We’re still a little too emotional to add proper content to this post but we wanted to share the documentary below.
Panaroma’s documentary on the many different faces of adoption, sometimes quite literally, was in itself a masterpiece. It may not have had the time to touch upon the intricacies of the family justice system and why it is failing children (and will continue to do so unless it understands the issues in their entirety, rather than effecting soundbite solutions), but it is a work of art.
What makes this documentary so special, is its delicate handling of the highly emotive world of adoption and foster care – Barnardo’s would do well to observe the dignified and subtle ways in which the programme gets its message across (we are of course referring to their rather crass attempt at publicising their work through the use of a worthless poll trying to loud-speaker dubious perceptions about children); its, rather successful attempt at looking at adoption from all angles and its gentle but insistent message about the failure of the family courts to give these children the support and love they need.
The government seems terribly keen on making things mandatory for families: we would respectfully suggest that the watching of this report be made mandatory, along with several other reports we can think of, for all agents who work within the family justice system, including lawyers. We recommend these reports should be watched or read every week, at the start of each week, so that no one forgets why they’re really there: the kids.
Please watch this short documentary. And please, pass it on to anyone you think should watch it, or cares enough to be moved into action by it.
Many thanks to one of our readers, who kindly drew out attention to the Panorama documentary.
Panorama: The Truth About Adoption
Social Workers really believe they KNOW what is best,the sad truth is..they do NOT.
Dear Anon,
Thank you for your comment. For legal reasons we’ve had to edit it, however your frustration is noted and of course, many families in the UK feel let down by social workers and local authorities who simply don’t understand what’s needed. We see distressing cases, often.
I really feel for Conor. I hope the Judge acts in his best interests and leaves him to continue his life with his Foster family who obviously love him very much.
Thank you for your comment, Jo. I don’t know what the details of the case were in Coner’s case, but I do hope that he is able to be where he needs and wants to be.
A well made programme,but hopelessly biased in favour of adoption as opposed to supporting families with problems.
6 Salient facts that emerged were :-
1:- The only two mothers featured, both had learning difficulties .This was probably because any mother with an average education and ability to express herself eloquently about suffering a perceived injustice when her children were taken would have ruined the pretty pictures portrayed.
2:-The reason given by one mother for losing her children was that she was at the time temporarily homeless ,and this was not contradicted .Instead of helping her to find somewhere social services decided to take her 3 children into care at a cost of £150 per day each,amounting to over £160,000 per year when they could have supported the mother at a fraction of that cost.
3:-In spite of the fact that the mother had not been allowed to see her 3 children for four years the pitiful half hour contact allowed to her by the social workers after the adoption by strangers broke down clearly showed that the loving bond between mother and children was as strong as ever and deserved to be preserved not broken .
4:-The story of little Connor who had been through multiple different foster homes (probably because of bad behaviour following his forcible separation from his loving mother) was pitiful indeed.Surely it went to show that the risk of emotional abuse being suffered by such a child “in care” must be many times greater than leaving him with an argumentative family or a mother with very slight learning difficulties?
5:-The model foster family came across as very sympathetic and their offer to adopt little Conor was praiseworthy if a little late after 5 years of fostering him.The mother’s wish to get him back to join her partner and her other child (who was presumably well cared for) was understandable but her coming conflict in court with the fosterers could perhaps have been avoided.Nobody suggested that an OPEN adoption could go ahead on condition that the birth mother be allowed regular contact by court order.
The mother would almost certainly have accepted that rather than risk a case in court that could have resulted in her losing contact with Conor for ever;
6:-The need for more adoptions from care was accepted in the programme without question ,but the practice of taking thousands of children into care(over 100,000 in the UK!) and subsequent adoption against the will of the parents (most of whom had never harmed their children) was not allowed to be discussed at all.90% of all adoptions we were proudly told are vainly contested in court by distressed parents and the programme implied that it was somehow wrong and impertinent of parents to fight in court and hence delay the wonderful forced adoption process !
