Did I hear someone say adoption week? There were no big announcements from the government, the media seemed preoccupied/bored/disinterested and this general apathy was reflected in the public. “Oh you’re an adoption campaigner,” they say. “Isn’t that stuff all sorted now. I heard the government changed everything.” Uh. No, actually they haven’t changed everything or even very much.

 

This year the thrust of adoption week was the idea that people considering adoption should consider adopting groups of siblings That’s a huge ask when we have a system that struggles to fulfil the relatively easier task of single child adoptions. As many of 49% of adoptable children are siblings. The reason the figure is so high is that children are kept in care for far too long. So the first of three siblings might be removed from the family and put into care. Another child comes along. For reasons of neglect or abuse the second child is put into care. Another one or two arrive. Finding parents for these children who were already troubled but are now neglected by the care system, well how easy do you think that is? Remember, unlike foster care, adoptive parents get no support. None. So if you happen to listen to the government – and your heart – and adopt a set of siblings from a drug addled or alcoholic family, then you’ll be dealing with their traumas on your own. I doubt the policy makers in the government could ever imagine what that might be like. But then I seriously doubt they have any idea of what it’s like to be a forgotten child, being passed between care agencies and foster carers.

 

On Monday I was invited to host a chat at Mumsnet to open adoption week. Because Adopt a Better Way is not a licences adoption agency (this is only true for Councils and a handful of voluntary agencies vetted by the Councils) I am not allowed to give any direct advice on adoption. The questions that I received from adoptive mothers were utterly heartbreaking. Some of these were women who’d done what the government seems to think more people should do: they’d taken on either one or more children and had been abandoned. There were people who’d been violently attacked by their own children, bullied by their neighbours and abandoned by cash-strapped social services and local authorities. I’m accustomed to poring over data that reveal numbers of neglected and abused children and the consequences of this neglect. What I’m not used to is hearing from mothers who are stabbed with a biro by their own child, while they’re typing a message to me. To say I was overwhelmed by the desperation of these well-meaning people is an understatement. This was Edward Timpson’s ‘World Class’ adoption system at work. I wish he could have spoken to these women and seen and felt their pain.

 

I felt sad afterwards. I felt dejected. It happens to me often. And then, I decide I have to pick myself up and continue fighting for the thousands of kids who will never, ever grow up with the love and care of a stable family. Seventy two children a day go into care in the UK. That’s one every 20 minutes. And I won’t rest until we start caring about and respecting them as the human beings they are.

What they’re offering women is the chance to delay pregnancy so that they can reach their career goals while still having the option to procreate later on. There seems to be a subtext here: having babies is not a great career move. It’s saying that being a mum is secondary to being a career woman and that if you create a family at the wrong time your career will suffer. It doesn’t look so great when you see it from that angle. In fact it looks like a threat doesn’t it? “Freeze your eggs or you’ll damage your career.” That doesn’t sound like a perk at all.

We live in a society where children are seen as an inconvenience. “I can’t, I’ve got the kids.” “God, the babysitter’s sick. It’s going to be a nightmare.” Instead of being seen as a burden, kids should be seen as what they are: an opportunity to learn about ourselves, to live through the innocent eyes of others, to know what it’s like to care for someone so much that you would throw yourself under a bus for them.

And what happens when you do have kids and want to go on working? You still face the problem that to be seen to be productive in many of today’s businesses, you need to be seen at the office early – and stay late. Will egg-freezing fix that? I’m not sure it can. I think paying for egg freezing or infertility treatments or, yes, adoption costs is enlightened but what would really help working mothers would be flexible work policies that were not seen – as many seem to be today – as a lesser form of work. Or how about at work childcare? Because the fact is that for professional women’s lives to improve, it’s these parameters that need to change, not the decision to have babies at a certain time.

And let’s remember this. Some women, yes in fact quite a lot of women, want to be mothers. They don’t want to give it all up for a career and freeze what may be the opportunity of a lifetime.

