Adoption in the media again.
Adoption Horror Stories and the Rehoming Stories.
By Ann Yurcek
Republished with permission
First published Oct 1, 2013
This time with a big way... Rehoming. Adoptive parents who became so
desperate that they resorted to moving their children to another home
without going through proper channels.
First I will not condone any of the actions of the
parents who put their adoptive children in jeopardy, but I can
understand just how desperate they could be.
This blog post is going to be complex, but it is a complex problem that
causes parents to give up on their children. I hope this helps to put
another spin on it but with research to support my arguments.
Not media hype.
I saw glimpses of this as it was happening over the years and stayed
away from any of the discussions and discussion boards on the subject. A
couple of times on other groups the subject came up and I talked about
finding the help through the proper channels. Starting with the Mental
Health, Adoption Support, their insurance and Medicaid and tried to help
some parents find scarce help.
Back in 2000 I wrote a letter in the middle of the night. My thoughts
about having to tell my daughter that she was going to have to go back
to vary system she came from to find the mental health services she so
desperately needed. I searched and searched and found no hope or help
for her. I tried every door and found that the system was not set up to
help parents who found themselves in our situation.
I found the little known secret of failed adoptions.
Adoption Disruption and Dissolution from the Child Welfare Gateway
Some of those circumstances from lack of knowledge about what it takes
and think love is enough. Sometimes it is because of often not disclosed
information. Most often it is the lack of proper supports. For those
who find themselves with children with severe complex needs, it is a
lonely world.
I know that in our own circumstances, we were not allowed to see any of
the records and they did not disclose that our children were not general
level of care kids. We were promised that none of the group of kids had
any needs that would put other children in jeopardy as we had our own
children and a medically fragile child to think about. But we found
ourselves with four of them who were in therapeutic foster care and the
three seventeen page psychologicals on the kids were never shown us that
they were much more needy than we were told. Never-the-less we did not
give up even if had been fraud. We had made a promise.
Even more on the tragedy of custody relinquishment to garner Mental Health Services.
Custody
Relinquishment from the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law
Even biological families were forced to put their mentally ill children
into the care systems to garner services. But Adoptive Families had to
do it to. To return them to the systems to get services suitable to
condition and often times residential treatment if one could find one.
Those reports highlighted what I had learned. That systems are not
equipped to handle our most complex children and families find
themselves struggling to find competent help that is hard to come by.
One has to exhaust all services and then there are few options.
Hospitalizations and residential treatment are hard to come by and often
will not except our seriously disturbed children.
I fought hard and did not give up custody and learned to fight for my
daughter and her right to family. But most families will not be as lucky
as I was.
Families who have adopted from the foster care system and the worlds
child caring institutions. We have no safety net when we find ourselves
with children too severe to attach or too damaged to remain in the home
safely. We are vilified for not loving them enough, not caring enough,
for throwing away a child. The more of these stories, the harder it is
for parents to reach out for help as we are judged, juried, convicted
for not loving our children enough or doing enough to help them heal
from the ghosts of their pasts. But it is much more complex than that.
We need a support system all the way from better training and support
from the adoption agencies, health and mental health care systems, child
welfare, schools and communities supports.
We adoptive parents who take on these children, sometimes unknowingly are Parenting Complex Children.
Complex...
Some once told me that they are Genetically loaded (they inherit the
parents genetic predisposition). There is actually a study going on to
see if prenatal alcohol exposure changes genetic structures.
Many will be prenatally exposed. A parents substance abuse issues often
put these children into the care of the states and countries. A new
study confirms what we parents have known for awhile.
Fetal Alcohol Common in Adopted and Foster Kids
Neurobehavioral disorder associated with prenatal alcohol exposure. They look normal but can't do normal and normal parenting strategies do not work.
Children who face poverty, neglect and abuse can have neurocognitive issues. Their brains changed by their earlier experiences.
Neurocognitive Impacts for Children of Poverty and Neglect from the American Psychological Association.
Most will have at least some mental health issues of some sort from
their trauma they have face. The majority are milder or moderate, but
some can be severe. For older child adoptions we need to expect Post
traumatic stress disorders. Trust issues, and Attachment Disturbances.
Why wouldn't they?
They are removed from the only people they knew, put in institutional settings, or disrupted placements.
Often kids act out their stress and those behaviors can cause multiple
placements. The child also learns that nothing is permanent and if you
are bad enough, you move on and you don't need to attach and trust.
Parents have answered the call to give children homes, not just from the
worlds institutions but from the foster care system in our own country.
Many parents go through the trainings and say what they can and can't
deal with. But often times the problems will not appear until later when
the child can't hit their developmental milestones that it will become
apparent or puberty hits.
I remembered reading early on a statistics of
adoption disruptions and dissolutions.
Adoption Statistics: Disruption and Dissolution from Adoption.com.
This not a new problem and these are not new numbers.
This article
written long before the push to move children from foster care into
adoptive homes.
We when adopt the children, we make promises to care for them and help
them to the best of our abilities. But for some parents, they find
themselves with a child that nothing seems to help. Sometimes the more
you love them, the more you try to care for them, or parent them. The
worse it becomes. Adoptive parents reach for therapists, books,
strategies and anything they can grasp for and often times the worse the
situation gets. I remember the conflicting advice I got from the five
different treating professionals in the differing spheres of my sibling
set of 5. The advice from one conflicted with the advice of another, and
learned to trust my own intuition and fire the ones that were worsening
my children's conditions. The Reactive Attachment Therapies do not
work well for kids prenatally exposed with alcohol. They actually worsen
them. Then the schools with their behavior modifications that do not
work with FASD and then the triangulation of the child pitting
unattached people against the caregivers. It is a set up for Adoptive
Parent Burn Out and a child in danger of blowing out of a home.
