Conversation & discussion on contemporary Adoption & Fostering
Episodes
Sunday Apr 26, 2020
Sunday Apr 26, 2020
In this episode Nicola shares her story of adoption. It’s a difficult story to listen to as with limited or no support Nicola and her husband supported children with challenging and aggressive behaviour for many years. Nicola shares the impact on the whole family as well as on her mental and physical health.
This is a personal account with personal views and at times is hard to listen to but reflects the experiences of an increasing number of adoptive families. We advise caution as this is a challenging listen but we hope you find it thought provoking and interesting.
Nicola writes:
'Our experience of adoption has not been an easy one but it is far from unique. Many adoptive families have had similar experiences, particularly with their local authority. My original reason for telling my story was to help improve the understanding of any social workers who are stuck in a child protection mindset and don’t have the training to understand the impact that early childhood trauma has on family life. Or that parenting children who have had very difficult starts in life is extremely challenging and even the best parenting may not be good enough in some circumstances. I want them to understand, that in these cases, support not criticism is vital.
More recently after our complaint to the local authority was upheld I have been working with them.
I have been very impressed that they have now heard this message and are working extremely hard to provide additional training around whole family support. They have accepted that things were not done well in our case and although a little too late for our family have been receptive to making essential changes to avoid this happening to any other families. So if you recognize your struggle in our story please don’t give up. There are people in local authorities who do want to listen and make a difference.'
If you’ve a story of care or adoption and would like to share your perspective or experience then please do direct message us at our twitter feed here or on our facebook page here.
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Music by
Together, We Can Make It by Neutrin05 | https://soundcloud.com/neutrin05
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported
Saturday Apr 25, 2020
Saturday Apr 25, 2020
Adding to the other podcasts this weekend Scott and Al discuss the newly released report on Policing Childhood Challenging Violent & Aggressive Behaviour (CCVAB) and you can download it here. Al gives a quick run through of the key findings and point and the potential impact for developing understanding of behaviour. They then unpick some of the aspects of the The Adoption and Children (Coronavirus) (Amendment) Regulations 2020 that were put in place today and what that may mean for children, adopters, foster carers and social workers.
We hope you enjoy and as always your views and thoughts are appreciated, you can contact the podcast through the usual routes and if you'd like to find out a little more the Adoption & Fostering Podcast's Facebook page is here, or our twitter feed here.
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iTunes here
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Friday Apr 24, 2020
Friday Apr 24, 2020
In this episode Sophie shares her story recounting the challenges that the impact of early adversity and trauma drew into her family life.
We’ve worked hard to protect her son during the interview and we focus on the challenges that Sophie faced working with the services that she looked to for help and the challenge of keeping her son safe at that time. This is a hard listen and contains a personal and honest account that some listeners may find upsetting or worrying so please be wise and listen with caution. Though Sophie’s story isn’t that unusual it remains uncommon.
If you’ve a story of care or adoption and would like to share your perspective or experience then please do direct message us at our twitter feed here or on our facebook page here.
Listen/subscribe on iTunes here
Spotify here
Google here
Music by
Together, We Can Make It by Neutrin05 | https://soundcloud.com/neutrin05
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported
Saturday Apr 18, 2020
Saturday Apr 18, 2020
In this episode we chat to Sally Donovan about a whole raft of things. We discuss the transition from adoptive parent to author then campaigner and chat about some of the challenges on the way both personally as well as with the professionals that she worked with. We also think about Sally's latest book, The Unofficial Guide to Therapeutic Parenting the Teen Years and the challenges that adolescence, and beyond, can bring to families as they look to make sense of the world.
It's a lighthearted conversation but we do talk about some of the challenges that Sally's faced as well as life beyond writing and parenting. We also mention Ron the cat, use occasional grown up words and have a brief but predictable foray into yet another vomit story.
We hope you enjoy and as always your views and thoughts are appreciated, you can contact the podcast through the usual routes and if you'd like to find out a little more the Adoption & Fostering Podcast's Facebook page is here, or our twitter feed here.
Listen/subscribe on iTunes here
Spotify here
Google here
Saturday Apr 11, 2020
Saturday Apr 11, 2020
In this episode we catch up on the second part of Rosie the Adoption Social Worker’s interview and this time it’s all about tracing. Drawing on her own experience she shares some of the challenges of the role, to help we got ‘friend of the show’ Pol on to offer a little insight from her own experience.
Again, its our views and our perspectives so take that into account.
As always your views and thoughts are appreciated, you can contact the podcast through the usual routes and if you'd like to find out a little more the Adoption & Fostering Podcast's Facebook page is here, or our twitter feed here.
