How To Get the Post Adoption Support You Need?

Getting the Support you need post adoption is vital but don't think support is easily available. Its not.  

From a Family who have adopted three children.

The Adoption Support (ASF) fund

The Adoption support fund is designed to cover essential therapeutic services for children who have been adopted. To improve their live chances. The ASF was at risk totally but has been agreed with reduced funding. It is likely the ASF will be at risk again in years to come ASF Funding decisions have a dramatic and long tailed impact on families of adopted children. You need to be prepared for this disruption

An adoption families experience. 

The Adoption Support fund, funds therapy for our 3 adopted children. Each of our children had a very difficult start to life including suffering neglect distress and significant trauma.  

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  I will talk generally. Their early life experience has scrambled their minds.

  They have difficulty concentrating, learning, sitting still and focusing.

For years they were in a permanent state of fear. Learning and being attentive are difficult.

They have complex emotions and feelings often expressed in anger and hurt to those closest to them.

  Adoptive families are bonded by love, but this love is pushed incredibly hard at times. Therapy is very (vital, lifesaving, imperative) important to us.

How to Get The Adoption Support You Require

As you will read in this Blog adoption support is challenging. There are some amazing people working to support you but not everyone can be amazing. The system can be slow and cumbersome. There are other deserving cases that merit attention ahead of yours. Social are workers overworked and often limited in powers. Therapists can vary. Getting the right ones is vital but even then they can't go back in time and change the experience your adopted child has suffered.

So here's the truth on adoption support

You need to fight for most things. You need evidence and to build a case. Being the emotional parent who needs help doesn't really cut it. You need to document events and prove support is required. You need professionals on your side fighting your cause. You need determination and steel to keep going but even with all this. The sad reality is that you might not get the help you need. Your child might not get the support they need and this is heartbreaking and saddening.

I don't want to paint too bleak a picture but as you'll read by the delays to the ASF funding, these delays, waiting lists and shortages have a real and significant impact on adopters and their children.

I can say keep fighting for your children don't give up. Or I can say save you energy to put into your children. Don't rely on services that may be set up to fail. CAMHS is patchy. CAMHS has long waiting lists and good people but also people who hide behind waiting lists and being overworked.

I would say fight for your children but be realistic. Don't expect miracles and don't rely on post adoption support. Be realistic about what support you can achieve and what you as a parent can do to support your child.

I Hope with every fiber in my body you get the post adoption support you need because you truly deserve it but read on to our experience and prepare yourself for the scenario that you don't get the support. As least your eyes will be open.

Adoption is an amazing thing but post adoption support isn't the safety need you may be expecting.

Adoption and our our family

We go to a specialized adoption agency linked to the charity Barnardo's. Our funding equates to a given number of hours for therapy, but the involvement of therapists is so much more than that.

 They have attended meeting, presented a professional opinion and been able to present a professional opinion based of therapy sessions supporting what we see at home. This has been invaluable.  

Two of our children now attend a specialist school for children with anxiety, the other is in mainstream school but in a nurture department. This much needed additional support has been achieved with the support of the adoption support fund and the ability it has provided through therapists and therapists attending meeting. Without it our fight would have been much harder and the impact on our family greater.  

I wouldn't underestimate this negative impact as at times we have been at crisis, police and paramedics knocking on our door, such was the risk of self-harm being raised.  Adoption Support.

The impact of our therapists has been life changing. 

Therapy does not stop. It is much needed and as our children grow, they experience very difficult times and emotions. Often these can be overwhelming, harming and dangerous and therapy supports us all through this.   Many adopted families suffer, and couples break up due to the often-immense pressure.  

Breaks in therapy can be very damaging.

We can’t control what happens when. When our children (and family) may crash and burn. When we need therapy the most. Therapy deals with very emotional and deep issues often where the child doesn’t understand their own feelings or actions. The trust between the therapist and subject does not happen overnight. It needs to be built over time.   Adopted children have been let down, trust and bonding is a huge issue. Delays to therapy funding are damaging in themselves. We have stopped our therapy sessions and don’t know when they will re start. We will have a period of ‘getting back into it’.

Delays are unnecessary. 

Adoption Decisions need to be made sooner and quicker.  Delays should not happen. This is not the first-time funding has been delayed. Adopted children and families need support but often don't get enough. We work with some incredibly dedicated people who go above and beyond for us, but we fight a system that lacks resource to support us.    

We receive no additional benefits or funding. At the point of adoption, we received £500 for cots etc. We love our children dearly. Their presence has changed and enriched our lives beyond comprehension. We don’t ask for or receive any additional handouts. Adoption makes sense financially and for society. It breaks the cycle of neglect. Provides a loving family to children who need it. Creates stability and is cost effective.   Children who are adopted come from the care system.

