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.

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.

Oxford is of course a popular place for Cameron and his ilk. Many of them (and many Labour politicians) studied there. But now, strangely there is no reaction from a government that wants to do better for children. We expected the usual deathly silence from Edward Timpson (Edward when are you going to talk to me?) but after the jaw-jaw of the government and how it cares about families and vulnerable families at that, where is the interest?

This is a classic example of what we at ABW have repeatedly identified: the lack of support for children and parents in vulnerable situations. This might seem like an isolated case but it really is part of a bigger picture where children in danger, either in families or in care, are given very little consideration. And if they are adopted, the parents get no support. It would be far too assumptive to say the council ignored the pleas of the girl’s mother because she was adopted. But it’s not wrong to say that adoptive parents are ignored.

The fact that this is likely a result of ignorance and fractured processes rather than malice, is little comfort however, for the adoptive parent. Having already endured an emotional rollercoaster that has lasted years, they reach a point where they adopt only to find they have no support.

An article in the Guardian raises some pertinent issues about this, particularly in the light of falling placements.

In the piece, John Simmonds, director for the British Association for Adoption and Fostering makes an excellent point regarding the lack of support (link here) particularly with troubled children, groups of siblings, disabled children and those who are older.

And this I think is the crux of the problem.

“There needs to be a recognition that, for any adopter, this is a challenging thing that people are taking on.”

Nothing prepares you for adoption. The local councils and social workers would have you believe that the highly invasive and traumatic Home Study is part of that preparation. It’s not: it’s all about satisfying their requirements. And that doesn’t help when you are dealing with kids who have come from situations of real despair.

“Currently, 72% of adopted children were neglected, abused or both by their birth families. Alan Burnell, director of adoption agency Family Futures, says many children they see are scared and need help to adjust. “Even though they’re in safe, new environments, they need help to rewire their brain so that they can accept the love and the care that they’re getting in adoptive families,” he says.”

The requirements of an adoptive parent are complex. Where natural parents are led through the process by an army of doctors, midwives, friends, support groups, ante-natal classes and more, adoptive parents get to read a few books.

As you’ll see in the piece, there are those who do support parents and do it in the most caring, non-intrusive way. However this shouldn’t be a mere option. The one who stands to lose at the end is the foster child taken back into care because the parents need help in dealing with this brand new challenge. Remember a new baby is challenge. Think about a new baby arriving with a whole lot of baggage to a family who, having been through the disappointment of not being able to have kids and the tough adoption process, now find they are unprepared. Adoption is an end-to-end process. Support for families should be integral to the process.

You probably know what’s coming next: what they uncover is heartbreaking and frustrating as they experience what many adoptive and would be adoptive parents have found – a system that works against the interests of the children. Apparently Sir Elton John and David have provided a great deal of input into the feature, so my delight at being contacted was pretty much off the scale. They sent a film crew from the States to record my experiences of adopting from Mexico. I had to keep pinching myself to believe  it was true!

It’s gratifying that my campaign group, Adoption With Humanity, has been recognised amongst global adoption campaigning groups  for its emphasis on the plight of the thousands of children in the UK forgotten in care. Though I’m no less frustrated at the situation we’re in with adoption, it’s very encouraging to know that many of you share our views and understand the need to make the adoption process leaner and more child-centric.

Launched in the US this coming September, the film will be shown here in the UK just before National Adoption Week. I have huge hopes about its potential as a catalyst for change. Filming with Olga and dealing with her and her colleague Mike Dudko was an amazing experience and their commitment to giving children a voice is real and will hopefully go a long way. I felt like I had known them both for ages. We share the same views and dreams. Dreams it is worth waking up to every day for.

Sadly this is pretty much how governments have conducted themselves in dealing with pressing issues in both the adoption process and the care system which is a part of it. Sure there has been much murmuring from Michael Gove and Tim Loughton about making ‘big changes’ to the process. The former is himself adopted so I guess I’d hoped for more action but instead, we just get more pronouncements.