Honestly I despair when I read this stuff. It’s bad enough a government that massages employment figures, but at least everyone knows they’re lying because they know their friends do not have jobs. With adoption it’s not something the majority of the population have experience with, so this kind of posturing makes me angry because, in an area of very little information, it presents itself as the definitive facts. But the facts are these:

- The percentage rise stated in the article is compared to a year when adoption is at its lowest ever point in history. Now, call me churlish but I don’t think that demonstrates a functioning adoption system let alone ‘world class’.

- 99% of children older than 9 do not get adopted.The increase refers to young children and babies. It’s a fact that nobody wants to adopt children as they get older and actually this was the worst year for adoption of older children.

- The total number of children in care rose to 68,840 last year, an increase of 7% on 2010 levels -which was the highest

- The average age of adoption is three years and five months. That is nothing to be proud of.

We live in a highly industrialized country and yet 68, 840 children are being looked after by the government. I use the term ‘looked after’ loosely of course. In reality the government, we, are doing the bare minimum for kids in care and those awaiting adoption. I am not sure that is world class.

Yes we know about being a mum. You’re on call 24/7, you wipe up dribble, vomit and poo constantly and you don’t get paid for it. It’s so unglamorous.

But you never hear this stuff from people lower down the socio-economic scale. These views tend to emanate from Western Middle-Class mothers, many of whom were in a position to give up careers to have children (a luxury in itself). And now, they seem to feel cheated.

And that is although often the moaning mummies tend to be able to pay for those things they don’t like doing – like cleaning – and afford babysitting or a nanny if they wish. Which makes these posts insulting to a large number of women who cannot afford the leisure and would never have the time to pen a blog about how tough it is.

I find this whole new trend is offensive to those who have lost their kids. Those whose kids are missing. Those who have had to abandon their kids because above the number allowed by their State or religion, or conceived out of wedlock. Those who have tried and failed to have kids naturally. Or have tried and failed to adopt.

It’s offensive to the kids themselves. Would we have wanted to feel that we were a ‘job’ to our mothers? And them reminding us and telling the world about how unrewarding and tiring it was especially it wasn’t even paid for?

And of course these statements are offensive to those who actually do have the hardest jobs in the world. You want to try and tell a miner in China or a sweat factory worker in Bangladesh that you have the hardest job in the world because you have to soothe your child back to sleep at night? Or do you want to ask my cleaner who hasn’t seen her kids for three years whether she’d rather clean the vomit off her own kids. Or mine?

This is offensive because kids are not a job. A job (and I have done a few) is something you do for other people, a place where you navigate the whims of others in order to earn money. With no passion often, certainly no love. Caring for your children, that you chose to have presumably (after all as a modern woman you could have chosen not to) is a privilege, a joy, a time to learn and relearn through their eyes.

This might be a cultural issue. I am Italian after all. A country where ‘I bambini’ are a pleasure to have around, are part of society, they sit with you at dinner table, you take them to restaurants with you (not just to special ones where they are allowed in) and the customer service improves rather than getting worse when the little people arrive. It might be because I am an adoptive mother and I went looking for that job high and low with every bit of me. Yes I did. It might be because I think even your daily ‘job’ needs to feel pleasurable. Or maybe all of the above. But I think being a mum is the highest form of honor I have been offered in life. Being with my children is the most enriching, fun, educational, creative part of my day and night. And it is rewarding, each minute of it is (OK maybe not the cleaning the poo bit). I feel grateful for their presence and the gift of our bond and companionship every single moment I can.

Ultimately the way we live anything from parenting to working to spending time with others or alone is all about attitude. I know I have chosen mine. And instead of spending time concocting a narrative about how hard done by I am, I am forever grateful I even got to choose.

As ever the topic of interracial adoption is a complex one, one that makes the headlines in the New York Times on the same day – link here.

I think the title of the NY Time summarises the whole thing correctly. Yes race (and indeed religion) do matter. They are part of a child’s identity, and it will stay way into adulthood. In an ideal world therefore we would want to match a child with the same ethnicity and why not religion parents. But guess what? We don’t live in that ideal world. We live in one where that choice isn’t always possible and the alternative to that ‘perfect match’ is a life in care shunted around the foster care system with multiple placements (in the majority of cases with temporary carers of a different ethnicity and religion anyway).

After that? The prospects are bleak. Crime, prostitution and homelessness are too often the only future for young adults leaving care as pointed out in our report from last year. 

