Presentation made to the Department for Education on why improved post adoption support is a crucial part of the adoption reforms.

1. Presentation to Department for Education
Improving Post Adoption Support
for Children and Families
Sally Donovan
Sally Donovan 24/4/14

2. Post Adoption Me
• Adoptive parent of two children
• Member of DfE Expert Advisory Group on
Adoption Support Fund
• Author of No Matter What and The Unofficial
Guide to Adoptive Parenting (pub. later this
year)
• Write for Community Care
• Part of active Twitter community
Sally Donovan 24/4/14

3. Child vs Received Wisdom
• I am a horrible person
• I just want to die
• I don’t deserve good
times
• Put me in the bin, I’m
an idiot loser boy
• Kill me so I don’t hurt
anyone
• It’s all my fault
• All kids do that
• It’s just a phase
• But they’ve lived with
you over a year now
• She’s enjoying the
negative attention
• You’re being neurotic
• He won’t remember
• Just ignore him
Sally Donovan 24/4/14

4. Children don’t just ‘get over it’
‘Being harmed by the people who are supposed to
love you, being abandoned by them, being robbed
of the one-on-one relationships that allow you to
feel safe and valued and humane – these are
profoundly destructive experiences.’ Dr Bruce Perry
‘Children who have been abused or neglected are
shaped by their experience; they adapt their way of
being to fit in with what they have had to deal with.’
Dr Amber Elliott
Sally Donovan 24/4/14

5. Challenges of adoptive parenting
• Behaviours – aggression, violence, stealing, lying,
sexualised behaviours, chaotic, controlling, self care,
food, constant vigilance
• ‘Traditional’ parenting and behaviour methods don’t
work
• Widespread misunderstanding that ‘children get over
it’
• Difficulties accessing education
• Often lack of even basic post adoption support
• Poor, sometimes inappropriate CAMHS support
• Isolation, blame
Sally Donovan 24/4/14

6. Therapeutic Parenting is ….
• Rooted in knowledge of past trauma, loss,
broken attachments
• Heavily reliant on empathy and acceptance
• Based on gradually building relationships and
trust and not a ‘quick fix’
• Creating a therapeutic environment around
the child
• Being a strong and unwavering advocate
Sally Donovan 24/4/14

7. Therapeutic Parenting is ….
• Transformative for children
• Emotionally demanding
• Very difficult to do without support
Sally Donovan 24/4/14

8. What ‘difficulty’ and ‘disruption really
mean
• My child will not eat
• My child will not wash
• My child will not go to bed
• My child is being excluded from school
• My child swears at me
• My child steals from me
• My child attacks me
• My child smashes up furniture
• No one understands
• I am on the verge of a tragedy
Sally Donovan 24/4/14

9. Stepping back from the brink
• An excellent but under-funded, over-worked
Social Worker
• Honesty – don’t waste your time fighting with
CAMHS, find your own respite, if you give up
now it will be very difficult to get your child
back
• Beginnings of understanding at school
• Two hours of direct therapeutic intervention,
at a cost of £150, which we paid for ourselves
Sally Donovan 24/4/14

10. Our longer term solution
• Not to involve any professional who doesn’t
‘get it’, particularly NHS
• Work closely with school
• Take control of (and pay for) our own training
• Give up regular employment
• Pay for therapeutic help when we need it
Sally Donovan 24/4/14

11. Isolation
• Can’t access NHS
• Difficult to access education – differing priorities
• Misconceptions are everywhere
• Employment is difficult due to the demands of
parenting, advocacy and school exclusions
• Silenced, not fitting the narrative
• The once welcomed now find themselves
unwelcome
Sally Donovan 24/4/14

12. What support should look like
• Named post adoption support social worker, who is
well-trained, contactable, unflappable
• Continual access to free, small group training and
coaching from experienced professionals
• Right to appropriate therapeutic support throughout
• Legal right to long-term support
• Better social work education in attachment and trauma
• Integrate safe, therapeutic environment into schools
• Robust package of support will encourage adopters to
come forward
Sally Donovan 24/4/14

13. Current Changes and Proposals
• Pupil Premium Plus – important step, cut-off
date? schools need help understanding why
• Personal budgets – will rightly put control in
hands of adopters BUT
– will not address issues within NHS, will not on its
own drive improvements to social work practice,
will be partly dependent upon knowledge of
adopters/signposting
Sally Donovan 24/4/14