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As per our pattern, tensions rose slowly and inevitably to a moment of unravelling. One child could not contain their inner world any longer and words were used with the intention to harm, and arms and legs.

Not pretty, not nice. We're all left raw and some of us a little bruised.

In line with our agreement, actually my insistence,   I emailed my Adoption Social Worker to keep track of our story*. I gave a fair but concise account of events, what led to it and what happened. I thought that I'd share the grown up words that had been directed at me as it was a key part of the story. With a big sigh I pressed send, unsure of what response this would precipitate.

To my surprise within  a few minutes an automated email response came from the RAA.

"Sophos has detected inappropriate language within this email...........Please review your email and remove any suspect wording."

Sometimes blog posts write themselves. I laughed and laughed, you just can't make this stuff up.

There's a metaphor for modern adoption support in this that I just can't get my finger on.

Answers on a postcard.





Post script: My social worker answered very quickly, as usual, once I'd removed the child's grown up words.



*That our story and files now fall into my mythical RAA's system and that is somewhat removed from my local authority's system is a slight worry that nobody seems able to bottom out. 

Melancholic

It’s perhaps the short days in the long month after Christmas or the days where day and night are barely distinguishable but my thoughts have drawn tight around me. Claustrophobic thoughts precipitated by days of child induced challenge layered on what seems like years of challenge. 

What a grim post to write this is after writing less. Don’t worry I’m sure I can pull this round.  

I’d hoped to write some profound insight or witty anecdote but they seem a little illusive right now.  I’ve had lots of thoughts for sure and I needed to put somewhere but none of them seemed to be complete thoughts, half-finished blog posts littered my mind refusing to be shepherded into neat blogs. 

The impact of early adversity seems to remain persistent in some of my children’s lives though ever evolving in form and shape as it clings on through middle childhood into early adolescence then young adulthood. I’m not a fatalist but there feels like a brooding inevitability about some of paths we’re heading down that I see my peers navigate with their children. I’m not worried just getting ready in my thinking and trying to make sense of my thinking. 

Then I went on a three day NVR practitioners course and it made me question myself and my capacity to parent. Ideas around parental presence made me think if I had any left and whether I could be bothered.  I’m pretty sure that’s the wrong attitude, pretty sure I wasn’t that good a delegate. 

Lots of thoughts and feelings I couldn’t get to the bottom of. 

So much stuff floating around my mind. 

A good friend thought he’d help me last year by describing me as a melancholic in a job reference for a promotion. I didn’t get the job and in fact lost the job I already had but it made me think what he meant so I looked it up. One description of melancholy is a ‘pensive sadness’. That how January has felt for sure there’s so much sadness about all of this but that’s ok and I’ve reconciled myself to being a melancholic.

I’ve taken to drinking non alcoholic beer, it’s all part of my plan to wean myself onto real beer when I’m in my 60’s. MrsC and @gayadoptindad think I’m a lightweight. 

But then in the middle of all the physical darkness of January and friction a peace descended unexpectedly and I cupped my daughter’s face in my hands and she let me. It wasn’t a PACE moment squeezed out like reluctant toothpaste at the end of the tube or planned act of kindness or restoration. It just happened and as I looked in her eyes they held my gaze and I said ‘I love you’ and she smiled as I kissed her cheek. 

To be honest it made me sadder for all the times we don’t have that, but it also sparked a little hope. A little hope goes a long way and there is a long way to go. 

Then today it was light a little later and I thought perhaps the future is a little brighter.  

Spring is coming. 

The conversation moves on? Childhood Challenging Violent and Aggressive Behaviour

It is with interest I read through the 'Transforming the Response to Domestic Abuse: Consultation Response and Draft Bill' that was released on Monday, I lie, if felt like work. I'm not a lawyer and laws are so not page turners.

The draft is released almost a year since the MP Toby Perkins had raised a debate on Child on Parent Violence that I wrote up here . This draft bill was referenced then and if you skip to page 44 there is mention of adolescent to parent violence (you can download the Transforming the Response to Domestic Abuse: Consultation Response and Draft Bill here).

What does it mean for us? Well, in all that Dr Wendy Thorley and I have looked at on the issue one of the resounding myths that we've repeatedly had to shatter is that only adolescents manifest behaviour so violent and aggressive that it precipitates external action or support.

It's just plain wrong.

The problem is across childhood but more prominent in middle childhood, primary school aged children. This bill is explicit in highlighting adolescents,  my concern is that those responding are being given no tools or guidance on how to help when the child is 7, 8 or 9 and below the age of criminal responsibility which is 10. Why does this matter? because families are desperate and calling the police and asking for help, they're looking to services that are mistaking violent and aggressive behaviour as an indicator of permissive or authoritarian parenting, they are 'believing' children's narratives because they've been given no other narrative.

