UN Official Calls For Inquiry Into Forced And Illegal Adoptions in Ireland

03 Tuesday Dec 2019

Posted by Natasha in Adoption, forced adoption, Inquiry, Researching Reform

UN Special Rapporteur on the sale and sexual exploitation of children, Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, has called for an inquiry into forced and illegal adoptions in Ireland, after a report she produced raised serious concerns around the sale and exploitation of children inside the country.

There is a very good summary of this development over on The Irish Examiner, but here are a few key thoughts from Boer-Buquicchio about why this inquiry is so important and what it should focus on:

Her report highlighted failures to provide information, accountability and redress to survivors of institutional abuse, and to individuals adopted in a manner that would amount to the “sale of children under international law”;
Commercial ties to forced and illegal adoptions were also highlighted;
The UN Rapporteur said the inquiry should focus on illegal activity around forced adoptions
Rather than focusing on individual institutions, she would like the State to focus on investigating “the gamut of human rights abuses identified in these and similar settings”

A Twitter survey carried out by this site in May found that 86% of those polled also wanted to see a full scale inquiry into adoption practices in England and Wales.

Number of Newborns Going Through Care Proceedings in Wales Doubles

16 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by Natasha in child welfare, forced adoption, Researching Reform, social services

≈ 8 Comments

A groundbreaking study has revealed that the number of newborns going through care proceedings in Wales has doubled in just three years.

The report, which was produced by the Nuffield Foundation and the Centre for Child and Family Justice Research is the second such report in a series of investigations carried out by the organisations, which hope to shed light on how to support families to care safely for their babies, rather than remove children from their birth parents.

The first report, Born into Care: Infants and newborns in care proceedings in England, which was published this time last year, looked at the number of newborns being taken into care in England, and discovered that the rate of care applications for newborns had more than doubled in a decade.

Information about the project’s aims was published last year on the Nuffield Foundation’s website and offered the following important details about its first report, and the project:

“The report argues that the new findings indicate far more attention needs to be paid to court intervention at birth.

At present, the report says, national statutory practice guidance ‘makes scant reference’ to either pre-birth assessment or removals at birth.

The Council of Europe and judges in England have described the separation of mothers and babies within hours or days of an infant’s birth, as a very severe form of intervention in family life fraught with ethical, legal and procedural challenges.

Given the frequency with which local authorities are issuing care proceedings at birth, the study recommends a greater policy and practice focus on newborns within the family justice system.”

The second report also offers some interesting data on what’s been going on in Wales, and highlights some significant gaps in the information recorded on newborns going through care proceedings, particularly in relation to Cafcass data around placements. (The one organisation that should be required to keep a meticulous set of data on the children they see).

While the authors noticed a drop in the number of applications for adoption orders, they also recorded a spike in the number of babies going through care proceedings in England and an even more pronounced increase in Wales, from 2011 to 2018. The reasons for this increase remain unclear.

The report also noted that while Welsh authorities ramped up their use of care orders (in 2012, care orders were made in 29% of newborn cases – by 2018 this figure rose to 67%), English child protection staff had begun to use other orders like Special Guardianship.

Further key findings from the report:

Volume of cases and changes over time
• Between 2011 and 2018, 3,266 infants were subject to care proceedings. Infants comprised 30% of the overall population of children involved in s.31 care proceedings in Wales during this period.

Over time, a greater proportion of care proceedings concerning infants have been issued for newborns in Wales, although the trend is not linear. In 2011, 40% of all infants coming before the courts in s.31 proceedings did so in the first two weeks after birth. This proportion remained roughly stable until 2015, and then started to rise, reaching 52% in 2018. Cases of newborns in the family justice system comprised a substantial proportion of all care proceedings issued for infants in Wales.

In 2011, for every 10,000 live births in Wales, 43 newborns became the subject of care proceedings within two weeks of birth. The incidence rate remained fairly static at around 40 cases per 10,000 live births until 2015, then increased rapidly, and had more than doubled to 83 cases per 10,000 live births in 2018.