To say that I found Nick Ferrari obnoxious in the interview would be an underestimation of my actual feelings towards him. Apparently he is amazed that I trust social services to be the ones to be making the right decision in the interest of the child. Who else would be? The birth family who had a total of three children removed from their custody and given for adoption?

In his biased view it should have been taken into account that four sets relatives of the biological mother came forward to adopt, and on top of that they were Muslim. How perfect blood related and same religion.

Should that have been a decisive factor? Being of a specific religion or even ‘blood related’ does not make anyone suitable to adopt.

Worse so Nick and a lot of the press around this specific case were clearly making a point that ‘on top of that’ the white women were lesbians too. So let’s throw everything in the pot why not?

This is going to get really boringly cliché now. What children need is the permanent love of doting parents. When that is provided by biological same ethnicity and religion parents that is great. When that is not possible then the next best available match has to be found to ensure the best interest of the child in paramount. In that case, dare I say like mine with two Mexican children, cultural needs of children can be met by different-race parents who are committed to the best interests of their child.

So that children are not made to pay for having been born in a family which for whatever reason couldn’t provide for them (in this case mental illness) and then for being of the wrong skin colour and or religion.

Being left behind languishing in a care system waiting endlessly not just for ‘a’ muslim family but ‘the right’ muslim family will never be the right alternative to a permanent loving family. Now.

One of the cosy themes this week has been that many people are under the misapprehension that they are not suitable to adopt. A YouGov survey showed one in four adults think being over the age of 40 would mean inelligiblility for adoption – whilst low incomes and being single were commonly cited as barriers too.

What’s less comfortable is the fact that local authorities have the power to interpret the current ‘guidelines’ however they like, and frequently reject potential adopters for a whole variety of reasons – there are documented examples of people being too wealthy, being the wrong ethnicity, the wrong sexuality or even having too many cats. Boroughs in London less than 5 miles apart have radically different policies leading to huge inconsistencies – there’s an excess of demand for adoption of ethnic children in Brixton, whilst there’s an excess supply of suitable potential adopters in Kensington. The real shock is that under the current system, never the twain shall meet.

Our current minister for Children and Families – Edward Timpson – should be the perfect man for the job, growing up with two natural and two adopted siblings in a household which saw his parents fostering over 90 children. He’s pledged to break down the local barriers and link children across the country more quickly with potential adopters through the Adoption Gateway, which has now gone live. Yet for all the warm words, he has after a year in office still failed to meet and hear the opinions of some forward thinking organisations in the sector, such as Adopt A Better Way.
What’s really needed now is a wholesale structural change to the system and the rules. Responsibility should be transferred to a new central authority, which can apply consistent adoption criteria. Resourcing needs to be hugely improved to stop the senseless delays which damage young children so much. And we need to totally rethink the conflicting legal and social care systems, whose competing agendas force children into a cycle of being returned time and again to unsuitable parents before their situation becomes so dire that they are placed into care, with their young lives already blighted.
Things have at last started to show signs of moving in the right direction, but like the system itself, progress is painfully and damagingly slow. Now is the time for government to commit to Britain’s future by investing properly in our vulnerable children. The argument for the investment in terms of improved life chances, lower crime, better health, improved education and reduction in the numbers needing care – has already been accepted. Let’s act now, otherwise Britain will be picking up the social and economic tab for decades to come.

So the police turn up and they have detained someone they think is his ‘look out’. Usual story. Nobody saw him do anything but he ‘looked dodgy’ said someone. Yes he was black and wore a hoody. Police say they can tell a dodgy guy miles away, the majority of the time they are right. The majority of the time they are black, the majority of the time they are care leavers.

Myth: Policemen are bad. I always thought so. I never really liked them. As an activist I associated them with beating me up during peaceful demonstrations, a tool of the Italian right wing. This policeman is a normal, nice bloke. He’s got two kids. And he gets it. You can see he’s torn between being a policeman for me and understanding the sad reality of what is unfolding with these kids. The detective is a good bloke too. Like his colleague he really gets it: he is genuinely interested in making things better. He knows the sensational media stuff about crime and kids doesn’t tally with the reality. He knows it’s part of a long chain of neglect that authorities, lawmakers and other adults are responsible for.
He has no tools to make it better. So he’s frustrated at the system, the length of time courts take to make decisions, the amount of money wasted on bureaucracy that don’t help either young offenders or society. It’s a joke he says commenting on the routine of detaining these kids for a night, getting a lawyer to tell them to say ‘no comment’ (and maybe a translator for many do not speak English) and then they go back to their normal life as neglected foster kids.

