National Adoption Week - Complicated

Firstly, I did promise myself that I'd not write a blog on the subject and I'd keep my head down this #NationalAdoption Week. But then as a favour to a friend I did a radio interview for #National Adoption week and again like Canute I could not withstand the tide of goodwill and limited knowledge of the reality of contemporary adoption. So, sorry, I'm rubbish at principles here's a blog.

#NationalAdoptionWeek is a peculiar feature in the calendar in comparison to the other awareness days, weeks or months. It stands out to me in that it is wholly focused on a system and recruiting more people into the process of adoption while systematically alienating at least two thirds that have been through the process regardless of the direction of travel or point of origin.

If it was #NationalAdoptionAwarenessWeek or #NationalAdopteeWeek or  #FindChildrenHomesWeek or even, heaven forbid, #NationalAdopterWeek then it would be a very different creature as it would then be about people* rather than a process. What is increasingly a contentious process. In reality, it feels and I'm pretty sure it is #NationalGetMorePeopleToAdoptWeek. So be it.

That seems to be the crux of it for me. With a system in transition and large communities on different sides of the so called adoption triangle** asking big questions then #NationalAdoptionWeek feels at times like a misstep. Parts of it seem to work, celebrating the dedication of many individuals, families and professionals to improvement and the welfare of children seems like a laudable element of the week at the #NationalAdoptionAwards. However, the questions of those bruised buy the 'system' remain fairly well hidden. of course the debate around funds used for the #NAW and the if's and buts of how that money could be used elsewhere in early support ring true but I'm not sure that they reflect the reality of funding or add up.

So, as I tweeted this week I find myself in a pragmatic stew caught between the good, the bad and the very large bit between.

Almost every adopter I ask about #NationalAdoptionWeek pauses, twists their face and says, 'well it's complicated isn't it?' Yes, on this we can agree.




*I think its a stretch to imagine we'd ever get to a point where we'd have #NationalBirthParentWeek

** It's not an Adoption Triangle its something entirely different as described here. 

Too Tight

We're on the cusp of National Adoption Week and, as usual, it is a flashpoint for a whole range of views from gushing joy to seething anger. All justified, all right, all appropriate responses to the complexity, injustice, loss, wonder, beauty,  marvellous and magical thing that adoption is and can be.
Lots of my adopter and social worker friends feel the same, basically it's complicated and #NAW17 brings that into focus.

I want to write it all out but it would be a mind vomit of the worst order, I don't want to be a neigh sayer or a cheerleader but here's some meandering through the middle.

Lately I've been getting a total rush when Peanut puts her hand in mine, it seems like that simple action sums up everything I wanted from parenting. These are the few years where my hand is a safe place, not inhibited by self aware coolness, worries about who will see or a developing self confidence and independence. We hold hands and run pretending that the wind is blowing us to school, she giggles and I laugh. We do it again and again. It's always fun. 

It passes, I've seen it come and go five times before with the older kids, so I'm savouring it this time. 

A little girl and her daddy being silly and adoption is working.

My social work has let me see behind the adoption curtain. I've witnessed enough to understand that it's not about right or wrong, it's often complex interactions between systems, budgets, mental health, circumstance, right and wrong. I don't work in adoption for good reason but sometimes it comes into my peripheral vision. When it does I don't always like what I see, sometimes I do. Sometimes I get angry. Sometimes I feel sick.

I met an adoption social worker recently who described how at the end of some hard days she goes home and holds her son tight and won't let go until he eventually asks 'have you had a hard day mum?'. She laughed as we spoke. It's not really funny her son's twenty five.

So, there's the two positions the unabashed good and the shameful bad. I can't see one without the other and I try to hold them both in balance. I'm conscious that I'm the winner in this adoption game.

Some days I go home and I hug Peanut. 

'Too tight, too tight', she says. 

I am holding Peanut tight,  I let go when she says 'too tight'.

'Do it again' she says. So I do. 

We both like this game.
Sometimes I remember that she was and is someone else daughter sometimes I don't.

As I say it's complicated but I can live with that. 

Questions & Answers #NAW17

In raising our concerns, highlighting our struggles, developing our knowledge of the impacts of trauma, loss and separation to better serve our adopted children are we in fact killing adoption one convert to our message at a time.

October rolls around again and National Adoption Week creeps into my calendar, faces of happy adopters and lovable ragamuffins looking for a mum and dad appear in the media.

I’m pausing as I write, the temptation is to fall words about truth and lies in recruitment but that’s an easy cynicism that has no nuance. I don’t believe that there’s a conspiracy or a covering of the realities but how I feel about the push to recruit adopters is complicated. Adoption is the best thing I’ve ever done, of course I’d do it differently, that’s hindsight for you, but would I recommend it? Erm……….. it’s complicated.