When will a programme be screened featuring the views of the thousands of bereft parents about the forced adoption that the UK alone in Europe (except Portugal maybe) so enthusiastically practices?
Hi Ian, I disagree that it was biased; that’s what made it so powerful.
With all due respect, the programme filmed the birth mothers saying they only had mild learning disabilities and that this should not have led to the removal of their children. I didn’t get the impression the programme was trying to deny people the right to speak. If anything, it wanted to be very open and even explained that they wanted to film Coner’s social worker, but she refused. They could have picked families where the mothers and fathers were so dependent on drugs or alchohol that the scenario would have seemed much more black and white. But they didn’t; they trod a fine line, which is exactly why these birth mothers were a great choice.
Taking your 6 points, we could look at the content and interpret things this way:
1) and 2) The birth mothers featured were mothers who the programme showed were parenting children perfectly well from ongoing and stable relationships or who had only very minor obstacles to overcome (your observation about the birth mum who had no permanent home being a good example). Panaroma contrasted that with the many placements some children have, a direct contradiction to permanence in itself and this was heavily touched upon, throughout the programme.
3) The fact that you can make this observation is due entirely to the editing of this programme. It was filmed that way so that you could see the huge strength of the maternal bond. I don’t think that was lost on the film makers or other viewers.
4) Again, the point you raise is raised directly in the programme. We see the kids struggling with placement and adoption – did you not witness the children crying at yet another rejection by a family who decided they couldn’t take them on? You can’t honestly think Panorama left this footage in by accident?
5) The programme shows quite clearly that the local authority had not followed protocol – we are told this after the court hearing takes place which is then adjourned and pushes back the adoption. We are allowed to see the mother’s joy and relief, which we all know will be brief, at the adjournment having taken place. There is no attempt at concealing wrongdoing here or trying to pretty-up the LA.
6) The birth mothers explained very clearly that they were anti the adoptions; there were several conversations between them all about this.
I have no doubt you care, Ian, but with the greatest humility, I do think on this occasion you have not set your feelings aside and taken a clear look at what the programme was really showing us.
Dear Ian;
A very accurate analysis of the programme and I agree totally with you.
Ian – I feel your response is biased towards the birth parents. I see this issue from both sides – as a proffessional who works with families in Social Care and also as an adoptive parent. I can assure you that children are only taken in to care as an absolute last resort. I have worked with a Mum with four children with mild learning difficulties and there was never any question her children would be taken into care – but a great deal of support did / does need to be put in to ensure the needs of the children are being met. There are often complex reasons why a child is taken into care – including domestic abuse, which was mentioned a couple of times in the programme yesterday. I believe passionately that families should remain together if at all possible – that is whay I do the job I do, but we must always put the needs of the child first, and that includes putting their needs before those of the birth parent.
Ian, you seem not only to be biased, but to have a very selective memory, and have some of your facts wrong:
1. Three mothers were featured – remember the first couple who were saying goodbye to their two children? We had been told they couldn’t keep them because of domestic abuse.
2. Yes, the reason Keiron’s mother gave was that she was homeless. However, we also see Keiron reading his life story book, which details how she was unable to look after him adequately, mixed with ‘risky’ people, and left glass and’ dangerous things’ around. I would imagine there was a lot more to the story than her merely being homeless.
4. Coner had not been through multiple foster homes. He had been with the same foster family almost from birth, except for the failed adoption which broke down after two weeks.
NATASHA ,The essential bias points 1 and 2 were that nobody queried or even discussed whether those children should have been taken for adoption in the first place and not one angry but eloquent deprived mother out of thousands available was allowed to denounce the “SS” and all their works !Point 3 and 4 were not criticisms of the contents of the programme ,but of its omissions.Firstly ,there were possible conclusions not even considered in the program that money could be better spent supporting a family than taking children such as these into care , and secondly that the bond between mother and child should never be dissolved for ever by closed adoption.Point 5 still suggests that an open adoption with birth mother contact for Conor could have been offered but this was never considered and probably never will be !Point six was in essence that if 90% of adoptions are fiercely resisted by parents should not the wisdom of ever allowing any such forced and closed adoptions have been debated?