I’m aware that the policeman in front of me and his colleagues risk their lives every day for little more than the minimum wage. That’s not right either. The guy they’ve detained is an illegal immigrant. That’s a mess right there. What are his options? The detective tells me about the vicious circle of neglect, poverty and violence. Nobody cares about these kids. They steal. They go to jail for three months. When they come out they have no alternative. They do have a few more tricks learned in jail from the serious criminals so the cycle continues. The policeman says the courts are too slow and have no idea how to deal with these kids. He despairs and thinks the sentences should be longer so at least they are off the street, even if they are in jail. He is trying to make the best of a mess. The fact that he contradicts himself by saying they have probably already spent too much time with social services and the system, is understandable. All these kids get told is what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ but as we all know, you can’t do it without love. And that is one thing they will never have.

Jail, says the detective, is like a training course, paid by the taxpayer. He also tells us about what he thinks is the best example of the failure of the system. A young guy he knows well. Care leaver, abused and neglected at home, a string of foster carers (sounds familiar?), now in a council hostel. He started with with basic street robbery at shopping malls around Christmas last year. Of course he was caught- he’s no professional. It took the courts 7 months to convict him. Meanwhile he’s moved up the crime ladder and is now into ‘knife crime’. Again he’s been caught a few times. But the detective thinks it’s now too late for him, he is in the system and there is no way out now.

He observes that when you watch the CCTV images of this kid stabbing other kids or doing nasty things (always to kids the same age, which surely must tell psychologists something) he looks like the most evil person in the wold. And then you sit down and interview him. He is a pleasant, even amusing young kid who will one day get stabbed, probably fatally, because he never got a chance. That, he said, is likely to be the fate of my intruder. A scared, unintentional criminal who has no alternative.

But as he says. People don’t want to see that. The government doesn’t and the media finds it easier to say we have a crime epidemic. No, what we have is a neglect epidemic. A society that punishes kids for being unwanted and unloved. What do you really expect them to do? Because although it was my house that was broken into, I know exactly why the kid did it. ‘The’ kid. He doesn’t have a name. But then he doesn’t have a home. Or parents. He’s nobody’s kid. But actually he is. He’s our responsibility. But the couple of hours the policeman, the detective, my husband and I have just spent talking about him is about as close to real care that’s he’s going to get.

So jail doesn’t work, neither does the care system, or leaving these kids to themselves. Where is it all go so wrong? I am sure everyone meant well when setting up the care system, the justice one, the Police one. But we have failed miserably to have any effect other than the multiplier one. We have failed and continue to fail ten of thousands of children who turn into young offenders by which time it’s too late. And in doing so we fail society as a whole.

In Worcester a few days ago a doorbell rang. The occupants of the house opened it to find a newborn baby, wrapped in a hessian bag. The baby, biblically named Joseph, is doing well say the nurses. The mother is nowhere to be seen and her state can only be guessed at. Those who know about this type of thing say it’s possible she was concealing the pregnancy but this is speculation. There is a lot of speculation about babies right now, not all of it joyous.

Two infants, to be born days apart in the uncustomary heat of an English summer. While Kate and William seem delightfully grounded, it can be safely said this baby will have all its needs met and more. Cared for around the clock, doted on, protected, loved and given the best that money and social status can buy, he or she will have every opportunity. This is not carping, it is simply fact. And what of ‘Joseph?’ Though only a few days old, his opportunities in life are already closing. If his mother is found, authorities will have to determine if she can, wants to or is able to look after her baby. If she cannot, then Joseph will go into care. At that moment his life has already diminished. Joseph will join over 60,000 children in the UK in care, many who have and will spend their whole lives there. Local authorities and courts will produce a mass of paperwork and have endless discussions purporting to be about Joseph’s welfare.