Of course, I understand that National Adoption Week is a recruitment drive. I don’t think that it’s being duplicitous when it shows the pictures and tells the good news stories. I don’t think that it’s a sinister plot marketing plot. #NAW17 is the same as it’s always been it’s about supply and demand. Yes, that is perhaps a crude phrase to use in relation to children. However, it’s the reality and an ever constant concern for many policy makers and those charged with keeping the system running. Too many children that are in need of permanent homes and too few prospective adopters.

With the figures of children waiting for adoption remaining static and the number of prospective adopters falling then questions are being asked how do we arrest this trend. A lot of money has been thrown at the problem but the trend is set in. What are the underlying causes? I’m no sociologist but I’m sure the answers are complicated.

As a community of adoptive parents we’ve had a frenetic year raising the profile of some of the difficulties that many of us face as we seek support for our children. The list of challenges makes for dire reading; school systems, family understanding, health services, mental health services, challenging behaviour, aggression and violence, challenges with access to service and poor understanding. This year I feel we’ve seen a tide change, my perspective may not be right and I know that many, if not all, still face significant challenges. I feel people are starting to listen but I’m under no illusion that there’s a long way to go.   Adoption is not all bad, far from it, AUK’s survey highlighted that most adopters would do it again, as I said it’s the best, and most difficult, thing I’ve ever done. I love them.

However, I’m not sure what prospective adopters are hearing or reading, perhaps prospective is to strong a word. People don’t see an advert and make a U turn in their life, run to the nearest prep group and sign on the dotted line. The idea grows over years, is influenced by experience, knowledge,  culture, media and circumstance and then is perhaps realised in National Adoption Week when all the moments up to then align.

However, the narrative is changing. Is adoption, once held so dear, not seen as the gold standard any longer? Media raises the spectre of misuses, abuses and injustice through the likes of Long Lost Families and revelatory documentaries. If you search the internet the adoption community has filled it to overflowing with blogs, twitter threads and Facebook pages brimming with the ‘reality’ of adopted life. Adoptees tell their stories, adopters tell theirs and birth families theirs. By the very nature of people, we rarely rush to our phones and laptops to tell our good stories or our normal days but we share our worries and struggles. Even our #Glomos are small and sometimes only reflect a lack of challenge and conflict rather than achievement as measured by the wider parenting world.

Can #NAW17 compete with this tide of information, freely available, at the fingertips of the curious and the potential? I don’t know. Are we, adopters, unintentionally casting a fatal shadow over adoption as we know it? Is that a bad thing?

As always National Adoption Week leaves me with more questions than answers.

National Adoption Week - Bunkers and Bunting

Well, it came round again National Adoption Week(NAW) - #supportadoption 

Scrolling my timelines and feeds my fingers sometimes speed up when I see NAW hashtags and posts, sometimes my finger slows. It depends on the day, time and circumstance.

I have to say it's a funny old week, I usually get my blood up and have a profound thought, or witty blog to roll out. Not this week. I've been busy so felt in some ways it's just happened. In my early years as an adopter I was the first to put up the bunting*. In the dark years I've retreated to my thought bunker and listened to the distant sound of happiness while gnashing my teeth. 

This year I had planned do something interesting, get three or four guest posts from adult adoptees. I tried but other than one smashing post I had no takers, I didn't want to labour the point so I didn't push too hard. Perhaps I didn't get the message out, perhaps my motives were doubted,  perhaps the Flip the Script movement hasn't got the traction in the UK that it has elsewhere. Perhaps this or perhaps that. 

National Adoption Week is what it is. 

'Marketing, recruitment, reinforcing popular misconceptions!' I hear you cry. Yes, I suppose that is something you could shout at politicians and professionals. 

But I hear others 'Joy, family, love!',  to not listen to those voices feels disingenuous.

I'm feeling pragmatic this year, I can hold both of those in tension. 

So this week I stayed in my bunker and came out when I felt safe to get snacks and have a little look at the bunting. Some people were enjoying themselves and I joined in for a bit, had a little moan,  then went back to my bunker. 

My finger scrolls fast my finger scrolls slow.

 

 *In 2000 I went to an event where David Bellamy planted a tree.

National Adoption Week 2016 - Long lost families 2050

It's National Adoption Week and I'd like to take you on a little strole through my imagination.

Imagine the scene, it's 2050 and I'm 79 years old. I go to the telly box and tune into my favourite bit of TV, Long Lost Families. The music swells and the presenters, a celebrity adoptee and a much loved presenter, start to tell you the stories that they are going to feature that week. Adult adoptees looking for the families that they were adopted from in the first years of the twenty first century, people telling their stories.

