An online conference which has been put together by the Consortium of Voluntary Adoption Agencies (CVAA), wants to improve post adoption contact for children and their natural parents.
The seminar, “Modernising Contact: Practice Fit for the 21st Century”, wants to develop the way contact for adoption children works in the UK. the page for the event says:
“In recent years post-adoption contact has come under increasing scrutiny and found wanting. All too often not meeting the needs of adopted children, their adoptive families or their birth families.”
“The use of the term `contact’ has itself been critiqued as problematic as merely having `contact’ is not an end so it is thought that the terminology needs to address the point of contact, i.e. relationship development/continuation, family communication and identity building.”
“Letter box arrangements are still the default option for post-adoption contact and yet even these indirect contact arrangements are often poorly supported and managed, and also beg the question; who writes letters any more as a main form of communication in this digital age of messaging and the internet?”
The statement goes on to say, “Keynote speakers will help us set the scene and then you will be contributing your experience and ideas to identify the issues with current practice/policy, suggest possible solutions and help write an agenda for what needs to happen next to influence practice/policy and create real change.”
The event aims to better understand the following:
- What are the current issues/problems in regard to direct and indirect contact?
- What are the possible solutions?
- What needs to happen next to support change?
Speakers for the event include:
Dr Krish Kandiah, Chair of the Adoption and Special Guardianship Leadership Board at Department for Education
Professor Debbie L. Watson, Professor of Child and Family Welfare and Head of the Centre for Children and families Research, University of Bristol
Ms Beverley Barnett Jones MBE, Associate Director Practice and System Impact, Nuffield Family Justice Observatory and;
Dr John Simmonds OBE, Director of Policy, Research and Development, CoramBAAF
While the seminar appears to be aimed at adoption “practitioners” and independent professionals, the conference will make absolutely no difference to the lives of adopted children if adoption-experienced children and families don’t attend this event and share their invaluable experience. Yours are the only voices that matter.
So we’ve asked the CVAA if you can attend the event. As there is currently a charge of £49, we will also ask them if they are willing to waive the fee, as you will be offering important knowledge the conference will need.
We urge you to sign up for this event, and if you have any problems with registration do come back to us and we will help.
You can register for the seminar at the bottom of the event’s online page.
Side note: The CVAA, contrary to the organisation’s misleading name, does not advocate for voluntary adoption and a ban on involuntary/ non consensual/ forced adoption. The word voluntary here just means organisations working in the voluntary sector, often referred to in the UK as the third sector, or charitable sector.
Researching Reform 
The same Contact problems exist even with children on a SGO till they are 18.
the biggest barrier is when the carer is hostile towards the parents and constantly claims that the children do not wish to have contact. how can the childs True wishes and feelings be established when the carer tries to block any independent advocate etc from speaking to your child ?
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Having made the most successful post adoption application in England then eventually having my son return home, I think I’m in a good position here to share my views from first hand experience.
I’d had our contact stopped illegally anyway, at adoption decisions stage only. It hadn’t even gone on to adoption yet (which come out eventually there was not one, but not until a few years later on when the certificates I got x2 must have been falsified and simply made up)
My son had been searching for his natural family. This was by the time he reached or was approaching his teens.
I applied for face to face contact, asking for it to be built up sensibly really, in his best interests and I’d had 2 SW’s come to my house because extended family were found to be in touch with him. I wasn’t but said SW’s came out to check anyway.
I got my application in, went on to have 2 Hearings and the Judge said I must be mistaken re my son searching for us, only I wasn’t. I’d had a GP friend and family member here with me the day they came out.
The Judge who is a family orientated Judge asked if anyone else had any evidence. I said I do (since the 2 SW’s had not attended either Hearing, so how could it fairly have been denied anyway) and as I was representing myself and had already mentioned my 2 witnesses in my statements, I asked for them to be brought into proceedings because I knew they had heard it too. I even got a verbal apology off the 1 SW upon hearing from said family member who knew me all her life, who knew my Case all throughout confirming what I had told these SW’s how I had been set up and had the written evidence which I’d been led to believe was in Family Court, beforehand. Only, it turned out that got concealed. But it was denied of course, by the time I made my Complaint. Only I had recorded the meeting at my house and put a notice up to say I was recording it.
One minute the adoption Manageress from Letterbox, fairly new was there. I told her I’d recorded it and wanted answers/for it to be put right. She said she would, then left!