The care system as it stands in the UK is unable to care for the kids it is supposed to protect. Born without any knowledge of the world and no cares, just like William and Kate’s baby, Joseph’s life will take a very different trajectory. The inept bureaucracy of the system will ensure that he is shunted between foster families, standing little chance of bonding with anyone. If he does find a foster family who love him, the authorities will probably move him. He may begin to exhibit difficult behaviour as a toddler as he wonders if anyone loves him or cares about. He is likely to be a slower learner (even though he was probably not born that way), potentially disruptive at school and may engage in anti social activities.

His chances of youth crime, drugs and being a runaway are high, far too high. His chances of being adopted by a loving family are low. Not because there are no adoptive parents but because the system makes it very hard for people to adopt. And so while Joseph languishes in care, developing emotional and physical problems, his potential family will attempt to navigate the councils and authorities and probably find it too difficult. If they do manage to adopt they will be given zero support. One day when Kate Middleton is doing her charity work, she might visit him, in prison or if he’s lucky, in care. She’ll tell everyone that she has a little boy or girl too and all children should be loved and looked after. They should. But they aren’t.

So according to Cameron and the invisible and highly reticent Edward Timpson (Minister for Children apparently though you would not think so) the reason why many potential parents don’t adopt is because adoption gets bad press. Not for a moment have they considered that the bad press is warranted. It is not a case of people being fed lies; mostly it is that those who might know anything about adoption, know that there is no support for families once you have adopted. The subset of the population who might consider adopting are generally a well-informed lot: they know that once you take on the responsibility of a child who has been in the care system you get a sack load of trauma and neglect but not tools to help you deal with it. Kids in care suffer twice (at least), first from biological parents who can’t look after them or don’t want them. They’re already messed up but the care system then shunts them around and makes sure they’re well and truly feeling the pain of neglect.
Love is not enough for these kids. For someone adopted as a baby it may be ok but the reality is that most kids will be toddlers at least, before they are adopted. They will have felt abuse, emotional and physical pain and much more besides. They will need specialist care to either prevent them developing a form of mental illness or to treat it . But they won’t get it. Almost to the day that parents and children come together to form a family, they will be left alone. Local authorities and councils, happy to pass the parcel, will cross them off their list.

This example  is typical of how well-meaning people end up exhausted after fighting for years to get post-adoption support for their kids. Most never secure funding for the therapy that’s needed and it is not uncommon for them to return the child to care because they are unable to cope.

“Our son, who we’ve had since he was two, at age nine became incredibly aggressive and clearly has behavioural problems. “Now he’s a nearly 16-year-old who’s over 20 stone, and I’ve been pinned against the wall and my head smashed in. I regularly would get hit,and his mouth is like a sewer. I love him to bits, but I wouldn’t say I’m very proud of him. We’ve been close many times to picking up the phone and saying ‘we can’t do this’.”

While social workers may reassure parents during the adoption process that they have the right to an assessment of a child’s needs, they may not explicitly communicate that there is no duty on a local authority to provide the services to meet any needs that are identified. And because no statutory agency has any obligation to stump up, all too often, they don’t.

And so we come back again to one of the central platforms for Adopt a Better Way: the lack of a central regulating body. Without it we have no exact data as to how many children are returned to care as a result of lack of support. how many children develop mental illness during their first years in care and what is needed to minimise this awful chain of events. initiatives such as the ill-thought out adoption passport do not attempt to address key issues including how to monitor the performance of councils or how to move towards a structure that supports children and parents so they can come together and stay together. But with such a reductive government in power, one who talks a great deal about families but whose policies are almost resolutely anti-family, it is hard to see how this will happen.

How is this possible? When we’d just adopted our first child, Gaia, the question was “Do you know anything about her ‘real mum’?” Now we have Luca as well, the question has shifted: ‘Are they ‘real siblings’? What makes ‘real’ siblings? Blood? Is it blood and genetics that are at fault when siblings don’t talk to each other, hardly bond and live like strangers? And should we thank DNA when the opposite happens?