Overall, the picture of a high and increasing proportion of infant cases issued close to birth is similar for Wales and England. However, the incidence rate (number of cases per 10,000 live births) is higher in Wales than England.

Variation by court area
• There were differences in the rates of care proceedings issued for newborns across the three Welsh Designated Family Judge (DFJ) areas. Based on an overall rate (for the period from 2011 to 2018), the Swansea and South West Wales DFJ area recorded the highest incidence rate, of 64 cases of care proceedings concerning newborns per 10,000 live births in the general population. Cardiff and South East Wales DFJ area and North Wales DFJ area had lower overall rates, at 47 per 10,000, and 45 per 10,000 respectively.

All three DFJ areas saw an overall increase in incidence rates over the period (2011 to 2018), although the trends varied, and incidence rates between the three DFJ areas appear to converge in the more recent years.

Between 2015 and 2016, all three DFJ areas recorded a marked increase in newborn cases, which warrants further investigation.

Local authority level variation
• A minority of local authorities departed significantly from the national incidence rate of 52 newborn cases per 10,000 live births. However, the rate range for outliers was marked between 32 and 100 newborn cases per 10,000 live births.

In the North Wales DFJ area and Cardiff and South East Wales DFJ area, there was very little deviation in local authority rates from the area average.

However, in Swansea and South West Wales DFJ area, there were a number of low and high outlier local authorities, falling outside the expected boundaries of the area average incidence rate of newborns entering care proceedings.

Case characteristics
“Subsequent infants” • Between 2016 and 2018, 49% of newborns were “subsequent infants”; that is their mothers had already appeared in care proceedings concerning an older sibling.

• Based on a 5-year observational window, 51% of newborns were linked to mothers who had not previously appeared in care proceedings.

Urgent ICO hearings and non-standard case management hearings
• Newborns are more likely to be subject to urgent ICO hearings and non-standard case management hearings than older infants, and other age groups of children.

A non-standard CMH or an urgent ICO hearing was recorded for 61% of newborns between 2015 and 2018, compared to 37% of older infants and 36% of all children aged 12 months and above. 52% of the newborns had an urgent hearing within 7 days of the issue of the care application during this period.

Case duration
• Between 2012 and 2018, 52% of infant cases completed within 26 weeks.
• There has been a general trend towards shorter care proceedings for all infants. In 2012, only 12% of cases concerning infants completed within 26 weeks (the statutory framework introduced in 2014), whereas in 2017 this percentage had risen to 70%, declining slightly to 63% in 2018.

The report goes on to make a series of recommendations, which include a review of cases involving care proceedings issued for newborns, what is driving a change in the type of legal orders being used, and further research to help improve child protection services.

It’s very much worth a read if you have 30 digestive biscuits and a full box of tea bags.

Useful Links:

The reports are also available in Welsh (see press release for links).

Denying Children Access to Their Parents Violates Right to Family Life – Harriet Harman MP

26 Thursday Sep 2019

Posted by Natasha in child welfare, forced adoption

≈ 28 Comments

An important, and potentially groundbreaking report, has been published by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which argues that children should not be separated from mothers who are sent to prison – because that separation violates the right to family life.

The conclusion in the report follows a landmark case in the European Court of Human Rights which found that a forced (non consensual adoption) had also violated a child and mother’s right to family life.

Harriet Harman MP, who is the Chair of the human rights committee told Politics Home that imprisoned mothers should not be separated from their children, because the effects of that separation are life-long and deeply damaging to children. The report suggests creating legislation which requires judges in criminal courts to consider the best interests of children whose parents are being tried for crimes.

She went on to say, “The Right to Family Life, set out in article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, states that “Everyone has a right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence”. It is this right that is violated when a child loses their mother to imprisonment.”

That same logic must be applied to children who are forcibly removed from their parents during child protection proceedings, and who arguably may be separated from their parents for their entire childhoods, not just a few months, or years.