I would like to have seen a short debate between those who favour more closed and forced adoptions and those who would forbid them by law !
Hi Ian, I think the seminal point is that all of the intricacies cannot be covered in such a short space of time on film. To my mind, they did well to give a flavour of the difficulties surrounding adoption in the UK.
As a father of 3 boys, I was extremely moved by this programme. Clearly it was edited with maximum impact in mind. However it still got its message across very well.
I would take issue with some of the comments made by Ian. It was mentioned that abusive / neglectful adults were involved at some stage in the childrens past hence why they had been moved. At no time was I, the viewer, under the impression that the decisions were solely down to learning difficulties on the part of the parents, or just a temporary period of homelessness. Ian also mentions that Connor had been through multiple foster homes? I could be wrong but I am pretty sure the Connor I saw had been with the same foster family since he was a baby? Understanding that the programme had been heavily edited, it was still painfuly obvious where Connor’s best interest lay. I felt desperately sorry for both Connor and the foster family when their adoption application fell through. What would it do to Connor to tear him out of a stable, safe, supportive and mutually loving environment, that he had been part of for 5 years since he was baby? To him, the foster family who wanted to adopt him, was his family. What part of that do the “authorities” not get?
Clearly children being with their natural parents is unarguably the best outcome. But if being with the natural parent puts the child at serious risk, or as in the case of Connor, if removing him from his loving foster family (who want to adopt him) risks causing massive emotional damage, then their welfare needs to be put first, ahead of the wants of the birth parent.
As someone with no direct experience of any of the issues raised, the documentary highlighted multiple failings right through the system, that were frankly, shocking. What came across, to me anyway, was just how remote the most essential needs of the children had become, from those involved in determining the outcome of their lives. The process needs to change. As Natasha said, all the agents need to be reminded why they are there; the kids.
The show DID show failures.
The failure to support parents with learning disabilities when with support they can and DO become ‘good enough’ parents. (MacIntyre and Stewart. 2011),
The programme also showed both sexist and class-ist non objective constructions used when formulating selection criteria. Sexist in the attitude that only females should help with the morning routine. Classist in the presentation of the idea of middle class values of ‘sunflowers in the garden’ ‘preferring dogs’ and playing ‘handbells’.
The ‘lifebook’ they showed the poor child with regard to why he was adopted was a poor show as well considering his mother had a learning disability. I noted that it was full of bias and did not state what happened to the poor mother and the failures of the state to support her as a vulnerable woman when faced with this ‘inappropriate adult’ that entered her life.
The show also showed the social services failing the foster parents / adoptive parents through not following protocol.
A very sad programme all in all and bad PR for conventry city council but reflected appropriately the ethical dilemmas.
The Prison Reform Trust did an interesting report with regard to care as a stepping stone to custody. http://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/Portals/0/Documents/careasteppingstonetocustody.pdf which shows that this ‘drift’ (or failures) by the services can lead to a child having worse life outcomes than if they were supported to live with their parents.
Perhaps David Cameron’s ‘parenting troubleshooters’ announced today might help.
http://www.google.co.uk/url?url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/dec/15/cameron-400m-chaotic-families%3Fnewsfeed%3Dtrue&rct=j&sa=X&ei=s07qTtGUCIXO4QTb_9DrCA&ved=0CCwQ-AsoADAA&q=guardian+david+cameron+parenting&usg=AFQjCNHHH5rFmZq5WAn6uPt0gbE4jEnjaw
Hi SM, Thank you for your comments. We recently mentioned the PRT’s report, which is very interesting.
The article in the Guardian may be indicative of a double-edged sword. One would hope that the right families will be identified and that errors in the wake of Baby Peter in the form of un-necessary removal of children, will not be magnified as a result of the proposed initiative.
