Keep It In The Family: Are the Kinship Cared-For the Forgotten Adoptees?

GrandparentsPlus co-founder Jean Stogdon (pictured below) told me it is unusual for grandparents to adopt their grandchildren.

Jean's championing of kinship carers is truly inspiring, take a look here.

To tell my family's story in brief, I was born to a mother aged 14 and was adopted by grandparents.  My mother married at 17, had another son at 19, divorced at 21, was diagnosed with MS at 24, remarried and brought up her second son. The first in my family with a degree, I am independent with a successful career.  My brother was a father and drug user by 14, spending years in young offenders institutes and prison until he died at 30. My brother’s daughter - a mother by 16 - has a chaotic life today, abandoning her two-year old daughter twice due to drug use and is dependent on benefits.  If you want to read the full story of me and my family, it's here.

Was this cycle of teenage pregnancy, low aspirations and state dependency in part caused by the adoption triad created by my grandparents formally adopting me? I have asked myself many times what impact did my adoption have on the breakdown of my family?

Through this blog I want to hear, learn and re-tell the stories of inter-family adoptees who are either formally or informally adopted.  There are extensive resources for professionals, many networks for adoptive and birth parents, professional help for adoptees, but little by the way of resources or support - especially peer-to-peer - for the estimated 300,000 inter-family adoptees in the UK alone.

What happens to the Kinship Cared-For, and to our families in the long term? Do we even realise the impact our adoptions have had on us as we haven't been adopted outside our families?

Please get in touch if you have a story to tell, some thoughts or experiences or just want to know more.

That is, unless you are a hard-faced hack like Carol Sarler 

who thinks that her clearly impoverished friends made such a noble act by giving up "their minimalist designer-flat for a family-friendly house" to adopt a little boy who "doesn’t know how lucky he is; like most children, he will probably never fully appreciate the sacrifice." 


Hmm, yes Carol, and I'm sure your friends adopted for entirely selfless reasons, and nothing to do with the emptiness they felt in their comfortable and clearly affluent lives. 


Read more of Carol's bile here.  And then send her something sticky, brown and messy in the post.