While this site is not arguing that children should remain in homes where their lives and wellbeing are at risk, we are advocating for more intelligent forms of child protection policy which understand that removing a child from a parent – particularly without parental consent – is a direct violation of a child’s right to family life, and that there are far better ways of addressing welfare problems than outright separation.

This is hugely significant in the case of adopted children, who like children of parents sent to prison, suffer similar setbacks as a result of family separation.

It is not a coincidence that a large percentage of adopted children seek out their birth parents at some point in their lives. This reality must be acknowledged and understood as an important phenomenon and a deeply damaging effect of removal.

If children of parents who have committed crimes can be allowed to have contact with their parents, the same must be allowed for children who are removed from their families during child protection proceedings.

The myth that parents who have children taken from them inside the family courts are evil or without any love for their children also has to be addressed. In the ten years we have been assisting parents, most of the cases we come across involve parents in need of support – support which would make it very easy for these parents to keep their children at home.

Will the government acknowledge that child protection policy also needs to be reviewed?

You can access the Committee’s report here.

Top Human Rights Court Rules Forced Adoption Violates Right To Family Life

13 Friday Sep 2019

Posted by Natasha in forced adoption, Researching Reform

≈ 22 Comments

In a groundbreaking case, the European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday that a child services agency breached a mother and her son’s rights by forcibly removing her son and giving him to a foster family several years after he was removed from her custody as a newborn.

The grand chamber of the European Court of Human Rights concluded that Norway’s Barnevernet child services agency had violated Trude Lobben and her son’s rights to family life, and had not carried out adequate investigations into the mother’s parenting skills or provided adequate evidence to bolster its claim that the child was vulnerable and that adoption was in his best interest.

In a statement published on ADF International, a faith-based legal advocacy organization promoting human rights, Lobben’s lawyer, Grégory Thuan Dit Dieudonne, said:

“Human rights advocates have been highlighting the destructive practices of the Barnevernet for years. This ruling is a step in the right direction for parental rights in Norway and beyond. Even a positive judgment cannot make up the precious 10 years this family has lost at the hands of the Norwegian state.”

Ms. Lobben told Norway’s TV2 that she hoped the judgment would help other families in similar predicaments:

“This must have consequences. I’m glad the decision can help many others who have experienced injustice from child welfare.”

The judgment is very long, but is a must-read for anyone interested in forced adoption and the human rights concerns around social services practicing this policy.

For those who don’t want to read the details in full, there is a very good summary of the case on the Christian Post.

Lawsuit Claims Forced Adoption Breaches Legislation

11 Wednesday Sep 2019

Posted by Natasha in forced adoption, Researching Reform

≈ 6 Comments

A mother who was forced to give up her child for adoption in the Netherlands is suing the state for emotional damage.

The lawsuit claims that a policy which allowed the state to forcibly remove her child from her care was in breach of Dutch and international law.

Trudy Scheele-Gertsen, who is now 73, is one of over 10,000 women in the Netherlands who gave up their children at birth in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. She was also the first woman to take the Netherlands government to court over the legality of forced adoption at the time the policy was enacted.

The lawsuit cites several procedural irregularities, which it says led to Scheele-Gertsen’s son languishing in care for the first three years of his life.

Speaking to Dutch newspaper, Trouw, yesterday, Ms Scheele-Gertsen said, “What was done to me and my son is disgraceful, that is the main reason I am going to court.’

The legal claim also hopes to shed light on why state institutions promoted the idea that unmarried mothers could not care for their children.

The lawsuit comes as the Netherlands launches its own inquiry into why single mothers gave their children up for adoption.

The Netherlands Association of Separated Mothers told Dutch News that the forced adoption process was riddled with procedural errors, which were either consciously or unconsciously a result of deliberate policy which prejudiced unmarried women.

lawsuit

New Study Suggests Children Suffer Most Harm After Entering the Care System

26 Monday Aug 2019

Posted by Natasha in Adoption, forced adoption, Researching Reform

≈ 6 Comments

A new study from Australia suggests that a significant number of children who languish inside the care system may be going on to suffer much greater levels of psychological and physical harm than children who are placed with appropriate carers at an early age.

