The Economic Barriers to Adopting Siblings

I was reading an article the other day about adoption and fostering, and I felt it missed a really important point about the economics of fostering and adopting.

The article talked about a set of three siblings. They had moved from foster carer to foster carer, and could only have got adopted if they had split up. The article talked about why it was difficult for three older children to be adopted together: emotionally hard for parents, would need extra bedrooms etc. It didn’t mention the financial issues of suddenly having three more children in the house. In fact, it didn’t mention the economic barriers to adoption at all. However, it made a pejorative statement when talking about the quality of foster parents: “some foster parents only do it for the money”.

Here’s the thing. If you foster, most local authorities will pay you around £130ish per week per child. That’s for two reasons: 1. To cover the additional costs of having another child 2. Because at least one foster parent is expected to treat the fostering as their full-time job.

It used to be the case that foster parents were simply willing volunteers, but that’s changed. Why do they need to treat it as a full-time job? Because the foster children often have complex support needs, some emotionally, some physically. You would not, for example, be expected to foster a child of under-5 and then be able send them to a day nursery and expect them to get on with it while you continue a full-time jobs.

So, the siblings are fostered, but the ideal for most children in long-term foster care is to be adopted permanently. But what happens if you’re fostering three children, with complex emotional and behavioural support needs, and you decide you’d like to adopt them?

Well, of course, you stop getting that money. The state doesn’t pay people to have children whether they’re your own, or adopted (with the exception of Child Benefit, but that’s not a huge amount). The addition of three extra people is going to be difficult to absorb into the household finances.

First – you need to give up your full-time job of fostering. Second – you can’t get another job because you’re now required to do your previously-paid full-time job for free.

It strikes me that the difficulty of placing siblings together is more of an economic issue than adoption organisations and councils have thus far admitted.

I know I couldn’t suddenly take on three more children without little financial support and at the same time need to give up a full-time job.

Despite what that article claimed, most people who foster do not do it “for the money”. I have known foster parents and they have done it for a variety of reasons. It’s not an easy job, and it’s not easy money. The foster parents I knew were not rich, but they did something they thought was right, often at great cost to their own families and even their own mental health. It is difficult to bring in a child, to form a bond, to do your very best for them and then later watch them be returned to the family that caused all the issues.

The article implied that more of these foster parents should be less money-grubbing, and simply adopt the children.

How? How would be that financially possible for the majority of people?

But what’s the alternative? Pay people to adopt children, and keep on paying them for years? I’m not sure that would solve the problem.

The problem with adoption is that the people who want to adopt siblings can’t afford it, and the people who could afford to adopt 2 or even 3 siblings don’t appear to want to adopt. Until either of those two things change, children like those three siblings will not get the permanent, loving home that they not only deserve, but that they have a right to expect.

Welcome to the Golden Age

The post title is not sarcasm. It is simply fact. Despite what the gutter press would have you believe, the institution of a welfare state circa 60 years ago has not led to the gradual devolution of our country into a sad reflection of a once golden nation. There never was a golden age. At every point in the past of this country more people died, of illness, violence, poverty, and general ignorance, than they do now.

And, in fact, the welfare state has been a significant part of ensuring that we live in what can only be considered a golden age of humanity, certainly in comparison with every other era that has gone before us, and many countries who currently co-exist with us.

However, that's not what many right-wing commentators would have you believe. They are convinced, and subsequently want to convince you, that this society is rotten to its very core. It's populated by scroungers, murderers, layabout, wastrels, and worse, all brought into existence because we have a state that supports the poor, the ill, and the disabled.

Any complaints to the contrary, like, for example that the welfare state supports the aforesaid groups, and that actually, there are bad apples in every society (whether it has a welfare state or not) is met with a chorus of derision.

"Pffft," they say, "You damned leftie. How could anything possibly be worse? Surely, if the state wasn't there to support these people, then they'd have to start working harder? Surely, if we weren't so soft on crime people would stop murdering and thieving and defrauding"

Well, would they? Would they?

Let's have a look at the evidence. And I don't mean someone on benefits splattered over the front page of a trashy tabloid, which proclaims (while lasciviously listing the intimate details of that person's sex life, you know, to show how depraved they are) that they are poor, and ill-educated, and just a bad sort because, because there is a state that supports them.

I mean the long-term evidence about what life is like in this country. Because without that, we can't possibly know whether "things are worse now", can we?

And who knows, perhaps I'll find that mythical Golden Age, and then we can all petition our MPs to return to EXACTLY the same laws, social circumstances, and voting rights that we had then, because obviously, it doesn't matter if child mortality rates have fallen, racism and sexism and homophobia are no longer tolerated by law, more children are educated now and to a better rate than they ever were. It doesn't matter if we now have a minimum wage, or universal suffrage, or a system which supports people who are unable to work through disability, and who would once have had to turn to begging or prostitution.

None of that matters. Do you know why? Because none of that sells papers.

What sells papers is a man with 15 children, who has threesomes with his neighbours and concocts a stupid scheme that kills 6 of his children.

But that doesn't mean the system is wrong. Just because one family didn't work doesn't mean the whole system doesn't work. But that doesn't sell papers.

What sells papers is a blistering attack on the welfare state, which directly equates welfare to why this man killed his own children. Because that's easier than confronting reality.

Which is this: those parents were failing. They received money from the state which they failed to turn into nutritious food, warm clothes, and a rich and loving environment for their children.

And so what do we do?

Choice 1: Take away state money from every other family who needs it. From every other family who is poor and struggling, but who takes that state money and turns it it into food, and clothes, and an environment filled with positive experiences. Take that away, just in case a minority of people abuse it. Knowingly consign children into poverty because of a moral outrage whipped up by the gutter press?

Choice 2: Keep the welfare state. Support families who need support. Don't consign children into poverty and crime, simply because the right-wing media wants more money for the millionaires.

Let's take Choice 2. Choice 1 looks like the rest of human history. It sees the elderly dying of cold, parents choosing to let their children eat rather than them, children bought and sold by people desperate to make money. It sees people choosing between food and medical bills, in a competitive system that is supposed to make it "better for consumers". The ability to make Choice 2 was bought for us by the solidarity of our ancestors, who refused to accept anything less from the ruling elite.

Don't let their sacrifices be for nothing. Don't let the richest in our society fool you into thinking that you will gain from the loss of the welfare state. Don't believe their lies.