The published document talks about the approach that services take but if they are stuck in the adolescent narrative, which is a valid one, they will not be equipped or prepared to support the majority of families that experience this phenomenon. It feels like a step forward in the wrong direction. Hmmmm.

That all said, at least it's in the documents, at least people are looking to consider best practice and the  knowledge and understanding will move on.

My limited knowledge of legislative process and the nuances of what happens next and implications must temper what I've said . To that end my thoughts are more of what is known and how we (parents/carers, professionals and services) respond to the issue and how that response should help.

(You can see the facts and figures in the CCVAB report that Dr Wendy and I published here)

Empathy and some thoughts on the Adopter Reference Group

So, up again I went to the Adopter Reference Group to look at and reflect on the issues that the Adoption and Special Guardianship Leadership Board consider and discuss some of the current issues that our community are negotiating at the moment. 

The discussion fell back into schools and again I find myself slightly out of step on that subject. For us to see the culture and practice shift that we want for our children in education we need to present an irresistible argument to education professionals, policy makers and politicians. With 26,000 schools in the UK and 55,000 adoptees under 18 years old in a pool of 11,000,000 children adoptees represent a very small cohort

Even in the group of children with SEN, 1,276,000 we are aren’t even at 5% and of course not every adopted child needs additional support in education.  The needs of adopted children may pull on the heartstrings of educationalists for all the cultural and emotive reasons we know but they don’t scratch the surface of the actual need in schools. The argument to change school culture and practice, to raise awareness in the workforce of trauma, loss and separation and to support the needs of vulnerable children becomes irresistible when adoptees are seen amongst the many more children that are living through and with the impacts of early adversity. 

1 in 5 children will experience domestic violence

1 in 20 children will experience sexual abuse

1 in 10 children will experience neglect

1 in 14 children will experience physical abuse

1 in 29 children will experience the death of a parent 

Foster care, kinship care, special guardians, private fostering etc.

Those are features in many adoptees narrative, however they are not exclusively theirs and in reality many more children experience high levels of challenge but adoption is not their story. 

I could go on………..

The case for empathy, compassion and a culture/policy/paradigm shift is clear when adoptees are seen in that community of children. Of course, within that community specific needs and nuances are represented with our children having some. However, the baseline shift that we’re looking for would change everything for those children and it’s likely for all children positively.

Here’s the rub, we need to form alliances and to do that do we need to shout a little less about adoption? Tricky, is it a word that opens doors and gets the ears of professionals? It is in my experience but do we need to help open the door for many that don’t have that luxury. 

So, that was what I was thinking and I did reflect a little of that as we chatted about education. I may have got a little passionate. Hey ho.

Then we went onto consider the work that is being looked at in relation to modernising permanency. It’s a broad subject matter and with several strands as support and contact are considered in relation to children’s identity as well as workforce development. 

I’ve lots of thoughts on that issue and it’s a fundamental issue for services at this time of RAA induced flux and remains a hot topic when broached with adopters and families. I’m going to keep my powder dry on that one. 

I apologise as this feels like a sketchy reflection of the discussion and more an essay on my thoughts on the topics raised. 

That said, continuity of NHS numbers were discussed, an issue that is significant for children with many children with complex health needs who need continuity of treatment and care. In a world of social media children being tracked down through this seems increasingly unlikely in my view. So that’s back on the table.  

The case for the continuation of the ASF beyond March 2020 is being pulled together, the Treasury will, rightly, want to see evidence of it’s benefit to children and families and that is being pursued. 

The issues of adopted children, quite obviously, remain central to the focus and efforts of adoptive parents and the dedicated staff of the DfE and the Adoption and Special Guardian Leadership Board continue to focus on those children. It remains a privilege to speak as a member of the adoption community and though the wheels of change move slow they do move but we need to keep oiling and pushing.

Together

It seems like utter bunkum to review the year, so I won't.

However, my thoughts are drawn to trends and developments. There's a lot going on, with shifts in emphasis, agencies coming and going, the whole RAA thing seems to be unstoppable with all that means. That all seems routine and beyond the control or influence of most of us though.

For me there's an increasing shift to see the needs of adoptees and foster children in the context of all children's experiences. It's clear, the lobby for supporting children who have experienced trauma, loss and separation is stronger when we pull in the vast array of communities that care for those children, primarily biological parents, kinship carers, carers, kinship carers and adopters in order of decreasing numbers. The number is then increased from the ten's of thousands to at least the hundred's of thousands. A much louder voice. In what seems like and increasingly punitive environment we need a louder voice.