The study, which was published in the Australian Social Work Journal, also casts doubt on research from the UK which suggests that children who are adopted from care have similarly high rates of mental health problems to those who stay in state care.

The research paper, “Descriptive Analysis of Foster Care Adoptions in New South Wales, Australia”, was produced by Andrea del Pozo de Bolger, Debra Dunstan and Melissa Kaltner.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first piece of research identifying the care system as potentially posing a risk of harm to children.

In addition, the research also emphasises the need to preserve birth family connections.

Looking at post adoption contact, the researchers concluded that care plans for children being adopted needed to be fluid throughout a child’s life and include contact with birth parents where possible, rather than the current provision of one care plan which is intended to last for the duration of their childhood and which very rarely features face to face contact with birth parents.

Unlike the UK, Australia appears to be committed to keeping birth family connections alive, which the researchers say is demonstrated by the frequency of face-to-face contact in the sample cases they studied from New South Wales (NSW).

In the UK, post adoption contact usually takes the form of indirect letterbox contact twice a year.

The research does make one mistake, though. It claims that recent legislative changes in NSW are consistent with what the researchers see as a drive to increase adoptions in the UK.

That is no longer the case in the UK, after several successful challenges in the European Court of Human Rights clarified the law in this area, namely that adoption should always be a method of last resort.

The researchers make several interesting observations:

Children placed with appropriate carers at an early age and who experienced continuity of care displayed “seemingly small numbers of behavioural and emotional disorders.”
Positive developmental outcomes may only apply to those adopted children who are placed in favourable circumstances at a very early age.
This outcome differs from the high rates of complex psychopathology (attachment difficulties, relationship insecurity, sexual behaviour, trauma-related anxiety, conduct problems, defiance, inattention or hyperactivity, self-injury, food maintenance behaviours) identified in the population of children in care.

The research also offers alternative explanations for these outcomes:

On early adoptive placements that lasted:

“The finding [that children who are adopted at an early age and who receive consistent care] may suggest that an agency is more likely to pursue an adoption application if the child does not experience high needs.”

“Second, the finding may be the product of the timing of the data collection. An English study suggested that children adopted from care have similarly high rates of mental health problems to those who remain in care…

However, the data were gathered some years after adoption, whereas the present study describes functioning at the time of adoption.”

“Therefore, a longitudinal study under the new legislative arrangements is required to determine if this outcome is enduring. This study should include comparison groups featuring children placed early in stable foster placements to ensure that any developmental outcomes observed are not erroneously attributed to placement type.”

On post adoption contact:

“In regards to the arrangements for post adoption contact recorded in adoption plans, some important issues emerged…

Contact plans suggested the NSW Supreme Court attempts to contemplate fluid circumstances as well as consideration for broader birth family ties. This is consistent with recommendations from international literature…

Thus, a single contact plan is unlikely to meet a child’s needs as they develop. Likewise, further exploration of the impact of face-to-face contact on children’s wellbeing is necessary to inform Australian practice, given its infrequent use in other settings.”

Researching Reform advocates for a system which offers birth families in need tailored and dynamic support, while ensuring that contact with birth families remains, wherever possible.

This could be done through a truly open adoption process which allows birth parents to remain in frequent contact with their children while allowing adoptive parents and highly trained child welfare professionals to assist with the day-to-day love and care all children need.

Alternatively, where needs are less great, allowing children to remain with their birth families while providing families with expert support, including regularly updated care plans to reflect the ever changing needs of children.

It is absurd that we don’t do any of this already.

Why campaigners are battling the UK’s adoption policy – Report

25 Thursday Jul 2019

Posted by Natasha in forced adoption, Researching Reform

≈ 18 Comments

This month we wrote a piece on forced adoption for Apolitical, a global platform which features innovative ideas and solutions being considered by government.

