This is the time of year when the local county council start appealing to become adopters to give children ‘forever homes’. I have been banned from trying to tell people what really happens on their adoption advert page. I think that it is only fair that I should put it out there because the potential adopters have to been informed of the potential seedy world they’re entering. Obviously, due to legal reasons I am not allowed to name the council. However, I have shared this post earlier on social networks, so there are ways around it.
The fact that they offer you enough money to do this act so that you’ll never have to work again is the first alarm bell. In these strained economic times, society knows that people will do anything they are instructed if offered monetary gain. At the end of the day, everyone has to be able to afford to live. There is a certain part of every individuals nature that remains selfish because none of us can live without income. Society has taught us to compete with one another because there are more population than opportunities (jobs etc), nowadays. I am aware that I am lowest in the pile because of my various disabilities. And, I hated that for a long time.
I know for a fact that a lot of these children are being taken for adoption from parents who have disabilities. The only children that they don’t take around here seem to be those of druggies etc. This is due to the children act’s 1989 and subsequent acts have a criteria which revolves around parents ability to ‘change’. I’ve known people that take drugs locally who act like they’re going to quit their habit and get to keep their children. I hang around the other end of own village where it is notorious for drugs. I know for a fact (because their mother told me) that a child has been residing in a home full of needles that his father used to shoot up on heroin. Then she openly admitted to me (due to the fact that she knows I’d never break her trust by handing her name over to social services) that she had given speed by someone else with children. Both of those drugs are the hard variety which over time leads to an addicts death. These kids are seeing their parents in drug induced states on a daily basis. Some of them are also alcoholics too. I am fair to everyone, but I am highly doubtful that those children are safe in their homes after their parents have been on a bender or session.
Anyway, back to the criteria of parents ability to change. Those with disabilities do not have a choice whether they ‘change’. They can improve and manage, however, they won’t get rid of their illness completely. I don’t want to have my disability but I am stuck with it for the rest of my life. It’s cruel that we are being told that we either have to ‘lose the disability’ or ‘lose our children’. There are a high percentage of children being taken from those parents with learning disabilities. I tried to prove it by asking for a freedom of information request from the council about the figures of how many children were taken from homes with parents that had learning disabilities. The request was denied and I was given an excuse that giving me that information would be too expensive due to paying for staff resources to obtain it. Then there is another local couple that I see about who look like they have a touch of learning disabilities or some form of impairment. They go around with a pushchair that has a doll in it. I think the woman may have a physical issue too because she’s sometimes out in a wheelchair. Apparently, they had their child or children forcibly adopted. This is why they walk around with the doll in the pram.
As far as supporting disabled people around here… they absolutely do not provide the appropriate support. This area has lacked funding for as long as I have been alive (30 years). None of us was offered any support for our disability issues. I had to pay for my own counselling when the doctor knew that I was experiencing post natal depression. All the services did was write notes on us about what they’d observed at contact (a lot of that was manipulated for court) and during our parenting assessment. The parenting assessment was duly unfair to any of us that had never been a parent before. We were never given a chance. They took my son into foster care after 8 weeks after applying immense pressure on both myself and my mother in order to ensure that the situation failed. They had a pre birth report instructing them about what they should and shouldn’t do to ‘support’ me. They did every single thing that they were advised would cause me to fail as a parent. I don’t know if the pre birth assessor scored my IQ as unscorable on purpose but I was given that test after I was 5 months into my pregnancy (baby brain etc doesn’t help).
I was pushed to break so that they could take my baby for adoption. They submitted lies into the court and got away with it. We can’t defend ourselves against untrue evidence because it’s virtually impossible for us to counterclaim when they are the ones that write the contact notes and parenting assessments. I fought my son’s adoption but every time we went to court it was like I was speaking to a brick wall. The judge kept giving excuses since my son had already been placed with the adopters as to the reason why he had to stay there while we were going back and forward to court. They ignored every single point I bought up and this went on for a whole year. I was denied contact because they used the fact that I’d fought the adoption to give the reason that if I was allowed letterbox contact (usually once a year) then I may destabilise the placement. They used my criminal label against me throughout the case. I wouldn’t have been given that label if I hadn’t had my Autistic issues. PDA to be exact. And I got that label because this area completely failed me and many other youngsters around here. They continue to fail us.
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