Adoption was once viewed as the best solution for children in care, but emerging research is beginning to tell us a different story.
While families have become familiar with the UK government’s adoption policies – from financial incentives and targets for placing children, to taking children from birth parents without their consent – the phenomenon of disrupted adoptions has been kept under the radar by agencies and local authorities.
This secrecy also sustains the myth that adoptions are permanent, and are never undone. But adoptive families can give children back, and they are doing so at an alarming rate.
The technical term for this is adoption disruption, and it happens when an adoption falls through, or adoptive parents decide to give their adopted children back to the agencies which hosted them.
Government data on adoption disruption is sketchy and there is currently no legal requirement on adoption services to keep a record of how many adoptions fall through, or fail.
A Freedom of Information request in 2018 found that adoption disruption had been on the rise since 2012, peaking at 2016 and included breakdowns which happened after an initial placement was made.
Across all 152 local authorities the request revealed that there had been 87 breakdowns in 2012-13, increasing to 160 in 2015-16 and 132 in 2016-17. The figures offered are likely to be conservative estimates, according to Children and Young People Now Magazine which made the request.
However, some experts estimate that at least one in five adoptions (20%) in the UK fail.
The latest statistics, which haven’t been collected for 2018-2019 are likely to show a spike in disrupted adoptions, after several parents who spoke to the BBC said they had given back their adopted children because they were unable to cope with their needs.
Difficulties around adopting children who have been severely traumatised by care or state failures in addressing their needs, have led to councils being dishonest about children’s backgrounds in order to enable these placements.
Poor data collection and wilful failures to produce proper Life Story Books – which are supposed to chronicle a child’s life fully before, during and after adoption – allows adoption bodies to present piecemeal information about a child’s complex needs.
The end result: even more adoption disruption as adoptive parents, who are often un-prepared to look after a child with sophisticated needs, find they can’t cope and give their adopted children back.
Speaking to the Yorkshire Press in 2018, a woman who gave back her adopted children said she felt social services “placed the children with us and ran for the hills. I felt abandoned. None of it was the children’s fault. Their behaviour is a result of their life experience. They are not responsible for anything to do with the breakdown.”
And it’s not just adoptive parents who get short changed in the process. Birth parents are also being abandoned.
Birth families who need support and assistance have for a long time accused local authorities of removing children from them when they’ve approached their local councils for help.
Local authorities are routinely choosing to spend their budgets on placements instead of providing families in need with the services they have asked for – services which could prevent children going into care in the first place.
And when an adoption order is made, birth families lose all legal rights to their children, so that when adoption disruption takes place there is no onus on the adoptive family or the agency to notify the birth parents of the placement breakdown.
This oversight also limits the ability of councils to place children back with their birth parents, who may have turned their lives around or may now be able to demonstrate meaningful changes in their lives which would allow for reunification.
But what about the children? By far the most important people in this process, they are reduced to numbers, data and failed policy, rather than highlighted and held up as our central priority, which of course, they should be.
We already know that an unprecedented number of children are being bounced around the care system, and research shows this is damaging children and their development.
We also know that adoption only works for a minority of children, and that quality of life is far more important than securing an adoption placement with families who are clearly not appropriate.
The myth that adoption is permanent, and offers a fairytale ending to a child’s difficult life journey, falls far short of the truth.
Links:
- Judge slams ‘outstanding’ council for breaches of law and guidance in ‘biased’ adoption application
- Disruption of Adoptive Placements – Nottingham City Council Guidelines
Image by Hans Kretzmann
Researching Reform 
Excellent article, Natasha. Ironic that the adoptive carers find themselves victims of the very circumstances which led to the children being taken into care in the first place – the fact that Social Services are completely unable to provide effective support and resources to struggling families. Fortunately, the adoptive carers are far less emotionally invested as the children are not their own flesh and blood. Imagine how much worse it is for the parents who have been similarly failed by Social Services and have had their children forcibly removed?