So I sit here looking at the same disturbing facts over and over. Black and Asian children find it hard to be adopted into a permanent, stable home. The numbers of children going into care are also increasing  - on average around 1000 each month. Meanwhile there are prospective parents coming forward, many of them ready to jump through the countless hoops that will be put before them. And we have a society that embraces alternative concepts of creating a family, one where even surrogacy is becoming more accepted. So why is adoption so complicated, so bureaucratic, so uncaring and unaware of the people it affects the most? Why isn’t it a leaner, more transparent process that gives hope instead of discouraging those who want to make it work?

The reality is that in nearly four years the government hasn’t even attempted to alter the the forms on the Home Study questionnaire to ask if parents would consider a child of a different race.

You know, I receive calls each day from people desperate to open their hearts to a child who needs a loving home. These people tell me they have been turned down as adoptive parents due to race. I find that even more troubling in a country that spends a fortune on ensuring ‘diversity’ in its workplaces. The number of children adopted last year was the lowest in ten years and England lags behind any other so called ‘developed’ country when it comes to the way it handles the children left to languish in care. Their lives are destroyed before they have a chance to begin. And still the government sits there, intellectually and morally constipated uttering passive words. Non-announcements are not only depressing, they are insulting to the children and those of us who care about making life better for them.

I don’t think we’re any way towards meeting the problem with the reforms it needs. In conversations with both Martin Narey (newly appointed Adoption Czar) and Tim Loughton, the Minister for Children I was impressed with the way both men understood the problem. And I think their intentions are there. However I am not convinced that they are going to generate any substantial mileage in terms of really making any difference – the kind of difference that will change the appalling statistic that out of 4000 children up for adoption in 2010, less than 300 were adopted.

Why is this the case? Again I am loathe to apportion blame on social workers and local authorities as they are merely instruments of the system. It must be said they have used that to make not wholly safe judgements that have tended to be in the interest of keeping families together, rather than finding care and safety for the child. It is the DfE and the government who need to be more accountable though, for their parts in this immoral and often, inhumane circus.

We live in cash strapped times. Councils have always known they can save money, rather a lot of money, by keeping children in care instead of helping them towards adoption. This is going to exacerbate the situation. Sure you can save yourself a bit of money in the short term. And when those neglected kids fail to complete school and end up in prison then what? Because the statistics show us what happens and David Cameron knows it too.

A government that won’t take responsibility for something so fundamental to the well being of children and society is not behaving like a government Government. What we want to see is the government using its weight to enforce any measures with  Local Authorities, Social Workers and Family Courts.

Otherwise Local Authorities will do what they have done before and ignore them and hide behind them. We still won’t have the clarity of direction we need.

That’s why we need a National Adoption Authority which will be able to impose guidelines and ensure there are penalties for not following them. We need much more of course, like a more streamlined process in the family courts that does not aggravate the delays already present in the system. But most of all we need David Cameron to take the lead.

I feel great because of the recent national media interest in my adoption campaign as the momentum builds up for National Adoption Week which starts tomorrow when I will be delivering our Adoption with Humanity petition to 10 Downing Street with my daughter Gaia, fellow founders Alex Bemrose and Stevan Whitehead, and Alex’s young son Jose. I hope this petition helps to make a difference and provide love and security for children who have been left to languish in care. Do look out for us this week on Sky News, ITV and Channel 4, as well as in the press.

This article appeared in today’s Sunday Times and also included the story of how Rick and I adopted two babies from Mexico, as well as a picture of us spanning six columns at the top of the page. It’s case studies like this which reinforces to the public and politicians the need for change, and we believe that setting up a National Adoption Authority would be the best solution.

Here is the Sunday Times article, with Gaia looking cute in her Halloween dress!

