A new report by the British Association Of Social Workers has concluded that children should have contact with their biological families before, during and after adoption proceedings. The country’s leading social work body is also calling on the government to overhaul adoption law in line with this recommendation.
Whilst the view isn’t groundbreaking – anyone who has spoken to an adopted child will tell you the harm severing contact does them – it’s an incredibly brave position for BASW to take. The recommendation if implemented, and it must be, is likely to damage the already ailing adoption and fostering sectors, which have seen huge reductions in uptake, both for foster carers and adopters over the last five years. A significant number of prospective carers are likely to be put off by the idea of ongoing contact with birth families.
The study was led by Professors Brid Featherstone and Anna Gupta, and included evidence from more than 300 individuals and organisations. The BASW page on the report tells us that social workers, birth families, legal professionals, adoptive parents and adults who were adopted as children offered thoughts for the study.
We know birth families around the country will be thrilled with this development. Whilst the myth persists that birth families are ‘bad’, and don’t care about their children, the exact opposite is true: most are families in need of support and understanding who would do anything to be able to take care of their children.
Researching Reform has campaigned for contact between children and their biological families for several years and like Professor Featherstone, we take the view that whilst legislation can be helpful in changing social work practice, a significant amount can be achieved, and much faster, through a shift in culture. The Children Act 1989 already provides a solid backdrop for social work practice to ensure working policies benefit children and bolster their development.
This latest recommendation is a wonderful step forward, and we hope it includes the need to ensure the voice of the child is faithfully recorded in these decisions and properly understood, to avoid the pendulum swinging too far one way or another, yet again. So whilst contact should be given, it should always be with the child’s best interests in mind.
Community Care has offered some quotes from the study and the lead social workers who produced it:
“Adopted children denied contact can experience serious identity issues and when they are free to seek out their birth families at age 18, adoptive parents can be ill-prepared for the emotional consequences.”
Professor Featherstone:
“You should start from the assumption that direct contact with birth parents ought to be considered… Usually, adopted children go searching when they get to 18 and it can store up trouble if they haven’t had previous contact, enabling them to see their birth parents for good or ill.
They can stop having fantasies about these wonderful parents that they were stolen away from, or equally that they were absolutely terrible people. It’s about their identities. Adopted people told us that identity is a lifelong issue for them. Where do I come from? Who do I belong to?”
The report doesn’t appear to be publicly available, so we have emailed the contact offered on the BASW page to request a copy. The BASW have published their response to the report, which you can read here, and which includes the recommendations from the report:
Recommendation 1: The use of adoption needs to be located and discussed in the context of wider social policies relating to poverty and inequality
Recommendation 2: UK governments should collect and publish data on the economic and social circumstances of families affected by adoption
Recommendation 3: The current model of adoption should be reviewed, and the potential for a more open approach considered
Recommendation 4: There needs to be further debate about the status of adoption and its relationship to other permanence options.
Recommendation 5: BASW should develop further work on the role of the social worker in adoption and the human rights and ethics involved
Many thanks to Maggie Tuttle for sharing the Community Care article with us.
Researching Reform 
THIS indeed COULD be a great step forward if passed into law.I have never denied that some children do need to be removed from parents but I have always believed that limited face to face contact should be maintained.(Xmas and birthdays maybe?)
Many mothers faced with a choice between fighting adoption and permanently losing contact or accepting adoption if guaranteed twice yearly contact would accept the latter and save the anguish of prolonged court proceedings and also save the court system a lot of time and money !
Trouble is I doubt if the necessary legislation will happen for a long time if ever …………
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Good intention, unfortunatelly utopistic… I was sure that keeping such contacts with birth family is in the best interest of my foster child. But she was doing worse and worse, turning her mind to suicidal ideas… and then I was told by a psychologist, that the reason was the contact with her birth mother… I could not believe that, but the following years confirmed it… reducing the contact helped a lot.
And without any shame, I want to add the point of view as a foster mother: I do take care about the child all year long, fighting with attachment disorder (so common for children parted from they birth parents), fighting her depresions and frustration from being denied by her birth family, trying to educate her (what is real fun with FAS Syndrom caused by alcohol during her prenatal development) and learn her some life values – and then the Christmas time comes, when we could have some leisure time just enjoying days together – but suddenly her mother calls she wants her child for holidays… and the child comes back to me, when we again have our daily duties… I would find this OK for one or two years, if there was a real chance that the birth mother will decide to get her daughter back to her own care. But doing this for 10 years just saying the child “Now I can not take care about you, but who knows – maybe once…” is quite unfair. Or: Can you imagine, that your loved child will NEVER spent the Christmas with you?