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Thanks, Mike. Yes, several ironies, not least of all that birth parents are told adoptions are permanent, and can never be challenged as it might damage the kids, and yet here we are, watching adoptive families being allowed to do untold damage in this way.
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Yeah it happened to my family the came in and pretty much kidnapped my two kids from their mother and myself. It was the very first time I met CPS face to face they were taking my kids. I’ve never been arrested or anything like that they didn’t like my wife and told her if anything comes to their attention about her again they were taking the kids. CPS never once offered to help my family. My children were spoiled rotten. Just bought a brand new 3000sq/Ft house for my kids and wife. Goes to show it has nothing to do with what’s in the best inter of the kids or for families. Their yearly incentives are based off of how many kids are removed and adopted out. So of course that’s going to be their “Go To” fix for every situation. Unfortunately my 5-year old son and 7 year old daughter are the ones that are and will suffer the most from this. And no one gets to hear what they want or how they fill. I can tell you because I’m their father that it’s traumatized them and they will never be the same
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This is disgraceful,inhumane etc…and they say that it’s the child’s best interest,this is child abuse,and it happens every day to our children,and nobody is doing anything about it.
Its ignored ,so what chance have our children have?
I want my grandchildren back before they go through this.
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They don’t care about the children or the birth parents or even the adoptive parents they just look for that ££££ they cause emotional abuse to all this children what I give to see my lil boy again
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What a perfect eye catching headline that should help potential adopters to be drawn to so as they are aware they are being misled. If I was planning on adopting a child, I’d want reassurance in writing I’d been told all there is to know about the child and all the circumstances first in writing and signed.
If you search ‘What do they know’ website for a lady named Melizza Moore, followed by ‘Adoption breakdowns’ it will open your eyes and reflect to what Researching Reform has shared with you and I can share my awful experience with you.
Many of these children in the care system are going home suffering with their mental health. It’s causing so much disruption that mother’s (could be father’s too) are literally having their lives put at risk and the rest of their family unit.
I’m one such mother (natural) who is one of them. I was literally terrorised by armed police alongside my long term live in partner and guns were held at close range to our heads. On requesting my information from police, the history relied on was brief, old and inaccurate and I’d already wrote in informing the police it was inaccurate before. But what I did notice was that nothing was mentioned re history from police about the many calls my partner and I had to make concerning my child’s mh welfare and them being currently assessed and the many general hospital visits and doctors all recent and ongoing pertaining to our data.
Then to my surprise, one of the police men who was one of them who carted us off up the road in a police car, I noticed had been one of them come out to our house before and very recently concerning my child’s welfare raised by either my partner or myself and I told him I remembered him. If you search ‘House Under Siege No Need’ on YouTube, there is a link providing more information which is currently temporarily down but will be back up soon.
I’d asked for the one leading the incident to phone me, to complain but they never did and those details for that which should have happened I have in writing too.
I’d done a live video about it shortly after and a small handful of people commented they were only doing their job. This included one person who had themselves had Firearms police come out to them where they possessed a gun they shared. The big difference being my partner who was falsely accused of making threats with a gun did not have a gun.
Initially we were told we was not being arrested but detained. My partner was escorted to the same police car I got put in (remember I’m meant to have been one of them threatened with a gun by him which was not true) Then I was hushed off into a seperate police car just behind my partner’s who got arrested and dearrested while they searched my partner after us having our house searched without a warrant because apparently they did not need one.
Upon sharing a small clip from the actual said footage, only one person out of approximately 6,000 people formed the same opinion the police were only doing their job. I’ve received so much positive support, even from strangers over the incident.
The same could quite easily happen to any adoptive parent(s) if/when their adopted children become poorly with mental health.
I’ve now lost my son all over again at least for the foreseeable future. Medical staff were all impressed at my partner’s and my care of my young adult child while we struggled getting the help for him at home. Initially we’d kept getting brushed off.