It seems that adoption is very much on the political agenda now. Martin Narey, the governments adoption advisor (formally of the Home office and Barnardo’s) has called for a 50% increase in the number of adoptions. In many cases adoption appears to be the right option but there is also a real financial pressure to reduce the number of (much more expensive) foster placements by raising the age of children who are considered for adoption – many older children cannot settle in adoptive placements, often because they still identify with their birth families. There is a real danger that this trend could lead to more examples of the practices that can be seen at – http://invisibleengland2.wordpress.com/
Barnardos declare an income of over £175 million per annum,Martin Carey knows that for Barnardos adoptions are big business !
Dear Mam, we all have our opinions of that excellent programme.programme. Perhaps the next programme will be about the miscarriages of justice in the family Courts. I took note of how the social worker dictated the letter that was written by the mother. I also noted the very lucid writing of a five year old about “risky people” screwdrivers, broken glass etc. in his Life Story. Once again NOTHING to help the mothers, why could they not adopt their own children with help from SS. It is now Yuletide and my thoughts go out to all the criminals who will be mentioned in the press as to the loss of their Family rights. One does get cynical at times.
Being a person affected by the forced adoption process and going though my own grieving, together with my wife who has an ABI – but a good IQ on good days. we both watched and listened very quietly with a tears in our eyes and silent emotions. We both felt it was not balanced in a number of ways. eg It represented a bias to women, not the fathers. It showed that the children suffer and certainly it showed a very uncaring ill trained and a mind set of Social Workers -high and mighty belief and prejudice – lacking speech delivery or empathy with the childs age to fully understand or comprehend at a childs level. The SW had a pitch of a dogooder but with angst of a system belief in right. The birth book exapmle was appalling and potentially damaging to a childs memory, good to see that a child when seeing mother again after 4-5 yrs was happy to see her. The system lacks respect for a birth family, is using and playing with childrens lives, without care, the relieance on foster carers to recommend spliting family was telling when the system has let them down – The poor prospective adopter – foster carer that wa snot told that the delay was potential as the SW’s had not followed proceedure and thus messed up the hearing in Coventry Court house – another delay of 6months, not caused by the mother that wanted to maintain contact and new prior to court was realistic on her chances.[ why delay another 6 months - yet the SW never asked reason of the failure??]
I can assure you all, that losing a child – be it mother or father that can give his son a home and would wish contact as a minimum – forced adoption is abhorant and a slow death, a mother of father affected would know the programme was not a balance, just a snap shot. Its more damaging to think that our child will suffer further horror. The bit no one saw balance was the last good bye at contact centre, the emotions felt by the Foster father who knew both child and parents, and felt for both that session inflicted on both children, the parents and the emotion on Fostering.
Therefore likely the management by SW is the real failure, of all the SW’s and the IRO clearly moving cattle around was more there speciality and remorse. Not a real touch or true understanding of damage inflicted or real care adequately.
Thank god Children are more resilient – clearly protrayed but clearly mislead expectations and adding to damage of memory of birth parents suggestion of ties terminated for good as drip feeding and brain washing techniques. Poor children poorly served by all adults they have met, but resilient, that was the balance impression
Thank you for your comments, Stephen. I was very disconcerted by that book as well.
I sat and cried through the entire programme. The reason for this, is because the social care system (not the social workers themselves, who actually do an incredibly tough job with very few resources) has completely failed the kids in this country. If you actually looked and listened to the children themselves, all they want is a family. All they want is to feel wanted and loved. How is this ever possible if they are shipped from foster home to foster home? Adoption is too expensive for many families, and as the programme highlighted with all of the cases, it is a lengthy and bureaucratic process. The fact Conor wanted to stay with his family and was happy with this family seemed to have little relevance in court. The fact we think that judges are the best people to determine a childs future, when they have no experience of working with the child, is also pretty questionable. It is niave to think the sole reason for the children being removed was due to the learning difficulties of their mothers, because there are hundreds of examples of where this isn’t the case. I’m sick of hearing that keeping ‘biological families’ together is best for these children. Having worked with teenagers who have lived in troubled environments their entire lives, you can’t help but ask what this country has done for them? You can’t wait forever for people to change or take risks with the ability of a parent, especially when there are vulnerable children involved. By the time they change, the psycological impact of a difficult environment is often too engraved to reverse. And what if they don’t change? Then your left with young adults who are technically then ‘too old to adopt’.
