I am a trustee at Adoption UK and I am a family solicitor. I represent birth families and children in care proceedings, and adopters in adoption proceedings. I think these various roles put me in an ideal position to reflect on National Adoption Week, which begins today, 17 October 2022. I am not sure, though, that I have any answers to the challenges.
Adoption is not a simple theme for anyone and I spend a good proportion of my job seeking to keep children within their birth families during care proceedings. For those parents adoption is the worst thing they can imagine, but every one of them will say that they want the best for their child.
I know from my work with adopters and Adoption UK that adopters do not want to have children placed with them who could, genuinely, be safely brought up in their birth families. They want only to offer a permanent family to children without one to grow up in.
So, if we all want the best outcome for children why is adoption so polarised? Largely, I think, it is because a care plan for adoption almost always means severing direct contact between children and birth families. If adoption meant a safe and permanent home within another family, but truly maintaining a link with the birth family, would more people be open to it? Would birth families cease to oppose it? I think many would.
I regularly see birth families who wish to argue in favour of long term foster care as opposed to adoption. There are excellent foster carers all over the country but this plan means their child does not benefit from a permanent home, is brought up ‘in care’ for their minority, can move from placement to placement to placement over many years, and they exit care with precious little support. It is sad for these children that this is seen as a better care plan for them, in my view.
So perhaps we should allow ourselves to imagine care plans for adoption that maintain a link to birth families. It’s certainly not a new concept but it’s not one that we see much in care proceedings. It is argued by local authorities that adopters don’t want direct contact but I know that’s not always the case, and if we recruited and trained adopters differently so that they truly understand the benefit to their child of that contact, then that rationale could disappear.
Local authorities also argue that some children are ‘unadoptable’ (a word I find utterly objectionable) because they are too old or have particular needs. Well, in my view that makes them even more in need of a permanent, safe, home with people who will fight for them.
[I do offer the caveat that for some children direct contact really would not be safe or offer any benefit; but even for those children what they need at 15 years old may not be the same as what was required at 4 years old, so I believe these decisions should be open to review.]
There is simply too much to say on this topic in one article and I know the conversation is starting to happen more openly about adoption being right for older children, those with greater physical or emotional needs, and those for whom direct contact should continue. I hope that lawyers involved in care proceedings, and adopters, welcome those conversations and want to take part. I know I do.
Emily Boardman
Boardman, Hawkins & Osborne LLP