This is down to nursing staff at the mental health hospital where my child told me they were being encouraged for them to go back all the time to where they was living before. But what an unqualified registered nurse there told me was that they hadn’t encouraged them to go back, they’d encouraged them to come to a decision. Then in the next breath I was told well, all the nurses here are advocating for him/her to go back.
All of a sudden we were told 2 weeks later, my child didn’t want us having any information before. I’ll let you decide that one for yourselves but we had attended a Review the same day that decision got apparently made. We’ve still not received the letter I was told would be sent when I asked to substantiate their (my child’s) consent was withdrawn and the hospitals record keeping was astrotious. They’d been home several times before for breaks and we were being told they couldn’t see anything wrote down about it initially, before they’d release them. The last we do have in writing was that my child did want us having information.
Now all over again my heart feels ripped out and after the last time I saw them, literally straight after I’ve started having severe stomach cramps. That same pain any parent gets whose lost their child to adoption and all I’d ever done was asked for help.
Children’s identity gets so screwed up in care with the serious procedural errors made, but remember we did not get to raise our children for the majority of their lives. Mum who lost 1 of her 4 children to ‘alleged’ adoption.
Don’t you all think it’s time face to face contact remained in place for the children, families and adopters sakes? Quite wrongly our children are not benefitting and they will end up/are speaking out for themselves now which I wholeheartedly 100% encourage once they’re old enough. It all needs to start being about them the children, just as Researching Reform shares and really these authorities do know this.
Xxxx
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xxxxx
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My name is [edited] my boys have been forcibly removed all I needed was a bit of help and support but social services used everything against me and turned it around to make out I couldn’t cope, I done all the courses they asked me to do and more I paid over £3000 of my own money to pay for therapy which I was falsely diagnosed by a phycologist called dr [edited] working for northampton social services. He spent 3 hours with me and diagnosed me with a borderline personality disorder and said I wouldn’t be able to cope being a mum there’s so many tests ect that need to be done to diagnose a person with bpd so spending 3 hours with me and writing the report he did on me is disgusting practice of his so called highly professional work. The social services stole my children and I have no say in it I feel so lost without them everyday apart of me is missing my boys aren’t happy where they are they want there mum but adoption is final and I have no rights please help if you can xxxx
[edited]
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Thank you for your brave post, and I’m so sorry you and your children have experienced all that you have. Your name and some other details in your post had to be removed to comply with reporting restrictions in these kinds of cases, but I have your details and will email you in relation to you request for support.
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Hun, you’ve had the same happen as me. I was only seen a few hours too and got falsely diagnosed with EUPD and pretty much the same outcome as yours. I am so sorry to learn this has happened with you too for you and your family. It’s nothing short of disgusting and criminal behaviour. Much respect to you Xxxx
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Same with my family,I’ve had to sell my home to pay solicitors and courts,useless,nobody will help us or our kids.
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Pure criminal. I’m sorry for you too. We may see more come forward and comment. Hold on in there. Stay strong guys Xxxx
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Not many people know that so called psychologists often have no qualifications at all !
Anyone could advertise themselves as psychologists without any penalty for fraud (unlike the extensive qualifications needed to become a psychiatrist)
Set yourself up as tummum the friendly psychiatrist ,very low fees ! Nobody could stop you diagnosing your social worker as having a personality disorder …..!
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Tempting. To see the clip of the short footage search ‘House Under Siege No Need’ on Facebook or YouTube because the link is back on YouTube now telling more information. Over 7000 currently viewed it and most are disgusted xx
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Reblogged this on tummum's Blog and commented:
Perfect headline and post Xxxx
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Barbarians won,t understand
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Easy solution,easy solution ! Abolish forced adoption and never restrict non criminal parents from contact with their children in care or special guardianship.
