Adoption and Foster Care Reform

During our time of talking about should we or shouldn't we adopt we started geting interested in reform for adoption and foster care. We hadn't automatically decided to adopt we had also thought for a short time that foster care might b for us. This led onto us wanting to do our own research rather than get social services 'take' on the system. One of my dad's cousin's and his wife had two sons before adopting from Africa and Malaysia. This was back in the 1960's so it was completely different to how it is now and something I really didn't think about as I was young. I also went to school with a girl who was adopted but I didn't know till I was 17. We have also known a few foster carers over the years. Through the internet we have found out about various sites relevant to adoption in general, forced adoption, justice for mothers and/or fathers and sites that give parents good legal advice and how to work with social workers to keep families together. There are times that I agree that it is in the child's best interest to be removed from their families and too regularly I read of children dying at the hands of a parent, family member, partner or friend. This is why we finally decided older child adoption was best for us as we really care that every child has a right to a loving, caring home. We had a friend who was a carer in two children care homes so got to know some of these kids. Considering what many had been through they just wanted to be loved for who they were and respected our friend cared about them as individuals. Sadly he committed suicide ... we should have seen the signs as he bought his son down to see us (he was living with us) then made a point of staying with his mother overnight followed by seeing his sister. He had split from his girlfriend, let her and their son stay in the house he bought then she moved her new boyfriend in. It took us a long time to forgive ourselves for not realizing. So how we feel about adoption is that it has it's place, same as foster care but both need reforms so the system is much better than it is now.