It ended up though, that if my son looked for me, I was permitted to respond but we’ve also seen the Judge Mark Headley or Hedley speak out in the newspapers that a child can contact their natural family and there is nothing to stop them.
The condition was, I informed the Council if my son did contact me which I did, once my son agreed for me to. This was because he’d had his phone and computer locked away in a cupboard at the time, for looking for us or having extended family connections. A meeting was then meant to be set up for both him and I. It had to be kept secret from my son and his alleged AP unless the Case continued, when a GAL would have been brought in to do assessments. But this Judge really praised me and my competence, but was not too happy with the LA for their lack of competence which are words I’ve chose to describe events.
My son contacted me around the age of 16, we were in touch on social media and even got to speak to each other through headphones in one place and he ended up coming home to live for good in the end.
When he got here, things started off well, he’d come over more for stays rather than rush in to live initially. We couldn’t have done things more sensibly.
When it came to him living here, we’d arranged between us when and I asked him to involve his AP to make it more fair as she’d been the one get to bring him up for most of his life and the way things worked out, she got him to come here sooner than first planned.
My son started popping to the local food bank bringing back fatty foods after my partner and I had tried getting him eating healthy food something I was big on doing with my other 3 children, I brought them up on healthy food but he’d developed a love of McDonald’s food and the Keto diet with fatty foods which I felt sure was no good for him but it was also his choice as a young man. I could only try and guide him.
He got in the shower fully dressed including with his trainers on, then went in the garden dripping wet. I calmy got him to come on and get changed into dry clothes.
He stepped out in front of traffic, I pulled him out the road.
He went out and was found collapsed by a passer by who got him an ambulance. I went to the hospital where my partner and I got to spend many a night. I told him I did not want him going out alone, until we saw a Dr to see what was wrong. I got told not to mommy coddle him, but was adamant he’s not well mentally. I’ve had breakdowns myself in the past so I knew something wasn’t right and his communication skills had never been too good from the time he came home. He ended up 90% mute and then a more experienced professional confirmed I’d done absolutely the right thing using my motherly instincts.
He turned the TV over, turned it off, turned Alexa off, turned electrical items off, even scared to have a fan in his room and had made at least one attempt with his life.
He smashed up his new bedroom furniture, his door, punched our bedroom door and was hearing things. He’d got arrested.
I struggled to sleep day and night worrying he’d be ok and he’d lost his dad to death in his teens and would punch walls and have red, sore bloody knuckles telling me he wants to see his dad, whose PR was removed from him over an injury caused to my son which SS went on to use against me, even though it wasn’t me, it had been his dad but with SS pursuing me using NAI.
Unbeknown to me, when it had been in the local papers I’d handed said newspaper cutting into my Solicitor for evidence after been told so much by SS it was deliberate. Only by the time (some years later) when I got my files back, I saw said newspaper cutting where it was headlined re his dad playing games which caused the injury stating how the Judge said it was NOT deliberate or he would have jailed him, so I took the flack for that.
My son is now suffering with mh for life with a diagnosis of Autism and Phycosis and he isn’t living at home. He isn’t living back with his alleged AP either. You could say that (and even though he is in his 20’s now) he is back in the very system that caused all this re no contact with his dad, not even supervised.
Granted I could not have ever lived with him again having 3 other children besides after that, but my son misses the dad he was never given the chance to get to know even as an adult.
Lack of face to face contact, even if it could happen by Skype or telephone call or Zoom, is causing these children irreparable harm by the time they’re older. I even had my son raising his voice saying I SAID…. thinking I’d spoke and said something to him when I had not.
Then as parents we do not know what has been really happening all those years in our absence do we. But it can become us parents who get the blame. I ended up with armed police at our door, we’d done nothing at all wrong. This was scary. Then we had 2 nurses turn up to take my son. We’ve had him come to stay over once since then but it just goes to show the emotional harm and the danger parents or a parent and their new partner can be put in by the time the child does come home because after all, we’ve been forced to become strangers to them.
My poor son even believes or believed that I was his adoptive mum and his alleged AP his real mum, so heard and identities are severely being messed up and interfered with and as a mum it is heartbreaking to see. We had to have many an ambulance, police and the mh team come out to him and by the time he ended up in a mh hospital things went from bad to worse.
So keeping contact is absolutely vital, I hope you can see and agree instead of contact, seen in cases over all these years being stopped illegally even been in contempt of court.
