Today I have had to.....

Blimey OB that's brave of you.

As a recent S20 Mum, I am comfortable talking to you lot on here, and close friends, but I'm not sure I could cope with talking about it with a room full of strangers, (other than the profs and SW's of course), but I mean real people who may not understand and that's scary, so well done you. xx

My eldest is S20 but up until reading your experiences I hadn't worried about it.

I saw it as a way of adding weight to my requests for better disability services and that the IRO was the person to add the clout.

I am now going to explore the S20 further to see whether it could easily be used against me in the fight for competent transport!

Oh yes I do say to people blossom lives in a specialist unit.

I don't say she's in care.

This was a group of adopters, foster carers and some clinicians and I was asking about support services for adopters before the children became section 20. Blank faces all round, hence I explained what section 20 meant in essence. I have asked for numbers as I know three other s20 parents personally locally. I normally say my son is at a residential school unit but as of next week I don't know what i will amend that to!

i am involved with so many groups now that I feel quite serene and calm when talking about my boys, however that has taken three years to get to this point. It is difficult and i do wish I could have posted openly on bubble board at that time but was so exhausted just by getting through each hour I couldn't face criticism cyberly when I was getting it face to face!

Hi OB
I'm a dubious member of your S20 club, and I know several others.
I doubt very much that any group involving adopter preparation would want me to speak about S20.

I am very blunt - I say my girl is in foster care because my children simply could not live together, however hard we tried.

I don't know whether section 20 has brought better services for her. Maybe.
It has stopped me from becoming either a complete neurotic or possibly turning beserk.
My children are doing better apart, both of them.

It has made me think very, very hard about our original desire to give siblings a family together - we were still running on giving them a 'normal' life. Not understanding that a normal upbringing would be well short of what was really needed. It goes profoundly against the grain for people raised in large families to believe that splitting siblings up might be the most helpful move. It wasn't sentimentality on our part, underneath we just could not believe that them being together wasn't right.

What services would have made the difference for children adopted late, arriving with a well established trauma bond?

xxx D

Yes Damson there is a big difference. I find myself having to remind SS that it was "I" who contacted them asking for help, not anyone else "reporting me" to SS as being a bad mother.

I think that's the problem when people (and even teachers) when they hear a child is LAC they automatically make the assumption that the parents must be lousy or abusive, they just don't understand that we are caring parents dealing with difficult/abusive children.

Society in general does not get that, unless they have experienced it for themselves - hence the "Blame the parents " culture and why we are always seen as "Guilty until proven innocent" and that's why even within SS, they always treat parents with suspicion initially until they spend time with our children and then they see why we asked for the to be taken into care to get them help.

It is hard, and is why only close family and friends know mine are in care. I don't go around broadcasting it to all and sundry because they wouldn't understand and anyway I don't think it is any of their business.

In fact I had an extremely nosey neighbour from the far end of our road, (who doesn't normally bother talking to me, beyond saying hello) - shout "Hi jmk" to me across the street the other day, followed up by "How's the LO, is she alright?" because another neighbour who lives opposite me and is very friendly with her, had probably told her he'd seen YDD getting into the police car the other day, and her curiosity was killing her as she wanted to know what it was all about. This woman is someone I used to be a bit friendly with years ago, before I learnt that she is a MASSIVE GOSSIP, tells everyone everyone else's business and loves nothing more than repeating stuff to everyone else whether they are interested or not, so I have learned from the past not to tell her ANYTHING, so I just smiled and said "she's fine" and kept going as I was in a hurry to catch a train. She still hasn't copped that myself and ex have split up even though it's been 2.5 years. I bet her curiosity is eating her.