In the piece we look at a dynamic form of family intervention where biological parents remain in close contact with their children wherever possible, while highly trained social workers ensure that children in need of extra support are properly cared for, through every stage of their childhood.

The piece includes interviews with two adoptees, now adults reflecting on their lives as adopted children, as well as groundbreaking research by Joe Smeeton, Director of Social Work Education at the University of Salford and Jo Ward.

You can read our piece for Apolitical, “Child health: Why campaigners are battling the UK’s adoption policy,” here.

The full interviews with adoptees Emma* and James*, are added below:

Emma:

“Charities such as Adoption UK do a lot of work to promote education around attachment between children and their parents or carers. Whilst this is helpful, it often approaches the issue of the attachment with the view that something traumatic has happened in the child’s life pre-adoption to cause the child to have difficulties in forming healthy relationships with caregivers and others.

The idea is usually that the trauma is to do with domestic violence, alcohol, drugs or neglect within the child’s pre-adoption family. However, this fails to recognise that the act of severing a child, either permanently or temporarily from their parents and family is, in itself, hugely traumatic for that child.

Many adoptees describe themselves and each other in relation to whether they are either in or out of “the fog”. The fog is a happy and comfortable place to be, where the adoptee sees their adoption as having had a wholly positive impact on their life and feels that it was necessary in order for them to reach certain goals, e.g. to have a good education, stable home life or get a good job.

The adoptive family who surrounds the adoptee will reinforce this view as it generally fits in with the views of the adoptive parents who feel that the adoption has been a “win, win”, with the child gaining adoptive parents and being removed from whatever problems the child’s family were facing.

Though I love my adoptive parents very much, I’m not sure if it’s a genuine love or a love which I developed through a need to survive. I was acutely aware that if I didn’t at least make efforts to try to fit in with biological strangers and play my role of daughter, there was every chance that I could be returned to foster care and be without the material and immediate advantages that adoption presented to me.

Although my adoptive parents were materially wealthy and offered me comforts such as my own bedroom and lovely family home, I suffered the stress of hiding my adoptive mother’s alcoholism from the world. Her drinking caused my adoptive father to become angry and perpetrate domestic violence upon my adoptive mum and I. It was frightening and scary, but after being told for so long that I’d been saved and needed to show gratitude for what I had, I felt I should make the best of the hand I had been dealt.

Knowing that speaking up to teachers or other adults about some of the horrors going on at home could mean that I would be removed from my adoptive family (the only family which I had a conscious memory of) felt like too much of a risk. Having already been removed (without conscious memory) from my own family at birth, loss was hugely frightening and I felt I had to hold on to my adoptive family with the tightest of grip, regardless of the difficulties we faced.

I am confident that my experience of abuse and neglect within my adoptive family is widespread. No families are immune from poverty, addiction or emotional difficulties. I knew from things my adoptive parents had said to me in the past (e.g. “why can’t you be more like your cousin?”) that they felt the pain of me not being biologically theirs and that I couldn’t replace the child they were unable to have, regardless of how hard I tried.

All of this makes me wonder why children’s hearings and social workers are keen to put the wheels in motion to move towards adoption in the modern day (e.g gradual reduction of contact with their families) when it serves no real or guaranteed long term benefit to the child.

Quite the opposite, the child is required to enter into a permanent, irreversible legal agreement to which they have no capacity to consent to (and to which their consent is not required). They are often required to grow up with people who (through lack of biological links) share no physical traits or characteristics. They lose a sense of self and sense of family history. They feel like flowers picked from the ground and placed into a vase – nice to look at for a while until they eventually wither, without their roots to feed and nurture them.”

James:

“How does adoption affect a very young kid, as I was? I joke sometimes about an abandonment syndrome, and I think there is something more to it than a joke. If I’d not known I was adopted, I’d really grapple with the nature / nurture debate as I had very little in common with my adoptive parents.”

We would like to thank Emma, James and Joe for their time and kindness in speaking with us, and a thank you to Apolitical for the opportunity to highlight the issues within non-consensual adoption.