Like the comment above, its thank god that children are so resiliant. The instability and change they have to endure at such a young age is more than most of us adults could handle.
Thank you for your comment, Beth.
I have written to at least 50 persons on the RED side. In MOST cases when SOME of them replied they PROPOUNDED the MYTH that I was not their CONSTITUENT so as to avoid knowledge of what I had told them. I have PROOF that they are WRONG. ANY PROTOCOL may be ALLOWED with the CONSENT of the Speaker. There is also another proviso to allow ANY person to appeal to ANY MP. Consider that all MPs vote for the POPULATION in GENERAL. Returning to the THEME of all the posts I pray that someday the ABUSED PARENTAL FAMILIES will be heard.
Mam, I respect the integrity of this site. DELETE or AMEND anything that I have written.
Thank you, Phil. Please do forgive me, I have had to edit your posts but I appreciate your thoughts and thank you for sharing them.
65000 kids in care in England,but over 100,000 kids in care in the UK as a whole !
Nobody debated in the programme whether or not the children in the programme or whether most of the 100,000 should be “in care” at all.”Risk of emotional abuse” was almost certainly the reason in at least 25% of the cases including those of the children in the programme.YES IT WAS THE LITTLE BOY IN GLASSES (not Conor)WHO WAS SHUNTED FROM FOSTER HOME TO FOSTER HOME WHEN HE SHOULD HAVE STAYED WITH HIS LOVING MOTHER;
Yes the life book was written by social workers to justify their cruelty. One day justice will prevail and children will only be removed if a parent has committed a crime against them.Punishment without crime ? UGH ……..
The first thing that struck me was the absence of any fathers. JH MP seems exclusively gender biased as well. 85% who have their children taken into care are on benefits. It affects mothers more than fathers because often the father has been disposed by the mother, walks away himself or cut out in private law.
The programme did remind people that the children are in limbo and deeply affected. What the problem did not do is highlight some of the issues around the failure to support birth parents as priority and from experience I know many reports are indeed either exagareted or invented in some depth or other. Bullet point life histories are laughable.
In one case the adoption report for the mother and father on the same case and same children are different to such an extent it sounds like two different families. in Portsmouth not one request for adoption by adoption agency has been refused since 2005. It is not known if any were refused prior.
The programme did highlight that there are children affected but it was clearly a programme designed to make that message and to show problems within the Family Court with selective examples.
What has to be recognised is that there are genuine cases in the system but from what i have seen the majority are overhyped for legal purposes to win the final care order and placement order and to protect the interests of the insurance companies and that cannot be in the best interests of the child. The removal or parental consent for placement is a rubber stamp once a care order is made.
There has to be a genuine debate on the issues as there is an extreme reluctance to right wrongs or to place matters in a fair prespective. Some parents are treated horribly and I feel sad for anyone the State tries to interfere with as it is not a transparent and honest process.
The general public will see no smoke without fire, but the sexing up of dossiers is commonplace and there needs to be a balanced debate on the evidence available and not one sided emotionally laden programme making.
I was deeply shocked by the fact that Coner’s adoption was put to a halt purely because the birthmother, whom he had never seen or known, was suddenly interested in getting him back. I understand the maternal bond and the desire to keep your children close to you, but clearly in this case it was in Coner’s best interest to stay with the family he had grown up in and known for the past 5 years. I can only imagine how heartbreaking and distressing it would be for him to be taken away from this loving and stable family and be placed with a woman he doesn’t know and a man who is not even his father and has no relationship with him.