In financial terms it is far cheaper to fund adoption than keep children in the care/ foster care system,

but adoption is becoming less attractive. Less people are adopting.    Fewer children are joining loving supportive families. Less traumatic childhoods are being repaired.  Adoption delays.  Delays to the adoption support fund do not help.  They don’t help adopted children, adoptive families and children waiting to be adopted.

They present a picture of a government (s) that does not value adoption, adopters or adopted children.

This is not right.  Its counterproductive.    The adoption fund has faults and needs to be reviewed, so do it now ready for next year so there are no breaks in service, and we have certainty.  Adoption Support.

Place the power with the people who deal closest to the children. 

Who understand how best the money should be spent and what benefits the child the most. 

Adoption delays. The Impact of delays to Adoption Support Fund, funding.

 

Therapy sessions finish and we don't know when they're start or if they re-start.

Once new funding is agreed there is a backlog of applications for new funding.

The system is overwhelmed creating and processing applications.   

Applications must be approved, and another bottle neck happens, without guarantee your application will be approved.

More delays occur.

Adopted children require certainty, not uncertainty.

Crises cannot be meet.

Families are not supported.

Self-harm continues.

Other services cannot step in adequately.  

The world is on hold, but our children are not.  

Delays mean more therapy work must be done, relationships reformed, trust earned again, therapy takes longer, and money spent is less beneficial.

If there were no breaks and uncertainty therapy would continue, and the money spent would provide greater value.

Money would not be spent 'starting again'.  

Due to delays therapists must consider their position. Delays means no funding, not being able to pay their mortgages.  Should working models change?  Go private. Our therapists love their work dearly, but these delays are unacceptable. They cannot have a career where every year they have such uncertainty.  Adoption Support lost. 

This is all so unavoidable.  To the government. Plan in advance.  Speak to adoptive families, social workers, therapists.  See what is required. 

Plan so there isn't ever a break and uncertainty again.  Spending reviews cost money.  Adoption funding shouldn't be hard to justify.  It makes social and financial sense.  So, what happens next year?  Delays are avoidable, costly and entirely self-made.  Not system should suffer or work like this.

Families and those supporting them shouldn't be put through this each year but most importantly the children who have suffered the most difficult start in life, not being able to be cared for, suffering abuse and neglect are once again neglected.  Their needs are not being met, and I can't understand or justify why.   More needs to be done.  Better planning. Less disruption. More clarity.  There is no excuse for this.    Make the next blog we write be a positive one.

Being an adoptive family is hard enough without this.

 

** The Adoption Support Fund funding has been reduced. This has a HUGE impact to families of adopted children'

DfE slashes Adoption Support Fund grants' 

Be in no doubt this will have a significant and immediate impact. £5,000 may sound a lot but therapy is often traumatic, demanding and emotionally challenging for all involved. Therapy sessions are not undertaken lightly or frivolously. Trust must be gained. This doesn't happen overnight. These are not broken bones and the 'repairing' isn't a quick process.

Our children have required specialist therapy for several years and this has helped them to get through very serious and significant events. Periods of darkness and despair that were overwhelming for the child and us as a family.

Adopters need support. Children who are adopted need support. This is not a choice its a fact. The reduction in funding allows more children to be helped but the help less effective. Its just watering down the help across more children. Better to accept the principle of help and provide it to those that need it.

Put the power in the people closest to the children. Build in safeguards and approvals by all means but make it local. Therapy for us is a round trip of 2.5 hours. Its draining and takes up a day of our time for an 1 hour session. We don't undertake therapy lightly. Local decision making allows critical periods and events to be reacted to. If your child is self harming. Getting more desperate and despairing. Funding should be available to meet this critical event and time in the child's life. How many children will suffer or worse due to inflexibility in the system.

For us there will probably be a shortfall based on previous years. We won't have flex-ability to re act to critical events as we have done in the past. Our therapists are invested in us and already go over and above for us. I know they go well beyond what the current funding pays for but even for them there must be limits. Other children taking up time. Other critical events. We have been advised before (by other families) to call an ambulance. I understand how desperate families get but this is a last resort as this just adds to the pressure on that service and I'm not sure it actually gives any more leverage to getting help. Its a cry for help but outside of the ambulance what good will it do. I know that sounds pessimistic but its the reality in many cases.

It saddens me that adoption is not recognised nor supported sufficiently. This will made more people consider adoption less favorably. More children are likely to remain in care or fostering for longer. This cost far out weights the money saved in reducing the support fund from £5 to £3k per child. This seems shortsighted to say the least. Adopted children deserve more. Financially the case for reduction in funding does not stack up. The 'cost' is too great for the small benefit in funding.

Our adoptive family.  

We are unable to share personal details or show pictures about us.  Ours is a private life. Where we can strengthen our family bond and deal with the up and downs of life with adopted children. We are more than happy to answer any questions and talk privately contact@cosychats.com. 

Adoption Support Network 

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