Pause a second. 

I look back now at the acceptable practices in relaiton to adoption of the 1950's, 60's & 70's with amazement. Society accepted a totally different set of norms that allowed children to be forcably taken from parents with the acquiescence of courts, Social Workers, families, communities, churches and media. In fact those groups and individuals perpetuated the conditions that made adoption a  reasonable, acceptable and a proportionate response to what was seen as moral weakness, sin, immorality and a corrosive element in society. Pretty grim days.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. I think that part of the popularity of the long lost type program is astonishment at the judgement of society and the hope of justice in reunification. It's nice to think that would never happen now.

Back to 2050.

How will future society and adult adoptees view the government's push to recruit adopters, the money poured into advertising campaigns, the adoption fairs and websites with children's faces on? How will the restriction on adoption support and limits on resources be seen? the political influence exerted over judges and the fight back? the stigmatisation of mental health of birth parents and limited support as their children move on, the dogma of severance and the perspectives of all but a few countries as they move away from a policy of adoption.

I'm not sure how adoption will fair and if society will judge our norms as dogmatic, naive or worse. Will they see the Gove/Cameron Adoption project as a roaring success? What will they say?

Perhaps the narrative will change, the needs of children will be prioritised above the needs of adopters and birth families. Maybe judges will be allowed to rule and the decision will be supported by financial and therapeutic support. Where adopters are equipped, empowered and engaged in caring for the children they are responsibility and birth families are not framed as the enemy. Adopters, professionals  and extended families working to meet the needs of children.

Every day my views and perspectives have changed, everyday I've become less binary and increasingly murky. More and more I'm compelled to ask myself, 'am I on the right side of this story and is there a right side to this story, am I one of the good guys?'

I'm not sure how history will judge us, more to the point how my children will judge me.

Adoption is not what it was but it certainly not what I would hope it could be, parenting other people's children is damn hard.

Normal

It  arrived, without announcement or fanfare. The brooding sense that all was not well, a simmering that threatened to boil over at any given moment.

Of course there's a lot going on, there always is.

The good MrsC and I escorted her to visit her proposed school. Her eyes scanned every room, corridor, face, teacher and pupil she encountered. The resident Social Worker was good, putting Flossy at ease but making it clear what was expected of her. Some of it went in but she was scanning the children she could see through the window, all of her energy thought and concentration was focused on this danger. A stereotype of hyper vigilance. She liked the school though, lots of sport, thank goodness she liked it. Nothing bad happened.

Then we had two football matches for Flossy on consecutive days. The Cup Final and an exhibition match. A lose and a draw. She took it well, I think. The coach announced his retirement, she didn't take that well, a desperate sadness fell that tapped into all that sadness.

Then came the brooding and simmering. I stood in the gap, the personification of the nerves, frustration, sadness and all that sadness.

MrsC said 'There's a lot going on for her at the moment'.

I said 'There's always a lot going on.', my non therapeutic self not really interested in 'excuses'. Nobody has a normal day in a normal week around here. We never unravelled or dysregulated, just simmered, low level stuff, knit picking, name calling under breath, door slamming, a little bit of verbal, enough attitude to know there was attitude but not enough to kick off.

Then it left, it slid away like it arrived. Unresolved and not addressed but gone for now.

Step back

I'm just done in, the emotions I feel during National Adoption Week are mixed in normal circumstances but this year NAW has felt like really hard work.

I don't need to run through all the stuff; the adverts, campaigns and general media hype that sits in sharp contrast with our family's sharp multifaceted adoption reality. At times during this week I've felt outrage, cynicism, hope, confusion, joy, love, gratitude and a rainbow of other emotions as I've watched usual barrage of media hoopla through various formats.

My mind has raced for a week with issues, the number of approved adopters vs children to home; the lack of adoptee representatives, the dogma, the history, the pain of loss, the desperate need, the politics and my role in all of this.

In the middle of all the hoo ha Mrs C and I planned a school visit considering moving from a two tier system to a three tier hopeful that a middle school will stretch out more pastoral school environment. Before we went I was overwhelmed with isolation as we weighed the pros and cons of the various options. After days of representing tother people's views I was almost paralysed with confusion when faced with this significant decision for us. I just needed some help from someone to walk me through this choice. I've read the blogs and taken advice but the buck stops here, we needed to make a decision and the next thing I know I'm throwing up in the toilet. Ok, time to step back, tune out and stop.

So, no blog this week just this, I'm stepping back, loading up Twuffer and going to potter on.

I say this with the utmost sincerity, look after yourselves.

PS Just for the record I really am not an Adoption Champion, I signed nothing and completed no form ;-)