs and violence brought into the family home. The list goes on and is not necessarily even just one of these reasons in isolation.
There is a need for change.
We know this blog will be read by people in different situations and we thank you for reading thus far.
If you are an adoptive parent who is considering ending the placement, or you have already experienced this type of family breakdown, or you are just trying to find answers and kindred spirits, then do get in touch. We understand living through and surviving the fallout.
And if you are a person reading this who was adopted and then the placement later disrupted, please know that the family you were with did everything in their power to try to prevent this from happening to you and ended up having to make the only decision possible for everyone.
We also recognise that, in addition, birth children, adoptive siblings, grandparents, wider family members and social workers also suffer the impact of adoption disruption – its ripples are far-reaching.
Thank you to Laura for giving us the opportunity to post on this blog as a guest and open up this discussion to a wider audience. We appreciate being able to start the ball rolling to remove the taboo of adoption family breakdowns and hope that we have provided some food for thought to stimulate discussion – and we ask you to remember, do not judge us, you have not walked in our shoes.
Just to finish, we are running a survey and also a book project for adoptive parents affected by adoption disruption. Again, if you are in a similar situation and would like to contribute, do get in touch. Through this work, we hope to raise awareness of this very important adoption topic.
Please help us bring about some change in the system – for the right support and therapy for preservation of adoption placements, for services to be put in place to help future families who will face making this very difficult choice. Talk to us, not about us.
Thank you for reading!
As an adoptee who’s family did not do everything they could have done and where the system then failed, it would be good if you had acknowledged this type of disruption too. Sometimes adoptive parents struggle and succumb to their own issues. This isn’t based solely on my opinion but on the social worker involved and family friends. This could also be a better balanced article if you had spoken about how adoptees might feel losing what was meant to be a forever family.
Whilst our adoption has not broken down (we’re still praying there is time to change patterns with our kids who are only 8 and 10), I completely agree – a FUND should come with the kids. They need so much support later on, and by that time as adoptive parents you’re on your knees from exhaustion. The daily battles you wage with children who don’t know how to be loved, who push away kindness, and welcome (subconsciously) chaos – bring you to your limits. The idea or energy to beg (because it is BEGGING post adoption) & plead (that your child’s case is WORSE than an others and therefore merits the scant allocation funds) for the support you need from Post Adoptive support is almost too much to bear. It adds to the stress the ENTIRE family feel.
Post disruption all parties (kids and adults) need support and it disheartens me to hear of people losing (further) friends and family support because of a breakdown.
You are all very brave people for making the decision as it would have been done with the children’s best interests at heart as recognising you can’t meet their needs in isolation is a brave decision to make.
We are considering seriously disrupting our adoption. Our daughter, age 12, has recently been placed in residential through DCFS under a “no fault dependency “. However, this facility is a real joke and we are not willing to risk them discharging her prematurely back to us. Still, we have heard the state could come after us for child support because she has such high needs.
Thank you for opening up this much needed conversation! I, too, had a disruption of one of the 4 siblings i adopted. I was warned by 2 people but didnt listen. It is absolutely necessary thst they bring the realities out into the light. Here in Michigan. USA, the adoption workers get a bonus for every child that gets adopted so there is a silent race to get kids out of the system as quickly as possible. Sad but true realities that need to be addressed prior to adootion!
We adopted 2 from Eastern Europe at ages 8 and 9. The younger, our son, was violent from the start. But we were naive and he was small. We went through with it. The violence ever went away. He just grew bigger as he grew older. Our daughter, by comparison, seemed much better. He was removed from our home and we were blamed, until he became violent in the other placements. Daughter git worse once he was gone. She stole, cussed us out, used her body aggressively, refused to go to school, binge ate until she was obese, told children’s services we didnt feed her. At 16, 5 months before the legal age to move out, she forced us (to avoid more false allegations) to let her live with an aunt. My son wanted to be adopted by an uncle. A gun-owning uncle. He’s living there now. We will TPR when they are ready to adopt. They have turned on me, blamed me gir both kids behaviors. I now count 2 sisters, 1 brother and sister-in-law, and 2 cousins as my haters. They have trashed me online. I have blocked them from contacting me in any way. My family does not get it.
Fostering to adopt is a great idea.
6 months may not be enough time to decide.
But this should work across state lines too. Some states are hiding children available for adoption in facilities.
They do not TPR because a family resource has not been found. But one is not found, because we are not really looking. Childrens faces are protected by HIPA laws and so they are never added to Adoption websites.
Then, right before the kids turn 18, there is a heavy push to get them adopted. Cute pictures go up, & videos are added to Nightly news segments.
Why didn’t we push this hard 7 years ago, while the child still could be helped, and had supports in place?
Now we push them into an unsuspecting adoptive home who is not prepared for all the damage that has been done. Behaviors and diagnosis are hidden from the potential adoptive family, until Adoption is almost final. And even then, the info you get is minimal.
If you ask if the child has been violent or sexually acted out, they will almost always say “I don’t think so” or “Not recently…” without even checking.
My most recent Adoption is now 18. He has been here 4 months. He has told me that my day to control him was the day before his 18th birthday.
This means to him that I can not have any say over anything he does while living in my house. He had 2 years of school left, and zero funding or Medicaid.
This weekend I was awoken to him beating on my door with violent screaming, cursing, & demands.
We called the police and the officer came out & told me 2 of us may be going to jail today.
So now I feel like an abused woman, and can not even call the police for help.
Adoption is great, isn’t it?
I have been a Theraputic & behavioral foster parent for 20+ years. Adopted 6.
My 14 year old can not stop stealing & is violent. We have been to the emergency rooms and asked for help, and put on waiting lists for counselors & therapists so long, our name falls off the list. Always sent home with nothing. If the child is not immediately (in front of the Doctor) violent to self or others…they send us home. After 3 hours in a waiting room, of course child is wore out & calm. This does not mean he will not be a threat when we take him home.
But now I can never call the police for help again, because I might go to jail.
We say we want people to adopt our older teens…but if we really do, parents need help past age 18.
Social workers can always get a kid help. Therapist/psychiatrist/hospitalizations/residential with 1 Phone call. Why can’t adoptive parents get any help?
I have advocated for foster care and Adoption for all these years.
Now I am at a place, I no longer can recommend it.
My life has become hell.
I need respite. But who watches older adoptive teens with problems for the state rate of $20 a day?
I can tell you who.
No one good.