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I haven't adopted, though I raised my stepdaughter fulltime for the last eight years. My situation doesn't fit into many boxes but I feel like a lot of the issues my family face are talked about here. My husband and I were given my stepdaughter when she was 3 and a half by social services. The little girls alcoholic mum tried to commit suicide after a drunken domestic fight with her boyfriend in her gorgeous 4 bedroom en suite with garden backing onto an orchard family home in the heart of Warwickshire, UK. My husband and I at this time were mid university degrees, living in the coldest, smallest flat possible but we took the little girl in merrily, my husband was always very involved. We applied for help to pay for nursery fees, started a court process to fight the mother for residency order (so we could protect her from her unstable mum) and I got a fulltime job along side fulltime uni so we could rent a more suitable property. Social services loved us and discharged us. We didn't need their help apparently. We were 23 years old. 8 years later, a long stint of battles with the biological mother that involved us supervising contact, then unsupervised weekend visits, moving up to unsupervised sleepovers. We won in court vs the mum and had the power to deny mum access if we deemed it necessary. From about 5 onwards the child demonstrated challenging behaviours...everyone thought I was crazy, she's a normal kid or so they told me. We found out at 9 the child was actually autistic but a very good masker. Her autism helped make sense of some of her behaviours But she was also becoming increasingly manipulative, she triangulated adults against eachother and was very passive aggressive. It got to the point of school reporting us to social services as they were alarmed to hear about some of the behaviours we saw at home that they saw no sign of at school. After numerous social service assessments we were deemed a good family but with a challenging child. They watched us struggle on as things got more serious..clapping and praising us the whole time. The girl was now bleaching our toothbrushes, trying to endanger our other two children, she moved on to poo smearing and weeing in her bedroom. This wasn't just autism anymore. We had to supervise her fulltime as she became dangerous and unpredictable. The end result was us having to give her to our in laws whilst we sought psychiatric support from camhs. Attachment disorder was already frequently mentioned and early childhood trauma from experiences with her mum, but no real help was offered except reading material for us. Camhs came back stating they were to give our girl no mental health support due to her not living in our family home and how her demonstration isn't extreme with my in laws, but my in laws want to kick her out as her presence is upsetting their two boys (one the same age as our girl and one 12, we suspect our girl is targeting the ten year old but the in laws keep insisting everything is fine), despite camhs confessing they believe her mental health will deteriorate if she returned into our family home. Social services and camhs are pressuring us to have the child home despite how dangerous she had become prior to leaving with the promise of help to come. I'm lost, and because she's my husband's biological child I feel like they believe we should just soldier on regardless of the risks, the problem is our home was a battle ground and feels so much better since the child left. We are in grieving but we feel safe. I'm just a bit lost, I don't fit into any boxes and I'm grieving for the child we've raised, that we have lost and that we are afraid of.
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