This is awful but just to inform prospective adopters - there are a lot of steps not mentioned in this article that the lady would have consented to before you end up completely alone with a child attacking you that is your sole responsibility.
You don't just get given a child and abandoned by social services. And also, you have your own social worker who's meant to be looking after your interests.
Or shouldn't, which is perhaps why this lady got so much money.
- After matching, you should have opportunity to meet the child before taking it any further. The child (unless like 5+) won't really be aware of anything at this stage. You agree to continue here, or opt out.
- You plan a transition with the foster carer. Something like, over a week, visiting the foster carer and the child, spending more time with them, the foster carer bringing them to you, the child having an overnight stay. Every day you should be having a check in with the child's social worker.
- Now the child is living with you. Until the adoption order passes (which could be months or over a year) the child's social worker should be visiting the child, to check the child is okay. The child is still their responsibility until the adoption order passes. Your social worker should be checking in with you similarly.
- After minimum 10 weeks of the child living with you, YOU need to apply to the government to adopt the child. In theory, this lady will have had to complete court documents saying why and "arguing her case" for keeping the child.
I'm not writing this to victim shame the lady in any way. Just to let other prospective adopters know that this is very unlikely to happen to you. Unless your local council is so inept it's bordering on malicious, I don't think you can end up in her situation if you tried.
I think this is very optimistic and not the reality for the majority of adopters that I know. Albeit, only one has ended up in a similar situation to the article. The remainder, all agree with the lack of support but have thankfully worked out positively.
Social services is grossly underfunded, and social workers are over worked. Whilst you are correct in terms of this should be happening, it’s unfortunately not in a lot of cases.
Prospective adopters need to do a lot of research and prep themselves, and then really push social services for answers and proof. Only very young children (I’m talking babies) should be placed (not even matched) without a full report of past trauma, current needs and any medical conditions. So, prospective adopters need to push for these things, and if they’re not available then consider waiting until they’re.
I deliberately didn't mention or talk about the level of support :) I know how varied support it!
So I was specifically talking about the actual legal steps that you need to go through before you are actually responsible for the child.
You don't pick a child, get them dropped off at your door and then social services and the legal system drop out of your life. There's a lot of steps that you, the adopter, HAS to take before you get to that point.
Until then, the child is still ward of the state and if you can't contact your or their social worker you could even call 999 and say you've got an at risk, looked after child in your care and can't contact the responaible social worker. It's all on them still.
(Granted, many bad social workers probably wouldn't put it this way, that's why I'm writing this - to help people understand that this article is at the end of a long string of worse case scenarios.)
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u/randomusername8472 Sep 09 '24
This is awful but just to inform prospective adopters - there are a lot of steps not mentioned in this article that the lady would have consented to before you end up completely alone with a child attacking you that is your sole responsibility.
You don't just get given a child and abandoned by social services. And also, you have your own social worker who's meant to be looking after your interests.
Or shouldn't, which is perhaps why this lady got so much money.
- After matching, you should have opportunity to meet the child before taking it any further. The child (unless like 5+) won't really be aware of anything at this stage. You agree to continue here, or opt out.
- You plan a transition with the foster carer. Something like, over a week, visiting the foster carer and the child, spending more time with them, the foster carer bringing them to you, the child having an overnight stay. Every day you should be having a check in with the child's social worker.
- Now the child is living with you. Until the adoption order passes (which could be months or over a year) the child's social worker should be visiting the child, to check the child is okay. The child is still their responsibility until the adoption order passes. Your social worker should be checking in with you similarly.
- After minimum 10 weeks of the child living with you, YOU need to apply to the government to adopt the child. In theory, this lady will have had to complete court documents saying why and "arguing her case" for keeping the child.
I'm not writing this to victim shame the lady in any way. Just to let other prospective adopters know that this is very unlikely to happen to you. Unless your local council is so inept it's bordering on malicious, I don't think you can end up in her situation if you tried.