David Cameron’s adviser on adoption is to crack down on councils that ban white people from giving homes to black children, or bar smokers and the obese from adopting

Martin Narey, former chief executive of Barnardo’s, the children’s charity, warned that local authorities could face a legal ban on preventing couples from adopting children of another race if they do not voluntarily change their practice.
He blames the barriers put up by many councils for the sharp fall in adoptions and the delays of more than three years endured by large numbers of children before they are given a stable home. The insistence by many social workers that black children should only be adopted by black parents is, said Narey, “preposterous”.
Narey, appointed adoption tsar by the prime minister earlier this year, said in an interview with The Sunday Times he was “appalled” by councils that refused to consider smokers as adoptive parents.
He said removing unnecessary barriers could cut the amount of time it takes to assess people for suitability as adopters from more than a year to four months, as already happens in some areas such as Harrow, northwest London.
He said enough suitable couples initially came forward to adopt, but there was a shortage because so many were put off after being “ground down” by a process that can involve a dozen visits from social workers and filling in health and safety forms that went into “ludicrous” detail.
Recent figures showed the number of adoptions had fallen 8% since 2007 and that just 60 babies a year were being placed permanently with families, compared with 4,000 in 1974.
Narey, speaking ahead of announcements by Cameron on adoption this week, warned that black children were three times less likely than white ones to be adopted from care homes, partly because of a shortage of black couples willing to adopt and because so many white ones were being turned down.
He said guidance from the Labour government in 2000 had not been followed, adding: “Michael Gove [the education secretary] has issued fresh guidance to say that seeking an ethnic match should not delay adoption.
“We need to see whether that guidance is listened to … By the end of the year, I think I will have a pretty good picture. If it hasn’t, then my advice to ministers … will be that they will have to go beyond guidance … possibly to legislation.”
He added: “In some US states it is illegal to take account of ethnicity in adoption. It can’t even be mentioned and trans-racial adoptions are hugely successful there.
“Race does matter, but there aren’t enough black adopters. I believe that to suggest a white couple can’t raise a black child and be supported to help with the racism that child might encounter is just preposterous.”
He said he had been “told by the British Association of Social Workers that the reason they don’t support trans-racial adoptions is that they break down in large numbers. It is simply untrue, there is no evidence”.
Martin Narey wants councils to take quicker action on children living in squalor (Matt Lloyd) Narey, who is also a former chief executive of the National Offender Management Service, was brought up in Middlesbrough as the eighth of nine children with “25 or 26” nephews and nieces, including five who had been adopted.
“It was irrelevant that they were adopted,” said Narey, who recently wrote a report on the adoption system as part of a campaign by The Times. “They were just my nephews and nieces.”
He said he believed it was vital to expand adoption, and for councils to become more willing to remove children from neglectful parents and put them in care homes before adoption.
“I am talking about children living in squalor, not being fed properly, not being loved, not being nurtured, being brought up without any aspirations, seeing violence, being the subject of violence,” said Narey.
Ministers taking a strong interest in adoption include Gove who was adopted as a baby after just four months in care.
Narey also backed a call by Tim Loughton, the children’s minister, who while speaking about adoption earlier this month at the Tory conference in Manchester said: “If you smoke, come forward.”
Some councils bar or heavily restrict smokers from adopting and fostering, even if they are otherwise well qualified.
Wiltshire council, for example, will not allow smokers to be given children under the age of five, or older boys and girls with respiratory problems.
Last month it emerged that Clare and Paul Baker had been told by Essex council that they were not fit to be foster parents after Paul admitted to smoking two cigars in 18 months.
Narey added: “That is not to say you shouldn’t be saying to a parent, ‘Look, you should be thinking about your smoking’ … but it is like saying we are not going to allow parents to conceive if they are smoking. It is a nonsense.”
He also said obesity should not be a bar to becoming adoptive parents. Two years ago a couple from Leeds were turned down for adoption because the husband, Damien Hall, was classified as morbidly obese.
Narey said it was “entirely typical” for some councils to take a year or more to approve carers. He singled out safety forms drawn up by the British Association for Adoption and Fostering and used by most local authorities.
“I want a rigorous system, I don’t want an adoptive child to go to carers who haven’t been properly vetted,” said Narey. “But we can do it much more quickly and we have to accept we can’t head off every possibility. Checking there are locks on the cutlery drawer is not a very valid part of a family’s ability to adopt children.
“The social worker has to complete a health and safety check that runs to five or six pages, checking such banalities as, for example, if there is a trampoline in the garden, does it have a safety net?”