As Eugene says above these judges,social workers,lawyers and psychologists are barbarians who are regularly committing crimes against humanity ripping babies at birth from mothers who love them because these horrible people claim to be able to tell the future and so predict future emotional harm !
Police arrest those who commit crimes but they never arrest anyone they suspect might commit crimes in a year’s time because unlike the family courts our police do not claim special powers enabling them to predict the future !
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Police arrest those that don’t commit crimes too and/or detain them making out initially there’s no arrest. Then armed police holding guns to innocent parent(s) /partner(s) heads once either/both parent(s) is going through or has gone through the care system. This has been my long term live in partner’s and my experience anyway. Struth, all I’d been doing was eating my Rocky chocolate bar, the other one left untouched and my partner looked round from being stood in the kitchen and said ‘Armed police bab.’ I took no notice never having had them at my door before. Then when I heard them yelling so loud I couldn’t make out what they were saying from inside the house, my first thoughts were are they even real police or some mad men dressed up going to shoot us xx
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Absolutely appalling!, I’m so sorry tumtum, that you and your partner had to go through that, they are evil, sick and twisted Barbarians.
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They rip them from fathers, too, don’t forget. I know it’s easy to concentrate on the mother, particularly with a new-born, but a father deprived of his children is often a man lost and traumatised.
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absolutely correct Douglas.
if we take the gender out of this we are all just Human beings having our Children stolen from us and we all feel the same pain and suffering as a result of that loss. as we hear from many parents its like attending your childs funeral.its horrible and should not be happening.
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“What Councils Don’t Want You To Know”.
Pretty much everything dirty underhanded thing they get up to and what family court judges who allow them to.
Forced adoption in the UK has got to be the Crime of the Century.
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It is a crime to deprive a new born baby of a sane law abiding mother who wants to keep it. It is a double crime to follow up that snatching by handing the baby to complete strangers (who could well neglect or abuse it) and to cut out the mother from that baby’s life with no contact allowed face to face or by post,phone,or email .
I believe that every judge ,every social worker,every solicitor or barrister,and every “adoptive parents”who disregards the right of that baby to be with its birth mother should be jailed for a very very long time for crimes against humanity.
“But all these are wise ,highly intelligent respectable people ” I hear you say……..
My reply is that not so long ago wise and respectable people in authority believed heretics should be burned alive to save their souls
.Later on so called ,wise respectable people believed that theft should be punishable by death by hanging, ,they in my lifetime believed that homosexuals should be jailed ,and earlier that women should never be allowed to vote.
Those who seem so wise and respectable are often wrong,wrong,wrong !
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Aside from the hyperbole, you’re absolutely right Ian!
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I am a birth mother who was subject to an enforced adoption of my twin boys when they were 4 years old. The adoption appeared fairly successful when they were younger, but started to show cracks were they were teenagers and completely fell apart when they attempted to contact me at 18. Today they both have no contact with their adoptive parents and they have reconnected with me and their other siblings. My one son has some psychiatric problem which emerged when he was a teenager and was completely ignored by his adoptive parents even though they knew about my own psychiatric problems. They said a lot of bad things about me and their older sister who was in foster care. Both my sons felt they were treated differently to the adoptive parents own children. The adoptive father would take his anger out on them.The adoptive parents absolutely freaked when my one son contacted me and came out to South Africa to visit me. I would deem the adoption was a failure and it might have been better if social services had put more support into keeping us all together. I knew where they were living but was forbidden to go anywhere near their home. That was incredibly hard. I harbor enormous anger towards social services, even though 23 years have passed.
It also affected me terribly. I continued to mourn the loss of my children, had flashbacks whenever I saw twins and was diagnosed with post traumatic stress syndrome In South Africa. I left England and returned back to South Africa to enable me to keep my last child. For years, just the thought of visiting the UK was extremely hard because it was bound up with all the bad memories.
