Adoptive families need support to succeed

The average adoption breakdown rate is around 20%. This is appalling for the children and parents who experience it

When he came back into care at the age of 13, John was a classic example of how and why adoptions can fail.

John had been living with his adoptive parents since the age of four. His birth mother had been a drug addict, and during the first few important years of his life he experienced neglectful and abusive parenting and was in and out of care while social services tried to help his mother. When it became clear that she couldn't change enough to parent him, adoption was seen as the best option to give John the chance of a good family life. However, he was already considerably hurt by his life experience. In those crucial early years, he had learned that "adults couldn't look after him, that instead they would hurt him, reject him and let him down".

John's adoptive parents had difficulty with his behaviour from the beginning. They had so wanted to love a child, but they didn't understand him, and the more he tried to push them away, the more they struggled to feel warmth towards him.

It left them feeling angry, so they were offered help, in the form of therapy and foster care respite. However, the therapy John received didn't include them, so they continued to struggle to understand his behaviour. Additionally, the model of therapy offered did not to take into consideration John's attachment and trauma issues. John's behaviour got worse, his parents felt helpless, and the adoption broke down.

Approximately 3,000 to 4,000 children are adopted in the UK each year, mostly through local authority adoption agencies, and about 800 older and more traumatised children are placed by independent voluntary agencies.

In the UK, the average adoption breakdown rate is around 20%. This is appalling for the children and parents who experience it, and research suggests that the reasons are linked to the quality of assessments, the preparation the adoptive parents and children receive prior to adoption, and the support they all get once they have been placed.

Increasingly, it appears that many children coming into the care system are considerably more hurt as a result of legislation that encourages social workers to do all they can to support parents for as long as possible and prevent children coming into the care system.

Although it is right that social workers need to support families, there is concern that this emphasis on repeated attempts to support failing parents is resulting in children remaining in neglectful and abusive families for too long. And it is these children who are the adoption population of the 21st century.

Current international research informs us that neglectful and abusive parenting can significantly impact on children's long-term emotional health. This, in turn, negatively affects children's behaviour and their ability throughout their lives to have relationships with family and peers. Subsequently, their placement needs regarding the new adoptive family are much more complex.

That's why Adoptionplus, a new agency, is offering a groundbreaking service to children placed for adoption through voluntary agencies. It is pioneering new assessment tools, and establishing comprehensive therapeutic support services that address the needs of today's adopted families.

The agency's belief is that adoptive parents need to be helped to really understand their children, and why they may behave in certain ways, and how best to respond to them. That way we can start to reduce the number of adoption breakdowns and really give vulnerable adopted children the chance of a more hopeful future.