Last year Luca suddenly went cross-eyed overnight. Immediately we knew it wasn’t just an eyesight issue. At the time his co-ordination completely deserted him, he went floppy to the extent that he forgot how to even walk. A horrible month in hospital ensued while we waited to hear what this thing was. A virus? Brain damage? Meningitis? Nothing conclusive. Now we know what it isn’t but not what it is.

In the medical profession everyone is ‘confused’ but actually we are not because we knew we had adopted a child who had been physically and emotionally damaged before even being born. In recent months, it’s become obvious that he has multiple problems but we don’t quite know how deep it goes. His brain is affected. For a child approaching three he cannot really understand or communicate concepts. There are a few words he says but I don’t think he always knows why he’s saying them. He can’t tell me if he had a happy day at nursery or even answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ because he doesn’t really know what I’m talking about when I ask him. He just looks at me with impossibly big, lost eyes and just repeats what I say. Currently he is seeing a speech therapist, physiotherapist, developmental pediatrician, feeding specialist and undergoing genetic testing. He wears glasses and a patch and is a fairly regular visitor to our GP for recurrent infections and other issues.

Watching him go through test after test, being prodded, poked and shipped from hospital to hospital, hurts, right to the core of my shattered soul. Just like a real mum. I feel all sorts of things. Mostly I am sad because I think it’s unfair that he should go through this. I know he is the product of a ‘real’ mother who abused alcohol and possibly drugs for the entire duration of her pregnancy. He was that unwanted. I was talking to someone whose (biological) child has disabilities and she summarised it beautifully, she said “It’s not painful because we wanted the perfect child, but because we want our child to have a perfect life, and we know he simply will not”.

I feel pride at the way he smiles at life, is always up for a cuddle and finds even the hospital a familiar cosy place. At the way he holds my hand when I sleep with him and get overwhelmed with fear and upset almost as if he is the one comforting me. I am inspired by him, his resilience and unconditional love. And then I feel gratitude. A lot of people tell me “You are so good for what you have done, you know he would be in an orphanage if it wasn’t for you, he might be dead now” but I am the one who is grateful, for what he means to me and everyone around him.

Which leads me to the ‘real siblings’.
Gaia has every reason to be jealous. She was 2.5 when we went to meet him, a difficult age to accept a new brother. A difficult age to understand that we were flying to Mexico, where we adopted her, to now ‘meet him’ and bring him back forever, with all the implications that the whole thing brought. She was and still can be insecure with new people and obsessive with her attachment to me. When people tried to shake my hands she would stand between us and say “This is MY MAMMA!” especially if it was kids doing it. It was impossible to have playdates at home without it turning into a mini drama where she would push anyone who came close to me away. Everyone swore it would be a disaster to add another child to the family at that time. I am not going to deny it took serious adjustment.

But right now this is what I know. Just as we read our kids, Gaia and Luca understand each other.
Luca’s first word was “Gaia’. She is the only one he really recognises and always has done, at both a rational and emotional level. Whenever he is at the doctors and won’t sit still we mention the magic word “Gaia’ and he stops and smiles. I cannot take him to the school gates for drop-off because he has a melt-down at the thought of leaving her (he does not and never has done that about me!).

Gaia has demanded to sleep in the same room as him. She says ‘sharing is caring’ so I want to share everything with Luca, even my room’. In the morning she gets him out of the cot (she is barely five) and gets him ready. If I am unwell she even makes him breakfast. She sits on the floor with the patience of a saint, teaching him colours and numbers that she knows he will not remember. Despite us never ever mentioning the fact that he has issues (amongst other reasons because we don’t even know what the issue IS) a week ago she told us at dinner that when she grows up she ‘wants to be a teacher of children like Luca’. When I asked her if she meant a nursery teacher, she replied ‘no a teacher of children who take a long time to learn’. She encourages him to push forward even when I give up trying. She tells me not be ‘discouraging’ of him as ‘he will get there’. And I sit there and watch this miracle unfold in front of my eyes. Are they real siblings? I have never witnessed anything more real than the bond between my children.

And today if there is only one thing Luca knows is that he’s wanted. By me, his father and his sister Gaia. We are all real, like the bond that gets us out of bed in the morning and the love we have for each other. And we support each other, especially our dear little soul who often has no idea where he is or who to hug. The most important thing is that we are there to hug him. You can’t get more real than that.