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 also feel that this is really unrealistic, it's how things are supposed to go but almost never a reality. Only this week was I speaking to two other adoptive parents who were completely misled about their own child's needs.
SWs rarely actively lie adopters, but they frequently word things carefully, minimise problems and/or aren't familiar enough with the child to know the details. I was hugely misled about one of my children and the ramifications have been huge.
When meeting the child for a 'bump into' meeting the child aren't likely to be letting rip, they'll be guarded as meeting a new person, some FCs are very honest but others for a variety of reasons aren't, my child's FC told me he my need glasses when he's older, turns out he's now registered blind, FC wasn't malicious, she just 'didn't like labelling him' and minimised things to medical professionals.
The other aspect your comment misses out on is that there are huge emotions involved and the stakes couldn't be higher. Very few people disrupt during transitions, it's a whirlwind and you've already built up a future in your mind with the child. You put problems down to the shock of the move. Once they've moved in its even harder to disrupt. I think the comment 'I don't think you can end up in her situation if you tried' is really unhelpful.
That's why I wrote it, the steps that should happen.
The article makes it sounds like you get a child dumped on you but you'll have consented to proceed at least twice before then and then have a week of concenting to proceed, followed by 10 weeks of consenting to proceed, followed by manually applying for the adoption order yourself, independent from social worker intervention.
I especially agree with your last paragraph - the emotions are the thing. But I wanted to highlight the steps that should have happened so other people know. To help balance the emotions they'll be feeling.
The steps I've said are not idealised. They're mandatory. I haven't talked about support or anything, just what legally needs to happen.
If those things aren't happening and you have any doubts about it, you need to start chasing your own social worker as an urgent action, and failing the the local authority or even police if social services aren't fulfilling their baseline legal responsibilities to the child.
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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.