Parents are finding themselves having to run residential treatment
facilities without any training or support. I have seen adoptive
parents/kinship caregivers have to manage kids that have been released
from psychiatric hospitals because they could not be managed there.
Thrown out of schools for misbehavior's and left to function solo. All
the while trying to be on guard 24/7 to protect the child, the other
children and even themselves from catastrophe.
The failures of the mental health system in our country for children are written.
America's Failing Mental Health System, America's Struggle to Find Quality Care
But for the complex children from the care system, they are stuck in a
place where the care systems and mental health clash. They are always
the others responsibility. For those who bring in kids from other
countries they are in a No Man's Land and often on their own.
I have added to this piece a chart. My favorite with sharing just how
complex these children can be. Overlapping Characteristics. I once
asked a person in power in the state mental health system. Where is the
evidence based practice for my children? He didn't answer, except with
the statement you are?
What I learned is that I had to trust my intuition, leave no stone
unturned, I had to fight for my daughter, but also know that I had to
keep everyone safe.
Overlapping Characteristics Download PDF
But the systems of help in our country are failure based. Not
preventative. The medical system can diagnose the prenatal exposures,
but can help us understand the cause. The Children's Mental Health
system is not the right place for those prenatally exposed to alcohol
but often can help those with the complexities of abuse and neglect
issues. But as children mirror the behaviors of others others, these
children learn from their peers and those behaviors often worsen in the
home. But the lack of competent support for those from the care systems
is a challenge. For my kids the Mental Health system and the groups for
those kids actually worsened my kids disorders. Knock on the door of
Adoption Support and often they tell you you have to use your insurance
and Medicaid first. But that is another series of Medicaid stories
about that failures for the most vulnerable of children.
But our kids have no coordinated Silo to find support. Many of the
children from the care systems are often of normal intelligence, so
developmental disabilities services will not help us. Mental Health
services are a poor fit and the strategies do not work with children
with prenatal brain injuries. Those lucky enough to present as having
autistic tendencies may find services under the Autism Umbrella.
I was told to look for help in places that were not equipped to handle
our needs. I was not an abusive parent, I was not a neglectful parent. I
had a daughter too dangerous and damaged to live at home. I was ordered
by the Community Mental Health System that I had 60 days to relinquish
our daughter and to dissolve the adoption or be charged with
abandonment. That document came up missing and I had thought to stow a
copy hidden where no one would look for it. Someone told me that when
you go public documents burn.
I had been warned that if we abandoned my daughter in the state
hospital, we would face charges and the loss of our other children, not
just the adopted sibling set, but our own biological children. The care
system trumps parents say, bring this child home or possibly lose your
other children, your professional licenses, and be put on the abuse and
neglect registry. It is Least Restrictive Setting that is used to say
that ALL children belong in the homes and then it is our fault that we
are ill equipped to meet their needs. Even when someone gets hurt, we
need to go against the recommendations from the professionals that we
need to have them home to attach.
If you have to place your child into foster care system, the adoptive
parents often lose their adoption subsidies if they are lucky enough to
have one if you adopted from the US or if you adopted internationally
you will be charged with the cost of the child's care. I have even seen
where an adoptive parent was charged and they took not only the child's
adoption subsidy but the adopted siblings subsidy as well and handed
the adoptive parent the bill from the state and put liens on the parents
home. The same state that adopted
the child to the couple and the agency hid the records. Adoptive
parents are often charged with paying for the court fees to get help
from the justice system when the Child Welfare and Mental Health
Services fail. Too many adoptive parents face calling the police as the
option of last resort. Followed by the knock on the door from the Child
Protective Service Workers.
No wonder why parents take into desperate measures to find support, the
wrong way. Because has anyone tried to Navigate the MAZE to find help
for those most vulnerable of children who are the small percentages of
kids whose needs are great. Some of us who find ourselves with a child
with intense needs, we will get secondary trauma not just for the
parent, but the siblings as well.
PTSD in Parents of Children with RAD
We are held accountable for the failures of the Child Welfare, Adoption
and Child Mental Health Systems, Medicaid, Insurance and Schools to have
a Continuum of Care and a Safety Net. and it is time for all of us to
stand up for finding Post adoption support services and a continuum of
care for the the adoptive children and families so they can honor the
promises. For those of us who have adopted from the United States Foster
Care System we need not just a check, we need real help and not be
judged and serviced by the child protective services the same care
system that our kids came from.
We need a post adoption program and laws that will protect our families
from the catastrophic costs of having a child with severe issues.
We need the media to focus not just about the adoption horror stories,
but real stories of real families fighting the odds to try to help very
complex fragile children. We need evidence based adoption conscious
services and supports in all the service sectors and those parents will
not resort to give up on their adoptive children. And for those
children who do not fit into the adoptive home, we need laws that no do
penalize the family for trying to find healing for the child and for
everyone involved. It should not be seen as failure, but just another
place to meet the needs of the child.
We did not give up on my daughter, or her siblings, but we did pay a
price. Many an adoptive parent said that they were more traumatized not
by trying to help their child. The trauma of the lack of support and
navigating the systems if often times are much more damaging than our
circumstances.
Postscript: My daughter is now 28 and she still has a family to advocate
on her behalf and call home to and we have gone on to adopt another
little guy with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome plus a host of other problems and
he is thriving. We have full disclosure, we will do whatever and find
whatever it takes to give him the love and supports to thrive. But we
also know that we cannot heal his prenatal brain damage but love him and
nuture him through his challenges.
A followup to our story written for the North American Council for Adoptable Children in 2003