As someone who works with children in healthcare I do believe adoption is often the best result for children who are at serious risk of harm and abuse. All efforts should be made to support families who are struggling but if the parents fail to provide even the basics for their children they should be taken away. My partner was subject to both neglect and abuse as a young boy and taken into temporary care. Now as an adult he says he would have rather stayed in care than have been taken back to his mother who continued to neglect him even when the abusive father left the family. He is doing amazingly now but is a big fan of adoption as he wished that he himself had been adopted and given a better childhood. We will definitely be considering adoption in the future although I think the amount of obstacles prospective adopters face is a pure disgrace.
The film showed one prospective family didn’t make the cut because the dad would have been the one getting the children ready for school instead of the mum. Children are incredibly adaptive and accepting and the thing that matters is that they live in a stable and safe environment with loving parents. Who cares whether the parents have pets or not, or what race the parents are. If they are able to support the children financially, socially and emotionally then in my opinion that should be enough.
The social services are clearly trying their best with little resources but something is clearly very wrong when children have to wait for years to be adopted and there seems to be a growing number of couples desperate to adopt.
Dear Tina,
Thank you for your comment. Yes, we too were a bit surprised at the sometimes irrational reasons for why the foster carers refused to consider prospective adoptive parents. Indeed, some parents who wish to adopt in the UK find the process so demeaning and unreasonable that they opt to go abroad and enter into surrogacy agreements instead.
Here’s an example of how to speed up adoption as witnessed yesterday….
http://mckenzie.blog.co.uk/2011/12/16/court-of-appeal-and-procedural-lapses-12312950/
Tina ,how wrong of you to say that the mother was” suddenly interested in getting Conor back” I happen to know that she was DESPERATE to keep him and to keep in in contact with him after several court proceedings .Unfortunately cruel social workers refused her any contact at all !!
The solution for Conor is so simple that it stares you in the face ! If they proposed an “open adoption” (as practiced in most other civilized countries) with his foster family allowing contact 4 or 5 times a year with his birth mother I am sure she would accept as the foster family seem exceptionally nice people and Conor’s attachment to them is obvious.I personally would certainly try to persuade her to do so and I am convinced she would agree .
Unfortunately unpleasant social workers drunk with power take a perverse pleasure in excluding the mothers (and fathers) of adopted children from the parent’s lives completely;
Time and again weeping women are gleefully told by social workers that “you will never see your child for the rest of its life” “you will never know if your child is alive or dead” that is the reality,that is the cruelty of our so called “child protection system” .
As someone who is approved to adopt and is now waiting for children to be placed, I thought the programme was sensitive to all concerned. It didn’t, however, have time in just one hour to cover the cases for children who are removed from their birth families as a result of alcohol, drug abuse, domestic violence, neglect, physical and emotional abuse. We are reading through children’s reports at the moment and, yes, it would be great if the birth parents could be helped and supported so that they can care for their children. But, who are we, as a society, to treat these children as guinea pigs? It would take many months/years for the parents to tackle the emotional trauma of their own neglected/abused childhoods, where attachment problems mean they have no idea what is a normal childhood. (Read any CPR and this is most often the case). Do their children pay the price with their own childhoods? Do they end up in the same position as their parents when they are adults because it took three years of their own childhood while their Mum tried to learn skills that were never given to her as a child.
It is a cycle, a very vicious and cruel one, where there is no perfect answer. Life is cruel and hard and, unfortunately, there are those who bear the brunt and suffer far more than others. These children need stable homes now, where they can have a decent childhood and the chance of a decent future. In an ideal world, they would stay with their parents, but this world is far from ideal and we have to do the best we can for the children, for this generation. As a prospective adoptive parent, I feel so much for the birth parents and I will do everything I can to make sure their children have the chance to understand their past and to have a bright future.
Having dealt with a number of cases, the reports for the adoption panel dont resemble the facts. Indeed in some cases they are fraudulent. One has also to remember that attachment theory is exactly that and not one singloe expert on attachment or social worker/ CAFCASS officer has been able to state under oath what the process is that they used to make the diagnosis. the nearest they have got to an answer is ‘its complex.’ Indeed it’s so complex they cannot explain the process.