Listen/subscribe on iTunes here
Spotify here
Google here
Wednesday Apr 08, 2020
Wednesday Apr 08, 2020
In this special edition we speak to Martin Barrow, foster carer and journalist, about the implications and impact of the restrictions on public services and private lives in light of the Corvid 19 virus.
There's a lot to cover and we open up a wide range of issues from the really practical of managing children during a lockdown, how to facilitate contact with families and the implications for supervising social workers in fulfilling their roles. The impact on services is broad ranging we discuss the regulatory challenges as well as some of the measures to speed up approval for carers or waiving approval statuses. We could have talked further but kept to an hour, we hope you enjoy and find it helpful.
As always your views and thoughts are appreciated, you can contact the podcast through the usual routes and if you'd like to find out a little more the Adoption & Fostering Podcast's Facebook page is here, or our twitter feed here.
Listen/subscribe on iTunes here
Spotify here
Google here
Saturday Apr 04, 2020
Saturday Apr 04, 2020
It this weeks episode we have a little banter and then catch up on an interview we had with @bantam_polly and @CatTheresaUK. We discuss the what seems like age old question of when should you talk to children who are adopted about how they joined your family and the challenges that can present parents with. It follows on from a heated twitter moment several weeks ago, prior to the Covid 19 lockdown, when someone asked the Adoption Twitter community if you should tell children or not if they're adopted. It raised some heated debate at the time and it an issue that many parents struggle with.
There is a hiss on a part of the audio and we apologise as it didn’t become apparent until after the recording was completed and we’ve done all we can to clean it up. Hopefully it’s not too distracting.
As always your views and thoughts are appreciated, you can contact the podcast through the usual routes and if you'd like to find out a little more the Adoption & Fostering Podcast's Facebook page is here, or our twitter feed here.
Listen/subscribe on iTunes here
Spotify here
Google here
Tuesday Mar 31, 2020
Tuesday Mar 31, 2020
This week we take a moment in the busy schedule to reflect on the #YouCanAdopt marketing campaign and air a few thoughts on that. We also chat through a few thought on some upcoming stuff that we're up too. We don't want to slip into infomercials so we'll not mention it again but we're busy doing lots starting with the Adoption East Midlands Regional Adoption Agency's first annual conference. From the 1st March it's open to all adopters from beyond the RAA catchment so check it out here and come if you can.
As always your views and thoughts are appreciated, you can contact the podcast through the usual routes and if you'd like to find out a little more the Adoption & Fostering Podcast's Facebook page is here, or our twitter feed here.
Listen/subscribe on iTunes here
Spotify here
Google here
Saturday Mar 28, 2020
Saturday Mar 28, 2020
With chaos and uncertainty abounding the normal grasp on reality and all things normal has well and truly slipped out of the back door and left us all adrift. So, to add our full peneth to the mix we've cast aside the scheduled podcasts on all things tricky and refocused ourselves on the lived reality now.
To that end Al has chatted to Rosie the Adoption Social Worker, she shares her views and thoughts on the challenges that the current situation has thrown up for adoptive families and the SWer no less. This is part one with Rosie as we also talk about her day job supporting adoptive adults connect with their birth families and walking through that process with them.
Scott and Al also unpack some of the challenges thrown up this week indulge in some distracting banter as well as discuss Scott's crocodile hands and Al's selfish hoarding tendencies.
As always your views and thoughts are appreciated, you can contact the podcast through the usual routes and if you'd like to find out a little more the Adoption & Fostering Podcast's Facebook page is here, or our twitter feed here.
Listen/subscribe on iTunes here
Spotify here
Google here
Saturday Mar 21, 2020
Saturday Mar 21, 2020
In this episode of the adoption and fostering podcast we speak to Sylvia Schroer who is the chair of the Special Guardians and Adopters Together (SGandT) campaigning organisation.
We consider some of the issues that the organization campaign about specifically and discussed the challenges that's many families face as they try to access support in difficult situations as well as the accusations that can often be levelled at parents and carers. We also discuss the difficulty in raising the issues, lack of accurate data and the changing nature of adoption and kinship care/special guardianship.
You can go to their SGandT's website here and see some of the research that Sylvia mentions in the interview.
Scott and I keep the banter down to the bear minimum, though we do get drawn onto the rocks of name calling on twitter and if you listen to the very very end there may be a child hygiene related retching incident.
We recorded earlier in the week so all the latest Corvid-19 developments aren't commented on.
Stay well y'all.