That of course is a challenge for organisations that are built on the premises of supporting and training adopters/adoptees. They've historically needed to highlight the difference/uniqueness of adoption or at least the shared benefits of supporting adoptees in whatever context they find themselves in.

What has influenced this shift in me was an occasion this year when I stood in front of a group of 25 adults to talk about childhood challenging violent and aggressive behaviour, one person in the group was an adopter, two were carers and the rest biological parents. Dare I say that the needs of the adoption community are dwarfed by the needs of biological parents of children with special educational needs, complex biographies, loss, separation and trauma. Next year my diary shows me moving beyond my safe country of adoption to new lands.

It's all food for thought, don't believe that I see the needs of adoptees and adopters as any less, just that my knowledge of the wider context and level of need is perhaps better informed than it was a year ago. I also understand that public opinion remains mostly with adopters and we get a bigger slice of the cake than most. So, is everything ok in the world of adoption support? hell no, am I advocating us just gratefully accepting our lot? hell no. On Christmas day I got news though a birth family member of another injustice heaped on my children*, it reminded me that there's so much to do for so many of us. Looking further forward, I'm not sure where adoption will be in ten or twenty years. As an adopter will I become an ugly manifestation of a then unacceptable practice, I guess that's a much bigger question about the future of adoption and if adoption will choose to embrace the inevitable challenges that are coming. It's clear that a lot of the RAAs are re arranging the proverbial deckchairs while the future of adoption seems uncertain. One of the most depressing things I learn this year being that meaningful contact between children and birth parents is less than 20 years ago. How can we arrest this slide into uniformed popularist practice? I've some ideas but I wield limited influence within my own circumstances let alone beyond that.

So, that's all a bit rambly, rest assured I am optimistic for the future and have personal, family and wider aspirations for the coming year.  Will there be challenges, hell yeah, I'm currently suffering chronic whiplash from the levels of sass coming from a thirteen year old Lotty and the weekend seems like an unachievable target right now. I will hold fast, perhaps next year I'll find some new friends to hold fast with.

Anyway, here's my 'tops' of the year.

Book: Ruthless Trust, Brennan Manning

Album: Ozzy Osbourne, Tribute

Family Member: MrsC

Moment: There's lots of things I 'should' say but riding through the night on the the Dunwich Dynamo was hauntingly remarkable.

Have a great year, hold fast.


*I'm holding my tongue and considering my next move, but I'm as cross as hell at what seems social work practice that errs on the side of caution and the easy route rather than on best practice and forethought.

Amazing

MrsC recounted our year to a friend she’d not seen in a while. The ebb and flow of our version of normal, police, social workers, pregnancy, losing children then finding them, births and everything inbetween. 

She spoke of a feeling of slow inevitable corrosion and the friend listened, paused for a moment and said:

‘You’re bloody amazing’

I agree, she is.

Clear Blue Sky

Like tight shoes or awkward pants you only really appreciated how tight or uncomfy they are until you take them off. Then the true extent of the problem becomes apparent and you're aware of how you'd tolerated the discomfort and challenge.

Mrs C and I have had a few days away and the lack of physical work is good but the psychological blue sky we're sitting under is so sweet. We've left a good team holding the fort and lined up all the dominoes to make sure there's no uncertainty as to how the weekend is going to pan out at home. It's time to draw breath before Christmas and the deep mid winter and all challenges that can bring.

Like everybody that looks after children with additional, uncertain and complex needs we're holding our children in our minds even when they're not with us. There are rare time where I switch off, a call from school, an email or a call from Flossy or Lotty's  phone is a trigger, it precipitates a girding reflex as my whole being says what now. I leave our stories in the shadows but the two year anniversary of unwanted social care hangs heavy over Paula and I.  The weather's not helping, the dark brooding skies, short days and leaves underfoot take me back to those long December days of unwelcome social work involvement. We have our very own primary trauma, the skies bring it back, perhaps they always will.

But we've got a 48 hour pass and we've relinquished all responsibility, time with friends just being grown ups for a while it's only now I feel the tension as it's gone. The need for breaks for carers of vulnerable and challenging children remains unquestionable. That fight's for another day.

While I'm here writing the autumn has brought other things, thoughts that about where adoption sits in the world of permanence, I fear we're living in uncertain times with the us, adopters, losing perspective and context and wondering if we've ever really had it. Thoughts that don't want to be marshalled into a blog quite yet but are floating uncomfortably around waiting to be articulated. We'll see.