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Aww, god bless you and you are right. At first it can appear to be successful, but give it a few more years a teenager or young adult and the evidence speaks for itself and shows a different story xx
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Ian thanks for the phyco info will pass that on to friends etc brunwinbooks visiting the london borough of Sutton.
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Does the adoption business limited company have to give back the £52,000 that it used to find the adoptive placement in the first place. Do social services have back their bonuses or nice cars from the commission. If not, why would they care they have already made their commercial transaction in what i call Selling England’s Children by the £ in the Family Court Professionals modern ‘skin trade.’
https://www.academia.edu/42766726/Selling_England_s_Children_by_the_Family_Court_Professionals_in_the_modern_Skin_Trade._Jones_T._Bsc_LLB._17_April_2020
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Ive decovered theere are so many at it, its either taking children or land and properties company directors in there 1000s , best way to start of in the child trade i found was to get into the NHS first and that seems very easy, once in UK bussiness, children, ederly care homes, land, trusts is your oyster.
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A spate of mergers and acquisitions among foster care firms, typified by last year’s £400m tie-up between the National Fostering Agency and rival Acorn, has fuelled concern about IFAs.
Andy Elvin, chief executive of fostering and adoption charity TACT, warned that consolidation would reduce competition.
“We are moving towards some de facto monopolies or potential cartels of private IFA supply,” he said. “As companies get bigger and have more power over local authorities, they hold more of the supply. This can lead to costs being increased to local authorities, because they need the placements.”
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The merger between Acorn and NFA created a vast fostering company owned by private equity group Stirling Square Capital Partners (SSCP).
Analysis by the Guardian of accounts filed at Companies House reveals that the firm uses a corporate structure that transfers money to a parent company in Luxembourg. SSCP owns the firms via subsidiary SSCP Spring Topco, which had annual revenues of £104m but lost £21m after hefty interest payments on loans. This included an interest payment on a £62.5m loan from the Luxembourg parent company. Interest payments have the effect of reducing a company’s taxable profit.
The accounts also show that SSCP Spring Topco’s highest-paid director took home £319,345 for the year. The Guardian has contacted Stirling Square for comment about whether the loan structure generates a tax benefit.
Two other companies in the sector, Orange Grove Fostercare and Partnerships in Children’s Services (PICS), are owned by private equity group Sovereign Capital. Labyrinthine accounts for the Orange Grove group show that a parent company, Boston Holdo B, paid investors a dividend of £1.7m last year and took investor loans of £5.4m, paying an interest rate of 14%.
Sister company PICS paid £2.2m interest on borrowings including £14m of loans from investors, some of whom were company directors. The highest paid director took home £200,000, including pension contributions.
Sovereign said the high-interest loans were “normal practice” and that it paid all “applicable” tax.
Elvin said: “Any money leaving the system is not being spent directly on vulnerable children. Therefore all dividends, bonuses etc are being paid directly from taxpayers’ money allocated to be spent on children in care.
“The private sector is not driving down cost through competition, it is not driving up quality and it is taking out significant sums of taxpayers’ money. Where is the benefit to the taxpayer or to children in care?
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These judges are like racing tipsters when they decide that because of past events there will be a future risk to children who should therefore be adopted.
The racing tipsters tell you that the horse won the same race last year and will now win again.
Surprise surprise when it comes last ! So called experts cannot tell the future…….
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I already new all this it happens to us it’s corrupt the system is all lies to steal how children the gov should listen but we never change scum
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There is no criminal laws that control family courts, its a free for all. Social Service users their say has no legal rights in family courts. Many council legal services ie solicitors rule the courts outcome. In majority of court cases parents lose thier children. When a family court judge tells me they have private meeting with excutives of childrens services before a case goes to court then you know how corrupted they child stealing outcome is. A judge is meant to be on no side, would a family court judge come to your house to talk privately about your case, answer No! Coram and the many overs in this child traficiting industry need kicking out of the uk back to the usa.
