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‘We love our adopted children… but after years of violent attacks we had no choice but to put them back in care’: Shattered parents reveal why so many adoptions fail to HELEN CARROLL

By HELEN CARROLL FOR THE DAILY MAIL

Published: 01:58, 29 November 2024 | Updated: 16:13, 29 November 2024

Having met while working at a children’s charity, Naomi and Martin were aware of the challenges of adopting children who have had a difficult start in life.

They also believed that, given their experience, if any couple had the skills needed to provide the right mix of love, nurturing and guidance required, it was them. However, 12 years after adopting two young children – years in which the parents were beaten and abused so violently they regularly had to call the police, and both suffered nervous breakdowns – the children, now aged 15 and 16, are back in care.

They lay the blame for this heartbreaking situation squarely on their local authority which, they say – due to a lack of funding and a ‘pass the buck’ culture – totally abandoned them to their fate.

Says Naomi, 45: ‘We did our best, but the children desperately needed professional help which, once they were officially adopted by us, was almost impossible to access.

‘I’m not saying that I thought we’d ‘save’ them, but I, naively, believed that with love, stability and permanence we were providing an environment in which any difficulties that arose could be worked through.

‘We never bargained for being kicked, hit, spat at and verbally abused – Martin is deaf in one ear after one particularly vicious punch from our son – and certainly not for the relationship with our children to completely break down.’

It’s notable, and poignantly sad, that this couple still refer to the brother and sister, whom they welcomed into their home aged two and three, as ‘theirs’. They love them and feel guilty about what happened.

They’d gone into the adoption process longing for a forever happy family, after learning they were unable to have children themselves.

Adoptive parents have been left traumatised, their marriages wrecked – and even driven to taking their own lives – by a system incapable of supporting them, writes Helen Carroll

It’s a tragedy shared by hundreds of adoptive parents across the UK, who’ve been left traumatised, their marriages wrecked – and even, in extreme cases, driven to taking their own lives – by a system woefully incapable of supporting them.

One support group, PATCH (Passionate Adopters Targeting Change with Hope), which has 700 members, is campaigning for systemic change to address this ‘crisis’. Most members share the same grievance: that children are almost always removed from their birth parents due to significant abuse or neglect, which often begins during pregnancy, where they are exposed to drugs and alcohol. This leaves the children with symptoms of extreme trauma.

However, when behavioural issues manifest post-adoption – some of which can be genetic – the adoptive parents are left to fend alone and, ultimately, blamed when the situation becomes unmanageable.

According to figures from Adoption UK, 65 per cent of adoptive parents experience violence or aggression at the hands of their children. And, based on responses to the charity’s annual survey, the number of adopted children leaving the family home ‘prematurely’ is rising, from three per cent in 2021, to seven per cent in 2023.

‘There’s a common, but false, belief that trauma is healed through love, and therefore adoption is the happy ever after, which any psychologist or psychotherapist will attest, it is not,’ says Fiona Wells, who runs PATCH and is herself a social worker, working in fostering, and also both an adopter and adoptee.

According to figures from Adoption UK, 65 per cent of adoptive parents experience violence or aggression at the hands of their children 

‘Social workers are not experts in trauma, they’re experts in risk and family life. What these families need is trauma-informed therapeutic, as well as practical, support, but once an adoption is finalised the children, and any issues they have, seem to be considered the responsibility of the adoptive parents.

‘Support is, technically, available, through regional adoption agencies, but there are often lengthy delays and misdirected guidance towards inappropriate solutions which perpetuate the problems.’ Naomi and Martin’s experience was sadly typical. The children, Tamsin and Joseph, had been taken into foster care aged one and two having suffered extreme neglect. Their mother abused drugs and alcohol, and they were not fed or washed. Their biological father was in prison for domestic violence.

Joseph was still a toddler when he started lashing out at them. Naturally, the couple turned to their social worker for guidance.

The only advice was to use ‘non-violent restraint’, such as changing the subject and distracting the child in a confrontational situation, and ‘natural consequences’ tactics i.e. leaving it to the child to work out the results of their actions themselves.

Blunt instruments indeed when you are being punched in the head or attacked with a baseball bat.

As one specialist adoption solicitor put it, with highly damaged children the approaches are like ‘applying an Elastoplast to an arterial wound’.

Unsurprisingly, things got worse. Their daughter’s violent outbursts began after she started secondary school.

Naomi believes this was due to her being dyslexic and on the autism spectrum – although she was never diagnosed. Again, the social workers were of little use.

Tamsin was 14 when, after a fall out over something Naomi struggles to recall, she attacked Martin so viciously, biting him and hitting him with a bat, that Naomi had no alternative but to call the police for help.

‘They arrested her, keeping her in a cell overnight, which was horrific, but they thought it would teach her a lesson,’ says Naomi. ‘Sadly, it didn’t, and it happened again, two weeks later.’

Then, one day she returned from a brief dog walk to find Joseph and Tamsin brutally attacking one another, close to the top of the staircase, ‘biting, scratching, kicking, hair pulling and spraying deodorant into each other’s faces’.

After trying, in vain, to separate them, in desperation Naomi called the police again. By the time officers arrived, the siblings had fled and Joseph was later found, sitting on a railway bridge, threatening to jump.

When behavioural issues manifest post-adoption – some of which can be genetic – parents are left to fend alone and blamed when the situation becomes unmanageable (file image)

Police managed to pull him to safety, and he was referred to CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services). The couple were told Joseph needed ‘dyadic developmental psychotherapy’, a specialist treatment for children who have been hurt or neglected in their early years, which would require both Naomi and Martin to attend weekly sessions.

