Professionalism in post-adoption work in the UK?

Hello Robin, Would just like to say, I am in the uk also, not sure how much things have changed in the last 12yrs here but can say that I have just traced a brother it took almost 3yrs: Social services after giving me details of my history checked the records to see if my brother had been adopted and if there was a file with his history, this took 6mths, as social services in his town replied saying that all the records were being put on microfishe, after contacting them a few times we were told that his records could not be found. (this turned out to be false as he has seen his file) . After this social services put me in touch with 'After Adoption', which did most of the searching for a minimal cost, as it is a charitable organization. The problem was the adoption worker asigned to help me to be honest, was not very good to say the least. ie: turning up for a meeting that had been arranged for 3wks without the relevant form that needed signing. When I had meetings with her I would ask obvious questions about tracing, and checking other houses in the area of my brothers orignal address, to see if some people still lived there who would remember the family, the reply was, "oh I hadnt thought of that". I even took a friend along to a meeting once, so that I could have her opinion on the service, she was shocked as it seemed like a complete waste of time. As luck would have it the adoption worker in question was moved and I have to say the replacement was much better and she did help much more, to her credit. The organization is a good one, and I would have happily paid more money, thats not the issue, the problem is that I would hate other people to have wasted time because of poorly trained adoption workers, the original person mentioned once where she thought his parents might be, and it turned out to be right, but took another year and another worker to get the result. So I hope that people working in this area are better equiped to do so in the future, like yourself maybe someone who has had personal experience, and can have a deeper understanding of the situations they are working with. Renda

Hi I would like to add to this and say that my experience in dealing with public sector adoption professionals in the UK has been rather unsatisfactory to say the least. It may well be down to poor training but I get the message that these departments are also understaffed and the lack of suitable resources is a problem and lack of government funding. I also get the message that adoption search and reunion is something they would rather not have to deal with if possible and they prefer to palm you off with very little information and make you wait for months or even years if they can, it is all delaying tactics and stalling and when you force them to finally act - they pull the rules out and tell you they cannot help you right now. I have met 1 or 2 really good social workers who want to help and who give as much information as they possibly can but cannot do too much, they are tied by rules, laws and limitations. For the most part, it appears that there are approximately one to one and a half resources working on hundreds upon hundreds of post adoption files for only a few hours per week if even that - and that is covering a whole local regional area - so you can imagine why folk have to wait for ages jus to know if the basic files are present and correct. A large part of a social work department's everyday activity seems to be dealing with childrens services and pre adoption and whatever is happening now. Post adoption is and seems in my opinion, a low priority - their work was done, the funding was spent for work done on it at the time and why dig it all up again or if they have to then spend as little time as possible on it.. Basically, rules and laws need to be altered - times have changed, people know their basic human rights regardless of ancient archaic laws and they know the difference between what is morally correct and what is wrong. The way adoption is perceived also needs re-examined from the top right down to the bottom. Funding for resources and training needs to be distributed fairly within these departments. Parliament has to start taking notice and do something. These departments need to realise that things will change and that they need to get prepared for it. Regards Rowan