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Complain to the judicial conduct complaints office and make sure that judge who had private meetings with “SS” executives was recused from your case and then reprimanded
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Hi Joseph there is such a thing as revenge that uk people fear, report and revenge with fall apone you or your family.
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judges compete with each other for promotion and any JUSTIFIED attack on one of them would receive plenty of support from some of the others !
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The local authorities need to lose their power and stop removing children from loving families my poor grandson got removed from me on the concerns of not safeguard and poor parenting and neglect which is utter lies these ppl r so corrupt and so r the family courts the parents don’t stand a chance we r all put in the same category of a person who does abuse a child and that is wrong
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I’m incredibly sorry. Thank you for you sharing your experience, and agree the system is not fit for purpose.
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When fraud and corruption goes unabated the increase in children being stolen from their parents will grow and grow ,
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Pingback: No more ‘tacit decisions’ to terminate adoptions – Judgment | Researching Reform
Isn’t it about time to recognise that forced, closed adoptions helps NO child in the long run?
Fostering and adoption has now become big big business, from laundering of council fees at every stage (council pays a salary for a legal staff but bills the government pro rata by the hour as per a solicitor would inviting a large profit for the council) to the BAAF having multimillion pound profits and a yearly “pot” bonus divvied up between the directors of six figure sums a year.
It would be cheaper and more cost effective to the taxpayer to assist the birth family at home, far cheaper and far more effective and closed adoption reserved for those in real need e.g. orphaned children or children in highly abusive situations.
Going on what Jack Frost once broke down as the real cost back in the mid 2000’s of “child protection” per se, imagine what it must be now and all kept highly secret and absolutely NO political or public oversight and my own estimates are around £25 Billion being lifted from the pockets of every taxpayer a year so social services and agencies can line their venal pockets at our expense.
And that is where the balance can be redressed, start telling all and sundry just how much this quasi-science is really costing Mr A V G Taxpayer and you would hear the outcry in the next county and political will too to change the status quo. At the moment parliamentarians are hog tied because if one dare say “hold on, this is costing too much” he gets jumped on by the Savile loving NSPCC, NCH etc suggesting said parliamentarian supports child abuse etc etc and so the MP backs off and the status quo is unperturbed.
Are we as taxpayers getting value for money? No, it has become an out of control pork barrel that gains in size every year by eye watering amounts, it is also a self perpetuating beast as these private entities desire more profit and thus drive the system to scour the people for more stock in trade.
We hear a lot about welfare spending or defence spending and these are publicly overseen at national level but most people in the street do not know they are being shafted for a hefty amount not to protect children but to protect PROFIT’s of the agencys so tasked to protect children and in so fail to do so at every turn.
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Would be interesting to get a view from those Adoptive Parents who tried everything but we’re left high and dry. We didn’t steal anyone’s children. We tried to provide a “Forever Family” Due to violence. Mental abuse and even worse both our sons are now back in care. Not an outcome we ever wanted. Social Services promised the earth and delivered nothing.
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I’m very sorry to hear about what happened to your family.
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Were you given the family name details of the child you adopted ?
i often wonder why Adoptive parents dont try to contact the birth parents to get a little insight into why the child was taken away and if they agreed with it.
and to determine if the LA lied to them re why the child had to be adopted.
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Just teach your children to seem happy and well-adjusted before those Council twats come round
And be really smooth and polite with them they do want to steal your children
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“research has proven that the only winners are councils and companies investing in the process”.
Most parents are convinced that the driving force behind adoption is financial incentives from the Govt. and the unwillingness by the Govt to investigate allegations of Corruption is a dead give away why they dont want to investigate the SS.
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Pingback: Government funded body may be pushing for return to adoption as the ‘gold standard’ in children’s social care | Researching Reform
Great news piece. This is what the big news companies should be covering. This is our future we are talking about. If we can’t save our babies from going through all this heartache and pain, then we as the people stand no chance in our futures
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