Is child abuse natural?

The following post was originally started {quote}5 months ago (8 March, 2013 @ 13:15:06){/quote}

I’m releasing it into the wild now – unfinished – after seeing Cheryl Bell’s Twitter post that linked to The Telegraph article, Head of children’s services chiefs accused of ‘defeatism’ after he says ‘we will never prevent all child deaths’.

It will, for the immediate future, remain in this unfinished state as I am still in recovery from my latest adoption-induced breakdown. However, I don’t think he’s wrong, and have been wanting to look into this in greater detail, hence the post being started.

{{ – – Everything below this line was in the draft that I’d saved – – }}

I was hunting for a post I remember reading recently on animals in the wild being abandonded by their moms to put in the “Taking newborns” post.

Mother’s Day Mayhem: “Worst” Animal Moms?

http://blogs.psychcentral.com/attachment/2013/04/for-the-health-of-our-society-normal-child-abuse-prevention/

{quote}
This 2010 UK study is among many that show that the brain doesn’t reach maturity as once theorized until people are at least age 30. Executive functioning, such as planning and decision-making, social awareness and behavior, empathy and other personality traits, are the last bits of cognitive functions to fully develop.
{/quote}

Stop trashing adoption

Yet again I’m being accused of being all manner of awfulnesses for daring to be a voice against the sanctified glorification of adoption that is common in discourse around the subject. I’m not linking anything ’cause I don’t want to be reading such stuff tonight to find it, as I’m currently on hiatus from adoption for as much as I can manage because I have been sent over the metaphorical edge by some of the stuff I’ve encountered of late. In order to retain my sanity, I’ve been minimising my time around the subject, but I am the only admin. in some of the FB groups I run and so at least occasionally I have to go in to at least check for spam and such like.

I’m sick though, of being asked things like “when are you going to stop trashing adoption?”

This post then, is the answer to “when will 7rin stop trashing adoption?”

I’ll stop trashing adoption when just two very very simple things happen.

1. I’ll stop trashing adoption when http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/38120 has been passed into law, thus giving the ADOPTEE the right to make THEIR OWN choice.

2. I’ll stop trashing adoption when https://adoptedintheuk.wordpress.com/tag/post-adoption-support/ is available to ALL ADOPTEES from professionals fully conversant with the devastating impact that the process of adoption can have upon the psyche of the adoptee.

That’s it.

Nothing more.

That’s all that’s needed to be done to get me to stop trashing adoption.

And now I’m going to go to bed, and may be AFK for a while as I am still trying to get my head back together and stop myself collapsing massively, since I can’t get any post-adoption support, and can’t currently keep fighting to get it ’cause I’m utterly exhausted from so many years of it. There are so many of you out there who I miss ’cause of my self-imposed exile, but I really need to be strict with myself ’cause I’m >.< that close to a meltdown, which I don’t have time for.

Can UK Social Workers truly have “the best interests of the child” at the heart of their work

On Saturday 9th June this year, I went to the Birmingham Child Stealing by the State conference. I (kind of) gave a short presentation voicing some of the issues faced by adoptees (didn’t get to use my .pptx^[1] ‘n’ got cut short to let John Hemming, MP go on :p). Whilst there, I heard it suggested that Social Work is a dying profession. This argument could be said to have merit, especially after the University of Southampton ended its degree programme in the subject, with a statement announcing:

the quality of the research being produced by the university was not of a high enough level to sustain the courses. It said it had not been able to reach a position where it could ensure that “internationally excellent research can be found in this academic discipline”.

Errors in judgement after errors in judgement after errors in judgement impact both public and professional perceptions alike – leaving it little wonder why the title has earned itself the rephrasing to Social Wreckers.

Whilst contemplating my personal attitude towards the Social Work profession, a timely reminder as to the nature of “social work” was posted by The Declassified Adoptee. “Social Wreckers” reminds the reader that not all social work is about taking kids. I actually am aware of this, but when caught up in the furore against wrongs, it can get difficult to still see some of the rights. Other Social Workers go nowhere near kids, and instead deal with the elderly, ensuring they get checked on when there’s no-one else left. Yes, I admit it, not all Social Workers are bad, or evil. ;)

Yet in this climate of fear these are people facing budget cuts, or other job threats for varying reasons. How can those who are in the child snatching adoption industry possibly have “the best interests of the child” at the heart of their work when their very jobs depend so very much on hitting the targets so recently drawn up by the Government in order to eliminate targets?

I honestly don’t think it’s possible that it can be – especially since it’s been known for decades that adoption is not “for the best”. That’s why in Australia, they’ve got it down to the sorts of figures it should be running at (if it must run at all). Perhaps somewhat more astoundingly, the Australian Government has issued an apology to those separated by forced adoption – yet in this country, forced adoption is on the rise.

Why?

It doesn’t make sense to me.

Of course, somehow or another, a paradigm change has happened over in Aus., and adoption is now seen as the last option, not the first. This is as it should be, because let’s not forget that despite “child protection” supposedly being about protecting kids; that child only exists for 18 years at most. Adoption stays inflicted upon us for the rest of our lives though.

If the Government are going to keep aiming to annihilate more and more childrens’ heritages, then they need to give the adult that child grows into the option to nullify their adoption. “As if” it never was.

ETA on 16 Sep
Another course bites the dust: Closure of MSc in MH Social Work at Institute of Psychiatry.

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Footnotes:
[1] {THIS} is the .pptx that never happened, and {THIS} is the script I was stumbling over. And {THIS} little piggy is the snippet of a cam. copy of The Avengers, with the bit where “everyone” laughs when Thor says “he’s adopted” about Loki.

What *is* a “successful adoption”?

It gets said around – for example, in this {linky} article by (yes, I know, don’t mock, it was the easiest one to find :p) the Daily FMail, that there are such things as “successful adoptions”. (Bolding = my emphasis)

{quote}
And while some adopted children will go on to have behavioural problems because of their poor start in life, there are still many successful adoptions that take place.
{/quote}

So what constitutes a successful adoption then? Is it one where we don’t follow in the footsteps of our “dire backgrounds, where it’s highly likely Dad has been in prison and Mum was addicted to heaven knows what illegal substances and working as a prostitute.” ??

Are we even allowed to want to know our biological predecessors? Or does that make us a bad adoptee?

Does it make any difference if it is our adopters that are abusive, as has happened in so very many cases? Or are we still expected to follow the decree and only recognise our adoptive families (who we generally have absolutely nothing in common with at all, other than shared history) as our “real families”, since after all, they’re the ones who sat up with us sick, and other such normalities?

What makes an adoption “successful”?

I’d really really like to know.

Another point to raise, while we’re on the subject, is …

{quote}
But, unfortunately, the names of these blameless children make their less-than-middle-class backgrounds all too obvious. And most prospective parents don’t want to adopt children who are named after someone’s favourite celebrity or tipple.
{/quote}

… should someone who so obviously cares about such superficial things as the name we’re given by our parents be allowed to adopt in the first place? I mean, surely that exhibits pressures that are going to be applied to the prospective adoptee that should not be placed on a child who hasn’t already experienced such a great loss, let alone one who has to conform in the ways that an adoptee does?