The Truth Behind Adoption Breakdowns

What We’re Not Saying Out Loud — But Must**

When the BBC published its report on adoption breakdowns this week, many of us felt it like a punch to the gut. Not because the stories were unfamiliar, but because they were achingly, devastatingly familiar.

Behind every adoption breakdown is not a lack of love.
It is not a lack of commitment.
And it is certainly not a failure on the part of parents who stepped forward to raise the UK’s most vulnerable children.

What lies behind these breakdowns is something far more uncomfortable:

A system that is overstretched, under-informed, and often unwilling to face the reality of what children with early trauma and prenatal alcohol exposure need.

And today, I want to speak that truth plainly; not just as a parent, but as someone who has lived within this system for a decade.

The Missing Story Behind Adoption Breakdowns

One of the central issues rarely acknowledged publicly (but painfully clear to adoptive families) is the role of undiagnosed or unsupported Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD).

The data is unignorable:

• 2–4% of the general UK population is estimated to have FASD.

• Over 27% of looked-after children meet criteria for FASD.

• In some regions, practitioners estimate 70–100% of children going through adoption have been exposed to alcohol in utero.

• Yet fewer than 10% ever receive a diagnosis.

FASD is more common than autism, ADHD, Down syndrome, and cerebral palsy combined, yet is still one of the most misunderstood conditions in both medicine and social care.

And the consequences of missing it are huge.

FASD is brain injury.
Not misbehaviour.
Not poor parenting.
Not a lack of boundaries.

When children with FASD are treated as if they won’t rather than can’t, consequences escalate, relationship breakdown increases, and families become overwhelmed and not because they are failing, but because the system failed to educate, prepare, and support them.

The Silence in the Training Room

I was reminded of this recently at a training course for Non-Violent Resistance (NVR).
A room full of new adopters and prospective adopters sat listening, sharing their hopes, their fears, their excitement.

My husband and I were the only ones parenting older children (who have significant trauma histories, neurodiversity, and suspected FASD).

When we introduced ourselves and described the challenges we were facing, there was a subtle shift in the room. A slight tightening in the facilitator’s smile.

And then came the line, directed to the others:

“Don’t worry… that won’t happen to you.”

It landed like a dismissal.

Not only of our experience, but of the reality that these challenges could happen and happen far more often than new adopters are ever told.

After the session, the facilitator pulled us aside privately.
Behind closed doors, away from the others, they acknowledged:

• Our children need much more intensive support

• We should apply for specialist programmes (PATHWAYS / Family Support Pathway)

• But funding for this might be very difficult

• Our situation was “complex” and would require more than standard support

I appreciated the honesty — but the secrecy left us with a familiar feeling:

Our reality is too uncomfortable to show.
Too disruptive to acknowledge.
Too frightening for those just beginning the adoption journey.

And so, the message continues:
"Be therapeutic."
"Improve parenting."
"Be more consistent."

Even when the underlying issue is neurological injury, early trauma, and a nervous system wired for survival.

When Parents Are Blamed Instead of Supported

This silence doesn’t just happen in training rooms. It happens in services too.

We approached an organisation who support parents experiencing child-to-parent abuse (PEGS). Many families with trauma and FASD experience violent or coercive episodes, not because the child is “bad,” but because their regulation system is overwhelmed.

But when we discussed this with post-adoption support services, we were told:

“We don’t like to use the term child-to-parent abuse.”
“We prefer to work with parents to improve their parenting.”

And there it was again, the implication that parenting was the problem.

In households where children have:

• attachment disruption

• hyperarousal from early trauma

• sensory overload

• FASD-related impulsivity

• fight-flight responses that ignite instantly

The idea that simply improving parenting will resolve dysregulation is not just wrong.
It is harmful. Some families reach breaking point because the only way to access meaningful support is to say the words no parent ever wants to say:

“We can’t do this anymore.”

By then, everyone has already lost.

This Is Not a Parenting Issue. It Is a Knowledge Issue.

If social workers, teachers, paediatricians, mental health services, and adoption teams do not understand FASD, trauma, sensory processing, and attachment disruption, they cannot support the children and they cannot support the families raising them.

I have been told by doctors:

• “It will be easier to get ADHD diagnosed than FASD.”

• “We need proof the mother drank the symptoms aren’t enough.”

• “Let’s not complicate things with another label.”

All while my child presented with almost every neurological marker of FASD.

This isn’t a knowledge gap. It is a systemic blind spot and our children pay the price.

What Should Change — Starting Now

1. Preparation, honesty, and humanity for prospective adopters

No more sugar-coating.
No more dismissing of future challenges as “unlikely.”
No more treating adopters as “placements.”

Adopters are parents — stepping into parenthood through a different doorway, but with the same love, the samevulnerability, the same hope.

2. Mandatory training in:

• trauma-informed parenting

• therapeutic approaches

• FASD and neurodevelopment

• sensory needs

• child-to-parent abuse

• co-regulation

Not optional. Not surface-level.
Essential.

3. National standards, not postcode lotteries

Children in Manchester shouldn’t get a different quality of assessment, diagnosis, or support to those in Devon or Cardiff.

4. Post-adoption support that actually supports

Not parent groups alone.Not “more consistent parenting.”
But:

• targeted family therapy

• intensive support programmes

• behaviour and sensory assessments

• respite

• specialist training

• ongoing trauma counselling

5. Recognising that trauma and FASD require lifelong scaffolding

Strategies need to evolve as a child grows. Support needs to renew, not disappear.

We Cannot Fail These Children Again

The biggest fear I have (and the reason I am writing this now, ten years into our journey) is that we are repeating a cycle.

Children removed from unsafe environments
→ placed into loving families
→ not given their diagnoses
→ not given appropriate support
→ families struggle
→ families are blamed
→ children experience another rupture

We cannot keep doing this. The BBC article was not a warning.It was a mirror and now that we’ve seen the reflection, we must act.

A final word to the families walking this road

You are not alone.
Your child is not “too much.”
You are not failing.
You are navigating complexities most people will never understand and doing so with more love, grit, and resilience than you give yourself credit for.

And to policymakers, practitioners and leaders:

Please listen.

Not to the polished reports, but to the lived experiences. Not to the systems already in place, but to the reality that isn’t being spoken.

We don’t need blame. We need understanding.
We don’t need judgement. We need informed support.
And our children, your children, society’s children, deserve no less.