In this second article, adoptive father of two John Lamb shares his views on post-adoption contact in the modern world of social media.
Contact
This week I read – like many of you – articles of the report regarding plans for birth family contact post-adoption, carried elsewhere but exemplified in this article from the BBC.
I understand that birth family contact is an emotionally testing subject, especially early on, and it’s obvious that birth families can present varying levels of complexity, and even risk, when planning contacts. This area is emotive, nuanced, fraught with difficulties on all sides. How can we balance the needs of adopted children – at which we are often little more than guessing, pre-placement – with the well-being of birth family members, and the needs of adoptive families for safety – both physical and emotional?
But the fact is, unless you’re planning not to give your child a phone until they’re 18 – and frankly even if you are, since kids will borrow phones, and use school PCs to access social media – then issues around contact will arise in the future, regardless of what you want, what’s best for the kids, or how well-educated in the dangers you think your kids are.
Social Media
When these issues arose for me, I was startlingly ill-equipped for them, and unjustifiably surprised by how little anyone could do to help me. Social workers are powerless, and the police are, understandably, unable to engage unless a crime has been committed. However unhelpful contact is, if the child welcomes it, it cannot be effectively prevented.
The “mostly-closed” adoption model underpinning the basis of most adoptive families today was never fit for the social media age. When I adopted, much vague talk was heard about future difficulties, without the reality truly being apparent either to my fellow prospective adoptive parents, nor frankly, to those training and preparing us. Such resolution as was to be had, as it is with so much parenting adoptive and otherwise, seemed to be “we’ll do our best when the time comes”.
I read that report as a clumsy first step on the path to acknowledging this reality, and towards mitigating its consequences. The scope for damage and trauma in unmanaged or illicit contact is so high, the likelihood of it occurring so high, and the predictability of the protagonists so low, that whether we like it or not, the fact that children’s services and overseers are starting – however slowly – to respond to these facts are probably the first stirrings of a good thing.
That said – before I return to this matter – I’ll share something else:
Adoption Support Plans
I also recently attended an online discussion, hosted by Adoption UK and presented by CoramBAAF, about the new Adoption Support plan forms that will be used to outline support needs before placement. It was a slightly prickly and misfired affair, partly since the word “form” had been missing from some of the publicity, and most of the attendees, myself included, were under the impression that they were there to discuss plans for adoption support.
The presenter went through the form and the motivations for changes since the last version, which were all well and good. But the overriding sense I had from the attendees was that this was not currently the principal barrier to effective adoption support.
The experiences of those on the call seemed to be that adoption support currently is badly fractured, under-resourced, and often poorly targeted. Many interventions occur that are unhelpful and even damaging. Funding is short-term and sporadic. Support from schools and other bodies varied, short-sighted and badly informed. Assessments seem endless, and helpful interventions scarce. The most common interventions seem to be offered on the basis that they’re available and cheap, rather than that they’re precisely what is needed. These are the issues experienced on the ground.
Regular reviews
A support plan written pre-adoption order isn’t worth the paper it’s written on, unless it is regularly reviewed. Having heard this week of friends being “sent the support plan” without having had any input to it, this does not fill me with optimism that the redesign of a form is going to be accompanied by any great new commitment – or inclination – from Local Authorities to engage seriously with a support plan’s co-production, regular review, or its implementation. Indeed – as I said on the call – I feel it more likely that renewed rigour around pre-placement support planning will simply lead to more adoptive parents being told “You can’t have that. It’s not in the plan.”
The needs of each child
With these recent experiences in mind, read Sir Andrew McFarlane’s response to the above report: “The recommendations concerning contact with a child’s birth family are especially important, but the particular arrangements in each case must be determined by the needs of the individual child.”
Quite.
I only wish I had faith that any practical changes we see on the ground in this area will be safely, sympathetically and equably managed and that management will be evidence-based, well-resourced, frequently reviewed and handled humanely.
The fact that I don’t have that faith is a product of my experiences, and those shared with me by friends and acquaintances. Until these change, I will struggle to get excited about either changes to support plan forms, however worthy, or recommendations from Westminster as to how contact would be managed in an ideal world.
It seems to me too often, great care is only taken at the end of the bureaucracy at which it is sufficient that a pronouncement is well-formed.
