Help me find my forever family; why advertising Care Experienced children in the same way as animals needing rehomed, is wrong.
Charlotte is a three year old girl. She has abandonment issues due to an absent parent and sometimes she struggles to know whether she is coming or going, but despite these difficulties, she is an affectionate and thoughtful little girl who would make the perfect daughter.
Charlotte has some health issues, she suffers from severe asthma and it is suspected that she has brittle bones. Therefore, anyone who is willing to adopt her must be able to manage her complex needs. Could you be Charlotte’s new forever family?
How would you feel if you stumbled across an advertisement of you as small child — who was taken into care or put up for adoption for whatever reason — in a newspaper article with the headline; help me find a forever family?
How would you feel if you saw a smiling infant photo of yourself, along with a small bio that details the traumatic start to life you have had, but despite this you are an affectionate loving child, who enjoys playing with toys and is desperate for a home, a family.
Asking yourself — how would you feel if you saw yourself on an adoption agency website, the kind that strangers hoping to adopt can refine searches to a certain age, race, level of disability among other things? Refined searches just like the ones you most likely use when online shopping for trendy new clothes.
Seems all a bit far fetched, right? Outdated, old fashioned or you could even say like a step backwards in time? Except, its not.
I recently discovered that this kind of approach is not only still very much used in the present day across the Globe, it is happening, unchallenged, so close to home.
ITV Wales published an article recently asking if advertising stories of children in care can help them find adoptive families. The very first sentence of the article is; Ben and Liam (not the real names) are looking for a new home and new parents.
The article then goes on to tell us a very brief summary of two young boys, both under the age of 5. The catch? That this is the information advertised by a children’s charity with the hope that sharing the intimate details of these children’s lives will find them a permanent home.
After all, as the article says, they are “kind, loving boys” but statistically it will be harder for them to find a “forever home” than other children.
Angered, I couldn’t help but notice the similarities between the information shared by Barnado’s Cymru on two vulnerable brothers and information share by Dogs Trust on a dog desperately needing rehomed.
Everything right down to language and phrasing. Can you guess which of the below text’s are a dog and which is a child?
Clara is six years old .When Clara arrived with us she was very wary of everything around her and would come straight for a cuddle and some reassurance. She would prefer a quiet home where her new family will give her all the time she needs to settle in.
Alfie is four years old. His development has been delayed by his challenging start in life sometimes needs encouragement to play. Despite that, he is affectionate and loves cuddles. Alfie needs a loving home, a family who have lots of energy and can provide constant boundaries.
Both taken from the websites I previously mentioned. If I didn't know which was which, I think I would seriously struggle. So what’s the thinking behind all this? If it works for challenging, traumatised and unwanted animals, then it must work for challenging, traumatised and unadoptable children, right?
But what if it doesn't? What if a potential adopter visits an advertised child and decides after the visit, the child isn’t what they were looking for? Or worse, what happens when a child is adopted and for whatever reason, it doesn’t work out and the child ends up back in care. Then what, do we stick up the same advertisement and add the line ‘Charlotte has been adopted a few times now and through no fault of her own, she is looking for a forever home again’ just like we would for animals?
The whole idea of ‘a forever home’ is unnerving to me. Imagine telling a child they are going to live with their forever family in their new forever home, only for it not to work out the way it was promised. Now imagine that situation happening numerous times and think about the consequences this could have.
This unnatural and dehumanizing approach to vulnerable children’s lives, is a breach of their rights and doesn’t consider the lifelong aftermath of a unsuccessful advertisement.
Admittedly, we all guilty of googling our own name in the hope of finding something we didn’t know about ourselves. In the days of social media, the catastrophic situations that could potentially arise because of this approach, are endless.
The chance of an adoptive child discovering they are in fact adopted. A child in care who finds out they were once ‘unadoptable’ and then questions why they weren’t good enough. The cyber and playground bullying that could entail if a class mate found an article like this. I could go on for hours.
These are lives of the most vulnerable children in our country. We have to protect them and plastering their life stories into newspapers or online before they are even at school is not doing that.
The ITV Wales story is not unique in the UK. This approach is not uncommon, it is happening right under our noses and far more frequently than I could have possibly imagined.
I’m just thankful that I was never advertised as needing a home on a website or in a newspaper. I would have hated it — I’m sure you would have too.
This toxic advertising needs to stop. The next time you see this, question it, challenge it and in the future this inhumane approach will cease to exist. It’s never too late.
