In order to preserve the anonymity of the participants, most details of the families have been omitted. However, as a group it is of interest to note certain similarities and differences between them:

1. Lying
2. Stealing from both inside and outside the home
3. Self harm including acts of mutilation and substance abuse
4. Courting danger
5. Running away
6. Eating disorders
7. Truanting from school
8. Accusing adopters of abuse, or threatening to do so
9. Losing, breaking and wantonly destroying things which belonged to themselves and others

We began the interviews by obtaining an understanding of the family structure and the sequence of events during the time they had known the child. Defining the point when disruption occurred was not always clear. Was it when help from specialist services was sought, when the parents requested that the child be removed, or when the child actually left the home?

Some Local Authority Policies of working with the child and family to try to overt core meant that the situation carried on for months even though they were sure that the child had no future in the family.

Mrs B recalled: "I think the placement disrupted at the point at which we couldn't take anymore... it's at the point where you become too tired to cony on."

Adopted children and their families were felt to be different, although this was not always recognised by the social workers involved:

"The social worker was making judgements on the basis that he was a normal child, but he was not. He was an adopted child with significant problems before he came. She thought all the problems were of our making. She didn't understand that they were not."

"Adoptive families are not 'normal' families, they are different. I don't think therapists and counsellors understand this unless they are trained. Our counsellor was very honest with us and said: 'I'm not sure if I'm qualified to counsel you because I don't know enough about adoption.'."

Adoptive parents expressed surprise at their reactions to the child:

"I think the big problem is that you find yourself doing things, getting annoyed and making a big issue about things that ore really quite petty. And it's the straw that breaks the camel's back."

A recurring theme was the difficulty adoptive parents had in reaching the child - it felt as if the child would not or could not relate in a way they felt was normal, or form an attachment to them. It was often this, rather than specific behavioural difficulties which people could not endure:

"It sounds so trivial when you say it...She was a dreadful liar, an accomplished liar...as time went on we built up a picture of her as a child who when she was lying had no perception of cause and effect...sometimes you felt there was nobody there. I said once to the social worker 'she's like a shattered glass' and she said 'well it's up to you to put the pieces back together again, isn't it?'."

"It was like having a lodger, he wasn't part of the family...he was always there on the edge...when he first came to us we described him as living in a bubble he just lived in isolation from everybody."

"Social workers don't understand about attachment and adopted children. Kate now has two losses, the loss and rejection of the birth family, and what she now feels is rejection by us."

"All social workers are trained in attachment, but they have no idea about attachment disorder."

"One assumed that given TLC you'd begin to integrate her into the family, but it's never really worked...she wasn't used to being part of a family."

Requesting help was made all the more difficult due to feelings of guilt and failure:

"I think that if you can't look after your child, then you are blamed for it, in the eyes of the Social Services you ore a failure. It's actually worse if you've adopted a child rather than one born to you, because you should have been able to deal with the child."

"Here's a child you've been told you shouldn't have any problems with...you don't feel like going back to the person who told you she'd be easy...we weren't sure whether it was us. You think you're doing it wrong somehow."

"There is a great difficulty for adoptive parents to put their hands up and say 'we're in difficulty': That is because of the assessment process which says we have to be judged in terms of whether we are good enough parents.

"Once you've been through the judgement you are very reluctant to say or reveal anything that might allow you to be judged again, particularly to be judged as not being successful. All these components come out to being the worst one possible for the young person: Lack of appropriate intervention, timely intervention and the feeling that they're being rejected yet again."

One of the most difficult occurrences for adopters was to seek help, only to find they were not listened to or believed:

"All their time and energy is focused on the child, they just ignore the parents."

"Even the psychiatrist didn't understand quite how bad it was because Sarah was so good at being charming...when you took her out, people said 'what a delightful child'."

"I think we could have achieved something with Shaun if we'd had respite care and if we'd been believed. If people didn't keep saying 'he's fine with us, he's got no problems, he's got big brown eyes and he's gorgeous'."

"We had to highlight all her negative points in order to get the professionals to listen."

It is understandable that parents felt particularly aggrieved if it was thought they had abused the child:

"We were treated very suspiciously (by Social Services). They actually said to us 'what have you done to this child? Why is she in the state she's in?'. We very much got the feeling that they thought we'd abused her."

One of the families we interviewed actually found themselves being investigated for possible child abuse, just at the point at which they and their child most needed help. This enquiry was subsequently dropped and the adopters received an apology, but by then irreparable damage had been done to their relationship with the Local Authority concerned.

Although adopters were relieved once the child returned to the care system, examples were given of feeling marginalised or at worst excluded from the child's life:

"We go to reviews. Then we find out they've made a decision."

"Recently they made a decision, they agreed for him to have access to his sisters and they didn't consult us...they also agreed to him seeing his birth mother before they came and told us."

"They've overruled our rights about taking her away on holiday. We weren't asked about it, we just found out she was going."

For the parents we spoke to, the child's return to care was more about disempowerment than partnership:

"You go to meeting after meeting which continues to reinforce the feeling that you're a failure."

"I think the issue is that social workers by and large don't understand the power they've got and don't understand what it means to be on the other side."

"I'm not pleading poverty, but we couldn't afford £300 to have a solicitor attend a case conference with us."

As already mentioned, three of the four families did not expect the child to ever return to the household. The other family felt that if this ever happened it would be some years hence. Given the choice, some of the families expressed a wish to separate totally from the young person:

"I think if there was such a thing as divorce (from an adopted child) I would do it. We send her a Christmas card, but I don't like having to put 'love from Mum and Dad' on it."

"I think that ideally we would want to be totally unhooked. While she was younger I felt we had more of a responsibility towards her now I really think of her as an individual in her own right and OK, so she has our name, but not really much more than that."

"To be honest, I feel trapped...I can't get away from Shaun even if I want to."

"I think one of the things that troubled me greatly was thcit I really couldn't love her as a daughter. There was no bond there, I disliked her intensely and I felt so awful that she made me so angry."

Inheritance also became an issue:

"My mother made provision for both of them in her will and I don't know whether she's taken Shaun out now that he's not living with us anymore

"We've both made wills because you don't want anything to go to a child like that."

"We've remade our wills just naming the other children, but I do wonder if she can contest it."

One family in particular longed to get away, but felt this was just not an option:

"I feel we're social outcasts. We'd love to move a long way away to an area where people didn't know our business. But we worry that the Social Services here wouldn't continue to pay for Susan's residential placement if we moved.

"After all, she didn't originate from here, and the Local Authority didn't approve us as adoptive parents, that was done through a Voluntary Adoption Agency."

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