Fighting for the Best
Fighting for the best
Hello everyone,
Firstly, I want to start with an apology—it’s been a while since my last article! If you follow us on social media, you’ll know that things have been incredibly busy at home. Life, as many of you will understand, doesn’t pause—especially when you’re parenting SEND children.
As SEND parents, we know all too well the constant battles: securing support, ensuring provisions are in place, and holding professionals accountable. All of this while simply trying to be the best parent you can be!
Now, add adoption into that mix.
As an adoptive parent, the challenges multiply! Alongside advocating for educational and therapeutic needs, there’s life story work to manage, organising letterbox or direct contact with birth families(depending on the agreements), and navigating therapeutic parenting. Accessing post-adoption support is another major hurdle, one that often involves jumping through endless hoops just to get your child the help that they need and deserve. Contrary to belief, early life trauma does not disappear once an adoption order has been granted! (Can you hear the sarcasm in my voice…?)
For much of the past year, that’s exactly what we’ve been doing. We reached out for support at the beginning of 2024 after a particularly difficult period. It became clear that our son needed specialist support, not just universal services. Unfortunately, the response from our Adoption Agency was far from what we had hoped for. We encountered long waits, repeated mistakes, and systemic failures that led us to submit a formal complaint.
Months later, that complaint was fully upheld and several recommendations have been made.
While I won’t go into every detail here, I’ve shared more in this Instagram post.
To make matters worse, many of you may have seen the recent news of a proposed reduction to the Post-Adoption Support Fund. Officially, this is being described as a 40% cut but in real terms, is closer to 60%. These proposed changes have been made without proper consultation and will make it even harder for families to access specialist therapies or cover the costs of essential assessments.
In essence, the past months have been a storm of advocacy, complaint processes, emotional rollercoaster and endless forms, emails and telephone calls…all whilst caring for children with diverse and complex needs. I know many of you reading this will understand the toll it can take.
But through it all, we keep going.
We’re beginning to see a light at the end of this long tunnel. And as always, I’ll continue to share our journey on our social media platform.
Sending love to anyone who needs it right now.
Andi x