*The adoptees’ names have been changed to protect their identities.

Interesting Adoption Resource

18 Tuesday Jun 2019

Posted by Natasha in Adoption, forced adoption, Researching Reform

≈ 6 Comments

The Donaldson Adoption Institute is based in New York and promised to offer “independent and objective adoption research, education, and advocacy that addressed the needs of birth parents, adopted people, adoptive parents, the people who love them, and the professionals that serve them.”

However, the Institute appears to have closed its doors, or at least shut down its adoption reform efforts, though they have kindly left a lot of their research up on their site and some of it is free.

While this is a US based organisation and some of the content may not apply to the UK directly, it may offer some powerful insights where US and UK policies on adoption cross.

While we have not had the chance to look at the publicly available content on the Institute’s site, at first glance it looks very interesting.

Here are some reports we thought our readers would find useful:

Adoption and birth certificates (access, rights)
Birth Parents (safeguarding the rights and wellbeing of birth parents, best practice)
Identity (pioneering research on adoptee identity)
Openness in Adoption (ongoing relationships between adopters, adoptees and birth parents)
US Adoption reform (recommendations)
Opinion Surveys on Adoption (adopters, adoptees and birth parents)

There’s also an archive with the Institute’s newsletters, which offer emerging issues in adoption law, policy, practice, research, news and resources up until 2018.

OpennessCurriculum_LandingPage_11.2.2016-1024x522

Man Launches Forced Adoption Lawsuit

14 Friday Jun 2019

Posted by Natasha in forced adoption, Researching Reform

≈ 6 Comments

A man in Ireland has filed a lawsuit against the children’s home which forcibly removed him from his mother and put him up for adoption.

Terry Doran, now in his fifties, said that the nuns at the home forged his mother’s signature in order to dispense with her consent and move him across the Border when he was only a few months old.

Mr Doran was adopted and raised by a couple in County Derry after he was removed from his mother for being unmarried.

Kevin Winters of KRW Law, the solicitor representing Mr Doran, is alleging negligence by a failure to take care of the plaintiffs at the Marianvale home, forcefully separating them, removing Mr Doran to another jurisdiction and concealing the true circumstances of the separation from his mother.

Mr Winters also said that the nuns’ conduct was “clandestine and gratuitously cruel”. One of the nuns told Mr Doran’s mother that her baby had gone and she would never be able to see him again.

The nuns say that the adoptions carried out at the home were all done in accordance with legislation.

Mr Doran and his mother were reunited in 2010, after 46 years. At the reunion, she told Mr Doran, “I never gave you away, you were taken from me. I woke up in the morning, the cot was empty and I was sent home”.

Speaking to the Irish Times on Thursday, Mr Doran said, ““It looked like she had waited all those years to tell me that.”

A hearing for the case took place today. A further review has been listed for September.

The Marianvale mother and baby home in County Down, Ireland

Poll: 86% Want An Inquiry Into Adoption Practices in England and Wales

28 Tuesday May 2019

Posted by Natasha in forced adoption, Researching Reform

≈ 18 Comments

A Twitter survey carried out by this site found that 86% of those polled wanted to see the government launch an inquiry into adoption practices, including forced adoption, in England and Wales.

A total of 187 people took part in the poll which ran on Twitter last week.

The debate over the government’s current adoption policies came to a head this month after the Ministry of Justice announced on 21st May that it would investigate the way family courts process cases involving allegations of domestic abuse.

Calls to launch an inquiry into forced and illegal adoptions in Ireland were made by several MPs on 15th May. The MPs also want to see a separate inquiry into adoption practices inside the country.

Concerns about adoption in England and Wales stem from the implementation of forced, or non consensual adoption. A growing number of social workers, researchers and politicians are now saying that the policy is harming children’s wellbeing and development and re-traumatising parents.

If forced adoption has affected you, please share your experience below. We will make sure that your comment is anonymous and does not breach reporting restrictions.

Screenshot 2019-05-27 at 19.34.05