Written evidence from Joni Ejo (CFA0124)

HOUSE OF LORDS CHILDREN AND FAMILIES ACT 2014 SELECT COMMITTEE INQURY

Submission to the House of Lords report.

Dear Sir and Madam,

My name is Yoni Ejo. I am an adoption coach, trainer, social work manager and social worker. I am also somebody whose life was transformed for the better by adoption. Also as a parent I adopted two young women with my civil partner. They are now young adults. I'm making this submission because I feel very strongly that the adoption system needs reform, through an amended children and families act.

I work with adopters and foster carers who are seeking additional information. They seek more than they can receive through their local authority or approving agency. I think there is a mismatch in the needs and training or preparation of adopters. I think this is a problem because the people preparing adopters are also the agencies who have a vested interest in making the placement. And unfortunately what that means is that there is a tendency to paint what is perhaps a rosier picture than is accurate. There can be a less challenging picture of adoption painted by social workers assessing applicants and within the training.

I know adoption can be a transformational experience, not just for the child but also for the family. It's a wonderful thing in many circumstances. But it has to be ensured that parents go into adoption with full knowledge and understanding of the challenges that they are going to experience. There is insufficient emphasis on how traumatised children can be. Or advice how adopters can take more control of their own lives by fully understanding the child, the trauma and the impact on the child. Adopters also need strategies how to manage their child when the child is struggling.

Adopters need quick and early access to support services and to know how to access additional support when it is needed. Adopters I work with complain of the enormous delay in securing support for children and young people. This is needed for young people who have been adopted and I think it's vital that is much more easily accessible, and readily available. Adopters need support at the time they need it. Services to adoptees should not require, as mainstream services do, that children and young people are on the threshold of mental illness before they are offered access to support and referrals. This is far too late.

As a children's social worker, I have worked with children and care leavers who have been denied a service because mainstream services have indicated that their experience is behavioural and not as a result of illness. Because often medical professionals assess that adopted or care experienced children’s trauma does not make the threshold for intervention.

However young people have the same support needs whether as a result of illness, ADHD or behaviour management problems. This experience is not any less devastating, any less traumatic for the family, any less damaging for the individual than if medical colleagues could clearly point to a health source of the issue or illness.

It is critical also that we fully understand the vulnerabilities children and young people have when they are adopted. We know for example, that adopted adults are twice as likely to take their own life. Former cared for children are four times more likely to be homeless. Research also suggests that 75% of children adopted in the UK each year have significant mental health issues.

Children who are adopted are also almost twice as likely as those brought up with their biological parents to suffer from mood disorders like anxiety, depression, and behavioural issues. All of these vulnerabilities are as a consequence of being removed and adopted. But my view is that that is not an automatic outcome. What we need to be doing is effectively preparing, training adopters from the time before the child moves in, and giving them the confidence to feel that they are in control of the situation. Adopters should be able to know where to access the support they need, and in most cases what they will need in future is an ongoing support, not just crisis intervention.

What has been the effect of the repeal of the requirement to consider ethnicity, religion, race, culture and language in England when placing a child for adoption?

I believe that the repeal of the requirements in the Children and Families Act 2014 has been a totally retrograde step as it has under played the importance of these issues in matching and placement.

Adoptees will require ongoing, long term, consistent support for them and their families. I was trans-racially adopted. Adopters who have trans-racially adopted need to really understand the challenges of identity and how to helping their child feel positive about themselves. The evidence is that black and ethnic minority children and young people are disproportionately removed from families. I am also aware that agencies can struggle with the recruitment of black adopters.

There are not enough black adopters to care for the black children in care currently. We need to get much better at engaging black communities and encouraging those that wish to apply to adopt. We need to be much more proactive in challenging unconscious bias within the whole adoption process, in recruitment, assessment and approval. And we need to be much better at preparing white adopters who are positively seeking to care for a black child not as a second option but as a positive choice and wish to change the life of a black child.

I have developed an online course for white adopters of black children, to feel better prepared. There are some really key areas which we need to do better. For example, adopters have the responsibility to help black children feel positive about their own identity, keep children's connections with their birth communities, inform them about their own history, identity and encourage them not to see their history as evidence why black communities and that part of their existence and identity is negative.

I welcome further exploration of the situation of adoptees and how as a society we can provide a better life to children and young people who have already experienced disadvantage.

Yoni Ejo

CEO Diversity Adopt

May 2022