Adoption, would you, having read this?

FoxEye

FoxEye

FoxEye

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I know people who have adopted (recently) in a similar situation.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5326017/Adoptive-parents-told-truth-says-MEG-HENDERSON.html

Also know social worker(s) who - whilst they won't ever share details of cases - are happy to let you know in general terms how ****ed up the world really is. And down here in sunny Cornwall the reality seems to be that it's at least as fubar as other deprived areas, with high rates of substance abuse, sexual violence, incest, etc.

But the shocking - and worrying - take away from that article is that legally the Adoption Agencies are entitled/obliged to hide details of the children's backgrounds that would lower their chances of being adopted. Including mental illnesses!!!

the Judge said 'We would not hold that it is fair, just or reasonable to impose on professionals a duty of care towards prospective adopters.'
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In other words, "Get them out of care into adoptive homes; it's no longer our problem after that what's wrong with them. God help the new parents."

I can only hope the people I know personally who have adopted have a good roll of the dice, and get lucky. Because it seems that if there was a genuine problem, the chances are they would not have been told.

How scary is that?
 
I know a couple who adopted and it was a 3 year process with something like 7 extremely thorough interviews, along with quite invasive background checks and home visits.

All that and you might end up with a child who hasn’t got much hope because they’re allowed to hide those details?
 
I guess hindsight helps a lot but jesus christ how did it take them so long to realise that something was seriously wrong with her. She sounds like a little girl straight out of a horror movie, they really should've had her in specialist therapy as soon as they realised she was a little different.

It wouldn't stop me adopting in the future but it's a shame how these young people are being failed by the state. Services like social services should be prioritised a lot higher than they seem to be by governments.
 
Is there any argument put forward for this person's mental state being a result of the experiences of the first 18 months of their life? That seems to be the conclusion that's being drawn here, as though everything was inevitable.
 
While I don’t agree that the adoption agencies should be withholding information, I dare say that is quite a fringe case.
 
Caged said:
Is there any argument put forward for this person's mental state being a result of the experiences of the first 18 months of their life? That seems to be the conclusion that's being drawn here, as though everything was inevitable.
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It's not unheard of that some families have a long history of mental illness, across multiple generations. Also it's well-documented that children born of incest can be severely damaged.

https://www.nhs.uk/news/genetics-and-stem-cells/five-mental-disorders-may-have-genetic-links/
 
Caged said:
Right, but the Mail author doesn't seem to be suggesting a genetic link.
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You read the article? How can you possible say that?

"Doomed from conception onwards." The product of incest between a mother and two of her sons. Birth family wracked by mental illness. No idea how you can say they aren't making that link...
 
It's a figure of speech. It seems that she's 100% sure that the first 18 months of the child's life was responsible for everything that followed, but doesn't really make the case for this.

Edit: This is really weird because this article was written in October:

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/...tion_agencies___and_now_my_daughter_is_dead_/

This was written in 2003:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/may/27/law.children

In one of them, both children are the result of incest between the mother and her son, in the other it's 'only' one child, between the mother and her brother, and not the child that is the subject of this piece who it is noted is not the result of incest. Those are pretty big differences.

If we assume she died in 2017 then that means when she was 22 her adoptive mother was writing newspaper articles about how she regretted adopting her, yet doesn't feel that anything other than the nature of her child had any bearing on this. Also the author says the daughter was 24 in her 2003 piece.

None of this is very consistent.

Edit again: In one article the daughter was 36 when she died, and in the other she was 37.

And seemingly no issue with the child in question three years ago http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/a...shocking-confession-read-just-sympathise.html, when she was magically also 36.
 
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jesus that's a harrowing read. a family friend used to foster, some of the kids she took in had had horrific upbringings. thankfully, bar one 'lively' kid she managed them very well.

Adoption is not something I would consider unless we (the wife and I) had been unable to have kids of our own. I, for some unknown reason, think it unfair to your own kids to bring in an 'outsider'. children can have enough problems adapting to 'naturally occurring siblings' I imagine it can be worse adapting when the new sibling is not actually family (if that makes sense!)
 
Certainly creepy but at the same time the girls were 1 1/2 and 2 1/2, how much can you actually say about their mental state when they are literally toddlers.
 
Seems fairly apparent that she wants Adoption Agencies to fully disclose the backgrounds of the children they are putting up for adoption. Whether she's knocking on doors or writing to her MP is not something we necessarily need to know to understand her position.

She claims she wouldn't have adopted if she'd have known. Which is why the agencies consider keeping those details secret. Conflict of interest for sure.
 
FoxEye said:
She claims she wouldn't have adopted if she'd have known. Which is why the agencies consider keeping those details secret. Conflict of interest for sure.
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There is no conflict of interest as long as you consider the priority to be to put children with a good family.

This is not necessarily the same as the priorities for the host family or the social services but if you put the children first it makes perfect sense.
 
An article every few years rehashing the same story with conflicting details doesn’t seem like the most effective way to campaign to me. It’s also about adoption at the end of the 1970s and nobody publishing it seems too fussed about finding out about how things might be different today. She alludes to one case in 2004 as proof that nothing has changed, and gives no details about it.

So yeah, I think this is a bit weird.
 
Caged said:
Is there any argument put forward for this person's mental state being a result of the experiences of the first 18 months of their life? That seems to be the conclusion that's being drawn here, as though everything was inevitable.
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I'd argue as well that many behavioural traits are possibly genetic and no amount of nurturing will fix it. I wonder how many studies have been done around this as I'd like to see if anecdotal evidence tallies up.

A family member of mine never had contact with their biological father as a child but exhibits so many of his bloody awful facets despite a solid upbringing that it's difficult to ignore.

So yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if some kids are just fundamentally broken from the outset.
 
Sad story but, honestly, how absent do you have to be as a parent to miss the elder sister's difficulties until she's 16?

People from all walks of life have difficulties, it's not uncommon for biological children of middle class families to fall into drugs or suicide.

Strikes me as just a DM style scare story
 
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