Picture courtesy of Paul Vicente, Sunday Times

Please sign our Adoption with Humanity petition urging immediate reforms and the setting up of a National Adoption Authority.

This poster appears in today’s Daily Telegraph.

ADOPTION REFORMS PETITION TO BE PRESENTED AT 10 DOWNING STREET

Media invited to attend petition presentation: 13.00 on 31 October, 2011

A petition urging the government to form a National Adoption Authority and put the needs of children at the forefront of adoption reforms in the UK is to be presented at 10 Downing Street.

More than 1,200 supporters have signed a petition launched by Adoption with Humanity and firmly believe their proposals will overcome the present failing bureaucratic system which in the last year has seen only 60 babies under the age of one be adopted. It will be delivered to Downing Street on 31 October, the first day of National Adoption Week.

Francesca Polini, who adopted two children from Mexico after being turned down by her local authority in Ealing, London, and whose three-year-old daughter Gaia will present the petition, said: “It is important we take our message straight to the heart of government and we are doing this during National Adoption Week in the hope that our message is heard and listened to.

“We want to see changes implemented as soon as possible which will make a difference to the lives of countless young people who are left to languish in care homes.”

Adoption with Humanity was founded by Francesca, along with Stevan Whitehead and Alex Bemrose, who also both adopted children from overseas after being turned down in the UK for their skin colour and class.

It is proposed that the NAA have control over local authorities and courts and is governed by those involved in the adoption process, including social workers, psychologists, doctors, adoptive parents, birth mothers and adoptees.

One of the NAA key proposals is that a personal budget should be allocated to the child (similar to a statement of special educational needs) and the creation of a separate national budget for the assessment and preparation of potential adopters. Funding for this would come from the reallocation of budgets from the Department of Education and Ofsted.

Francesca says: “These proposals would result in significant improvements, resulting in less time being spent in care and a reduction of wasted time and resources as a result of proper co-ordination between agencies and the courts. Most importantly, more children would be placed in loving and secure homes earlier in their lives.”

Support for the campaign has been given by its patron Baroness King of Bow, Oona King, and courtier dress designer Bruce Oldfield, a former Barnardo’s boy.

Baroness King says: “Like Francesca I am an adoptive parent of two lovely children. And like her, I have experienced the utter frustration, despair and anger at the way the current system operates. This is not apolitical issue: successive governments have failed to solve the problem. So what’s the problem? Simply that a failing system discourages adoptive parents from adopting, and penalises children born into dysfunctional families.  These are children whose birth parents have usually been abused or neglected.

“Often, the best way out for these most vulnerable children is adoption. But adoption just isn’t accepted by the system. That’s why only a few dozen babies were adopted last year. The courts and local authorities need to be held to account, and the government of the day must get a grip.  Our government has a moral duty to get the system working, introduce national procedures, and rid the system of unnecessary obstacles. And there isn’t a moment to waste. I look forward to helping Francesca in her quest to change things for the better.”

Bruce Oldfield says: “Adoption today in the UK is itself dysfunctional. I find it particularly absurd that that colour and culture are preventing children being adopted by families because social workers and local authorities think it won’t work. I myself was raised by a single white woman, an extraordinary lady who looked after six of us in all. None of us were white. Her love, encouragement and the stable home she gave all of us was far more important than the colour we were born with.

“She is the reason I am who I am today and also the reason I am a couturier. As a dressmaker herself she was my role model. Without her there would be no Bruce Oldfield.  When Francesca told me what she was doing with Adoption With Humanity, I was immediately behind her.

“We need to get back to basics and to what adoption is all about and that is children who need parents and would be parents who have the love to give those children.”

Please contact our Press Officer Ellee Seymour on 07939 811961 if you wish to attend.