Next point: about 90% of adoptive parents would not accept the child with the contact to the birth family. (Today I know why…) So as you correctly mentioned, more birth parents would agree with such kind of adoption, but you will have trouble to find the adoptive parents for their children.
NO, this is not a step forward. This must be judged case to case, not set by a law.
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research in the USA has shown that open adoptions where birth parents do still have contact with their children have better results than closed ones where they do not.
10 Things that Scientific Research Says about Open Adoption
https://www.americanadoptions.com/…/10-things-that-scientific-research-says-about-o…
Aug 14, 2017 – American Adoptions encourages open adoption because we have seen … all but extinct; it’s estimated that only 5 percent of modern adoptions are closed. 2. … are more satisfied with their adoptions than those without contact.
Nearly all adoptions in UK are contested by parents desperate to keep their children so the example give by RIA Zof a mum who did not want this was exceptional and irrelevant.
Forced adoption is barbaric and should be abolished.
Depriving law abiding parents (who have never harmed a child) of all contact (usually for life) is extreme cruelty worthy of sadists not normal adults.
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Unfortunately the link takes me only to the main page… I haven´t found research article. Anyway, I am living with a child in such “open adoption”, although in my country it is called “foster care”. (Different from American Foster Care system – alternative to this we have under the name “proffesional family”). I must repeat, that frequent contact with a birth family had an adverse effect on my foster daughter, although both me and birth mother were doing all the best to keep good relationship. I really regret that I have not stoped it much earlier. Be careful when you generally recommend to keep such contact. It might destruct the child.
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there should be a law that foster carers and adoption parents if possible work with the parents, i agree with Ian there are many parents who should lose their children to the care system but those children still have aunts, uncles and grandparents, the care system is a business so it should be run as a business and the families and carers all work together IN A CHILDS BEST INTEREST
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i have spoken to untold adults from the care system and my god so many living on the streets and all said the same our family did not want us nor did they want to see us, and every kid in or from the care system records are kept so when they have kids what better then to take more children on future emotional abuse and all records are kept electronically, so no family friends personal possions no where to live after care its all control of the nation.
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Autism is a condition, not a disease. People living with autism need empathetic understanding, not the added stigma of condemnation.
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Reblogged this on World4Justice : NOW! Lobby Forum..
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Reblogged this on tummum's Blog.
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I am an adopted Adult and also a birth mother to 3 beautiful children and I can say for a fact that closed adoption is a truly devastating grief that no child should live without their birth parents and society should not have the right to make that decision unless that child is truly in danger. I am not a violent person I would never intentionally hurt my children in anyway my chi!dren are my life and everyday that I’m away from them is the worst heartache anyone could ever feel. Yes I needed support but how does that mean I never see my children again.
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Interesting to decide who are the most wicked of those involved in “child protection”
The social workers (who make their living snatching children to fill up their adoption and fostering scorecards ?);the lawyers who pretend to help their clients ,the parents but who betray them by agreeing with nearly everything the social services demand?The psychologists and psychiatrists who regularly diagnose parents with imaginary personality disorders knowing that if they gave parents positive assessments they would probably not get asked for reports again and would lose thousands of £s of revenue,?
No ,all these are a cruel unfeeling bunch but worst of the lot are the judges who decide that mothers who have committed no crime at all will nevertheless never see their babies or Young children again for up to 18 years !
These judges are highly intelligent and well educated persons who lack any form of compassion and who know they are being cruel.To take a new born baby from its mother for adoption is according to the better than most , retired President of the family court SirJAMES Munby the worst thing that can happen to a parent since the abolition of capital punishment. Forbidding all future contact between mother and child makes it 100 times worse and any judge making such orders is a monster with a heart of stone
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“worst of the lot are the judges who decide that mothers who have committed no crime at all will nevertheless never see their babies or Young children again for up to 18 years !
These judges are highly intelligent and well educated persons who lack any form of compassion and who know they are being cruel.”
So true. they do not have the ability to put themselves in the parents position and think how it would feel to have that done to them. they are extremely Cold hearted individuals and without doubt dangerous to family life. its these very sort people who should never be allowed to work in the Family courts. you could liken then to Mafia hitmen.
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