This proved very difficult for Martin. As the family breadwinner, who now works in finance, he was unable to take time off work in the middle of the day. Though evening sessions were available, the couple’s request for these was ignored. Social workers were unsympathetic, and highly critical of him in reports.

Both children developed serious mental health problems, and would regularly self-harm, shutting themselves in the bathroom. At their wits’ end, the couple took the lock off the bathroom door – only to be told by social workers to replace it to ‘protect the children’s privacy’.

‘I was terrified one of them might die and begged social workers to get them urgent appointments with CAMHS, which still felt like our only hope, yet there seemed to be no urgency back then – though I understand they’ve had referrals now, after the adoption has broken down,’ recalls Naomi.

Everything came to a head at the beginning of the year when Tamsin had gone missing. Martin was out with Joseph in the car, scouring the streets, when he had what can only be described as a nervous breakdown. He later described how he’d started driving very quickly, feeling like he wanted to die.

‘Martin was full of remorse,’ says Naomi. ‘But we realised we were both so broken we could no longer cope and asked that the children be taken back into care.’

Initially the siblings were taken into care under a Section 20 order, a voluntary agreement between the adoptive parents and the local authority for them to provide temporary care, but now have a ‘full care order’, which means they will remain in local authority homes until they are 18.

The couple still see the children – last week Naomi met Tamsin to go shopping and took Joseph for tea and cake. On another occasion, Martin took Joseph to play pool. The last time the children visited the family home, for Sunday lunch, they stole £100 from a safe. ‘We miss them and still consider them our children,’ says Naomi.

‘And we don’t put any of the blame for what’s happened on them. They’ve developed a fight or flight response as a result of their early trauma and haven’t had the professional support they need. However, as much as we still love them both, it’s a relief they don’t live with us any more.’

One explanation for the rise in cases of children having to leave their adoptive home is the effects of widespread cuts in funding to local authorities and CAMHS, says Alison Woodhead, of Adoption UK. ‘Adopters often feel quite abandoned, not knowing what they’re entitled to or what support is out there.’

This was certainly the case for Stephan, a little boy who, together with his older sister Juliet, was adopted by Sophie Greenwood and her wife, Susie, a schoolteacher, in 2012, when they were aged two and three.

Both children were malnourished, covered in sores and fleas and so terrified of water that Sophie and Susie were unable to bath them, unless they climbed in too.

While Juliet developed normally, Stephan had abnormal brain development that could have been caused by exposure to toxins in the womb, as well as suspected foetal alcohol syndrome. He was diagnosed with autism, ADHD and oppositional defiant disorder (ODD).

‘We wanted them to stay together, so we could all be a forever family,’ says Sophie. ‘However, we had no idea what a fight we had on our hands to get our son the support he needed.’ As a toddler, he was easy to pick up and distract, but as he grew bigger he grew increasingly violent – biting and kicking his parents and his sister.

Warned not to physically restrain him, Susie and Sophie would hold a kickboxing pad in front of them to soften the blows.

Eventually, when he was eight, they couldn’t cope any more.

‘A therapist, assigned by the local authority, agreed that our son needed a specialist residential school, but said the only way we’d secure one was to report any significant physically aggressive incidents to the council and the police, so there was a log.

‘We did this, and the local authority pushed back, placing both children on the child protection register under suspicion of ’emotional abuse’.’

Stephan moved to the residential school aged ten, leaving Juliet at home. In theory, this meant Susie was able to return to work as a teacher. However, she was now on record as being the mother of children ‘at risk’.

‘The fight for support and the shame just broke her,’ says Sophie. ‘She was so tired and constantly ruminating over the injustice of it all.’

One evening, in late 2022, Susie took her own life.

Sophie sobs as she recalls breaking the terrible news to their children — Susie’s death heaping further trauma on top of what they had already endured.

Juliet, 15, is developing normally, while Stephan still comes home regularly – but remains prone to lashing out. Although she cannot bear to imagine her life without her two children, Sophie admits that, had she and Susie known what lay ahead, they would have been unlikely to proceed with adoption.

Adoption specialist solicitor Nigel Priestley says the legal firm where he is a senior partner, Ridley & Hall in Yorkshire, is contacted by about 150 adoptive families in crisis a year.

‘Long gone are the days when most babies adopted came from teenagers, in mother and baby homes,’ says Nigel. ‘We have a whole host of children coming through who carry significant issues with them. Specialist support for these children costs local authorities a fortune and, over the last ten years, the services that provide support have been cut to the bone.’

Alison from Adoption UK stresses that this lack of funding is the issue, and that the devastating impact of adoption breakdown on the child should not be forgotten. ‘When adopted children and young people leave the adoptive family home prematurely it is devastating for all concerned, particularly the young person.

‘It’s almost always because they are let down – by adoption services, by mental health services and by the education system. Most adoptive families describe a constant battle to get the support their children and young people need. When children and young people do leave their adoptive family home prematurely, many return there. And many adopters with children and young people living away from home are still intimately involved in their lives and their care.’

As one mother, whose marriage didn’t survive after she and her husband adopted three traumatised, and later violent, siblings who had suffered terrible neglect and abuse, says: ‘I don’t blame the boys for how they behave – if I’d had their start in life, I’d no doubt struggle to control my emotions too. I blame the system for not giving them the help they needed. There should have been ongoing support in place from the get-go.’

Hundreds of devastated parents up and down the country, whose adoptions have been similarly disrupted, agree wholeheartedly.

• For support, visit the PATCH website at ourpatch.org.uk
• Names of children and parents have been changed.