III. More About the Children Available for Adoption

In the previous section I listed the types of children who are most available for adoption today in Britain. Now I want to discuss each of these groups in more detail. But remember, these groups are merely convenient classifications; each child is an individual, each group includes a spectrum of children who more or less belong there, and most children available for adoption could probably be placed in at least two of the groups.

Older Children

The term “older children” includes not only young school children; children as old as 17 can be adopted, and there are plenty of teenagers needing new families. Not all older children have severe problems, although there is a definite statistical correlation between age at placement and the severity of the child’s problems, as well as the likelihood that the adoption will break down.

It used to be considered that any child over a year old was unadoptable. No more. Healthy white children under five are now considered to present no problems in terms of finding new families. The situation is slightly different for Black children. Because of economic discrimination both partners in Black families usually have to work to make ends meet, so that school-aged Black children find homes more easily than toddlers. And boys over six years old have a particularly hard time finding new families, no matter what their race is.

Many people find babies scary (do they break easily? how do I know when it’s hungry? why won’t it stop crying? what’s that rash on its head?, why does it sleep so much?), and would feel happier and more confident with an older child. If you have already raised one family, you will have extra skills and could find the challenges of an older child exciting and especially fulfilling. If you are over the age of 35 you have no choice but to consider an older child; you are extremely unlikely to be considered for a baby, unless it has other special needs.

The last few years have revealed that while the problem is more common in older children, even very young children can suffer lasting psychological trauma from the repeated transfer from one carer to another or due to maternal deprivation, even if they never had contact with their birth mothers. The condition is often obvious to the new adopters within days of placement, and just as often ignored or denied by social workers, most of whom have never heard of it. It is called RAD (reactive attachment disorder) or just attachment disorder, and it makes it very difficult for a child to bond to his or her new parents. Children who have been passed around foster families, abused children from dysfunctional birth families, and children from understaffed and poorly-run children’s homes are most at risk. In a desperate attempt to control their lives they refuse to allow any adult to control them. They specialise in a seemingly perverse ability to appear perfectly normal to professionals and other people outside their families, while determinedly attempting to destroy them. These children are truly victims of The System. There is more later in this book about attachment disorder.

Many older children have justifiably become suspicious of all adults because of the way they have controlled or abused them, and it can take a long time to overcome this. Serious attachment disorder is not, however common. Most older children do make the transition from one home to another, although they need careful and sometimes long preparation, and it is by no means easy for them or their new parents.

Not long after our seven-year-old was placed with us he had a therapeutic visit from his social worker. The social worker asked him to draw a picture of a bus, and then they talked about whom our new son would take with him on his bus. He refused to have any grown-ups on it, because “they only mess you around”. He has been with us for 11 years now, and still cannot let himself become part of our family in the way the others, placed much younger, have been able to.

If they have bad memories of previous families they may make heroic efforts to blend in. They may have fears associated with neglect and abuse and need long-term psychological or psychiatric help to get over these. A fear of rejection can make them “too good”, unable to give vent to normal anger, frustration or disagreement, in case it brings another rejection. They may need to be constantly reassured that this is the end of the line, that they will never be sent back, no matter what happens. They may have fears that they will be kidnapped back by their birth families; conversely, they may believe that their new family has kidnapped them from a family which they have idealised, and be deeply resentful of their new situation.