I recently blogged on attachment nonsense see;
http://mckenzie.blog.co.uk/2011/11/22/attachment-disorders-misdiagnosis-and-professor-wilkins-12203793/
in fact whereas everyone argued that being in care was better than being with the parents, the generation that went through the care system are now losing their children because they were in care themselves, almost a self-fulfiling prophecy.
fact is that even not so good enough parents have better outcome than being in care. Fostering costs money so the adoption side is a money saving exercise. GENUINE abuse is rare in the cases I have dealt with, sadly there is too much at stake for honesty from our public servants who put the interests of Zurich before families.
The daily express article on sexed up dossiers is more real than they have said. LA social workers and the care system is self-serving and self protecting. When a baby dies in Portsmouth of chemical burns the first step is to get an injunction….the social worker (or so i have been informed) had stated it was nappy rash.
Dear Mam, and to all the people who make comments here. Have we been able to get a response from ONE MP, Social Worker, CAFCASS operative or ANY Council within this site..
Just as an example our prisons are full of people touting their services to criminals.
Can anybody show me a person from the Law who has come forward to offer their services in a case against SS if it concerns forced adoption..
Hi Phil,
It’s not likely that those you mention will respond directly on our site, however, we have seen some government departments respond to our project. There is a gentleman who attended a Westminster Debate in which we invited Anthony Douglas to come along and as a result the gentleman was able to speak with him directly and in so doing, was given the help he so much wanted. You can see this story on our site, here.
We would much rather these organisations and the people who work within it respond to individual needs than our site, for obvious reasons. Researching Reform is just a platform to raise awareness. The hard work comes in the form of our on-the-ground work, connecting grass roots with government and assisting families with their cases.
http://www.business-sale.com/news/article/national-fostering-agency-up-for-sale-35551.html
Here is an adoption and fostering agency for sale valued at a tidy £135 million !
LA agencies get around £13,000 per placement,but private adoption and fostering agencies get around £27,000 each time they place some unfortunate with fosterers or with an adoptive family ! I wonder why none of these figures were mentioned in the programme.The foster families on average get £400 per week per child, and it is not unheard of for certain social workers to get “generous kickbacks” from both agencies and fosterers ….
10 LAWYERS in various family court sessions spread over a year or more,(both solicitor and barrister for each of ,mother,father, children,local authority,and guardian !)Most contested cases cost £500,000 or more…..
With so many snouts in the trough can anyone be surprised that a blanket of secrecy is necessary to protect this money orientated child protection and family court system?
When “Panorama makes a “commercial” for the fostering and adoption industry suddenly “privacy” is no longer an issue .CHILDREN IN CARE ARE NAMED AND INTERVIEWED for millions to watch,but if parents got together to make a film exposing the cruelty and corruption of the system they would all end up in jail for breaching their own children’s privacy !Double standards abound……
Compared to this lot our MPs are paragons of virtue !
Excellent documentary. I felt that the point of it was to challenge any simple-minded notions of increasing the number of adoptions by showing that things are often more complicated. The dilemmas for social workers were well presented and it seemed very realistic in its portrayal of everyone involved in the adoption process.
Some of the above comments refer to the increased number of children in the system waiting for adoption and, as a retired social worker, I feel obliged to respond.
We know that the baby Peter effect lead to a 40% rise in Care applications. This was a necessary correction away from an over-optimistic policy of supporting too many families where serious risks had already become apparent. Now, concerns are being raised that the balance may have shifted too far and in some authorities there may be unwarranted removals because social workers err on the side of caution. Obviously, when social workers do not show good professional judgement the ongoing legal dispute does enormous harm to the profession and strengthens the case for those defending family rights. I agree that there is still a long way to go before we see greater consistency of good practice across all authorities.
Thank you for your comment, Hilary.