Play therapy may or may not help at the time, same as for grieving but when they’re older with the rest of their life to lead it is just not on, not fair or justified.
Thank you for listening Xxxx
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When contact is stopped the biggest problem is dealing with the liars who are preventing it being re-established. the child is kept isolated from anyone wishing to speak to them. Advocates are blocked by social workers. this is such a serious issue which causes mental health problems to parents and children. but what is the solution when you are told by professionals that a child can only have an advocate or a solicitor if they request one. How damn frustrating !
these children know nothing about advocates or solicitors. such an easy excuse that needs to be stopped.
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I totally agree and it was the SW who did it in my case, who came out and did it with a mh SW beside her.
It’s really important that children know their rights but when they’re adopted or allegedly so, at a young age then they don’t understand what is going on and it’s often difficult enough for their parent’s to know either.
But takes matters back to Family Court years later re both your child’s (since a young man) and your wishes and feelings, then they get ignored even once they are old enough to understand.
So we need a system who does want to put things right, with honesty and transparency who are going to make those changes because no one can say they didn’t know who knows it’s been going on long enough Xx
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Even if you was lucky enough to get postal contact the social workers who was put in charge of this , then they never fulfilled their obligations creating an in passé. to communication with my daughters blood relatives. This should put the social worker in breach of court . Is it not funny they don’t follow the rule of law that we all have too. Is it not a wonder that there is one rule for them and another for us ?
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The conference asks “what are the possible solutions?”
Well let me tell them !
All adoptions should be open so that parents know who has their children and where they are.
All adoptions should be voluntary
Adopted children should always be free to communicate with relatives by phone or email as soon as they are old enough to navigate the internet or utilise a mobile phone.
Adoption agencies should have their profits and salaries limited by confiscation if they become too great and majority shares should be held by the State if the organisations are not charities but are limited liability commercial companies !.
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Responding to my Twitter questions, the CVAA do not seem to want to allow natural families onto the conference, after tweeting that the event is for professionals and that they have already consulted with natural families. I have asked them to say how many families they have consulted with.
Perhaps of more importance is that these adoption agencies – and at least one senior judge – are all now frantically pushing to enable post adoption contact as there is a realisation that the movement to stop adoption from becoming the gold standard in care builds momentum.
In short, I see this new ‘acceptance’ at least in lip service format at this stage, to be a compromise for the adoption sector (and the judges who seem to lobby on their behalf as the government tries to push us back towards adoption), who do not want to lose market share.
By allowing post adoption contact, these agencies can claim to be working in the best interests of children they ‘process’, which in turn will allow them to justify their work, and keep pushing for adoptions.
This is though, a victory for natural families. It is a step in the right direction, and should pave the way for more contact and therefore more ways towards reunification, especially when children start to say they want to go back ‘home’.
The adoption sector hasn’t quite worked that out yet in its panic to stay in business, but once it does, it will realise it’s been check mated. It cannot go back to a policy of no post adoption contact, because it will be reminded of the importance of it, and could face legal challenges if it tries to ignore it. And it cannot allow more post adoption contact without considering reunification where it crops up, which will change the way the sector works forever.
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Natasha it seems to have become worse this was posted on our FB site I am not familiar with this case but should not al cases be equally judged ? JPM 14th June 2021 said “my judge 15 seconds to decide to stop my access and give full custody to his mother ..!! after i met my son 19yrs later he told me his mum couldnt cope and put him in a home i was never informed all the years my son was in the home of his wereabouts !!..”
I state :
“My own case took many years for them to find a social worker a special person with the qualities they required perhaps they could not get to the labor exchange and arrived found this deceitful thing elsewhere, who would stand in court and lie about her attendance at all the experts to write reports .”
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Far too common place.
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I tried to register website https://www.cvaa.org.uk/Event/modernising-contact-practice-fit-for-the-21st-century still asked for £49 and could not register as i was not an organization it said but an individual. Clearly this is restrictive an sets the climate for checkmate clearly they don’t want to be reminded what’s not working on my pages I am remined by a post from a concern citizen that reached out and said it took 15 mins in court for a just to remove he child care rights. Does this seem like due process. or is this now the bar that we subscribe to ?
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I asked them to waive the fee for families but they said no. They also didn’t want to accept families attending. It’s a disgrace.
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Ian we need more activists like you. You always make the most important points and you cut straight to the case, you never get distracted or lost in the details.
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