40 a day!

I heard the sentence this morning "40 a day is a shocking statistic"

The first thing that came to mind was smoking for me. My Dad smokes 30 a day, when I smoked (before I gave up) I would have smoked 15-20 a day. So to hear 40 a day, it just seemed a statistic for the average smoker, nowadays, which however sad, wasn't something that I was overly concerned with, I just assumed it was something in this current climate.


But before I turned over the channel the rest of the sentence saddened me even more so.


"I am in complete shock that 40 children a day are voluntarily given in to care in the UK."


This was even more of a shock, something that hit a personal place in my heart.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7843200.stm

This link shows a news report that suggests that 40 children a day are voluntarily put into care. In the report it looks upon the statistic that realistically the increase is due to the amount of troubled and uncontrollable teens.

However the statistic is spun for the reader I still found this a shocking amount and on a personal level it really rattled a few emotions up that I had buried.

At the age of 4 months I was put in to care and voluntarily given up. I stayed in care for a year and then although was replaced into a new family of care, after a few months this family eventually became my adoptive parents.

My circumstances I am sure are common for many that are put up into care, but it still was a sad situation.

My birth mother, unmarried, was dating my birth father, but on the soon arrival of me she was in the act of "relations" with another man, this act, although owned up to, was the reason why my late teenage parents separated. My mother ended up being in a relationship with another man, whose family is often then entangled up later on in the family and siblings web of history!

This new partner, although friends with my father, had abused me several times, with my mother often walking to his or back home at silly hours in the morning with me not dressed, the police and social services soon got involved. Putting her in a protected home for young mothers, we would assume that she would have got the support to care for me the way she should, but alas, she continued to see and choose her new partner over me, with him not wanting anything to do with another mans child, I was soon abandoned at the mothers home and voluntarily put into care.

From reading social reports and a variety of adoptive records of that time regarding my adoption, i can see that it was the best choice, she was mentally unprepared to be a mother, and although many people say that the natural instinct to be a parent comes, for her it didn't. These are always sad circumstances, of which I can see that the best outcome has availed.

In care, my abuse was increased and without going into too much details I was subject to a lot of things that a young child shouldn't have been exposed to.

When children are abused and then subsequently put into care we can so quickly justify that the child will have a better life outside of the birth family home.

I am a prime example of this, my life has been brilliant (regardless of health) I have been brought up into a loving family and because of this I have been privileged.

But reading the link that these parents just didn't know how to deal with troubled teens that they decided to call the social services to "deal" with the child, I really don't know how I feel about it, to be honest I feel quite angry.

I chose to have my children, whatever the circumstances, the decision was made and because of it these children are my responsibility to bring up and show what is right or wrong. Then therefore to deal with if they "run of the rails"

I am not judging these parents because I don't know the ins and outs of their circumstances, but the statistics on the facts that it is down to the teens being "troubled" troubles and angers me.

But is this something new? something that society has lead to?

In the Bible you see the example that Moses was hidden (for his protection) and then collected by the Pharaohs Daughter, and when he was older he was adopted. But when Moses grew up we see in Exodus 2:15 we see that even though Moses has been adopted into the family, he is not what the family expected, he runs off the royal tracks and starts to misbehave. (OK, he kills somebody) the Pharaoh, his adoptive grandfather not investigating just put an order out to kill Moses. Poor Moses has now been abandoned twice.

In 1 Kings 11 we see another case of a family leaving a child and the child boy Hadad being brought up by the Pharaoh of the day.

We see in Esther 2 that Mordecai had adopted his cousin who was parent less (unknown reasons)

In the Roman culture we see that Usually a man without natural offspring would adopt male as son. Seldom an infant. Young men sometimes adopted out of slavery; redeemed from such into privilege of son. We are also aware that Natural fathers sometimes "sold" a son to adoptive father.

Point to early questionable Roman practise of natural father "setting a goal" for his son, who then could reach that goal at age 14, 18 or 21 and be "placed as an adult son" into manhood. They emphasise that "adoption" is not the "making of a son," but the "placing of a son." God, the Father's, "longed-for goal" for Christians is that we be "conformed to the image of His Son" (Rom. 8:29).

So we can see that the practise of adoption and putting children into care of others has been around thousands of years. But it is in the last part that I raise the point that I think is wrong. In Roman tradition they would have a goal, target or expectation to set for the child, the "longed for goal" Do we still have these goals today? Of course we do, and I personally wonder if because of this are we still following the same practise? We are setting children longed for inherited goals and when the child doesn't meet them, and in some cases go completely opposite to them we see them as troubled, instead of sitting and managing the problem, we pass it off to someone else.

I have a happy ending to my adoptive story in care. But there is two things I want to mention, the first is that after my adoption, my birth mother has three more children, and my birth father another one, between them both my four siblings all at some point ended up into care, all at different ages. The sad truth here is that the same mistakes were made over and over again, each time the child wasn't being met with a caring and productive up bringing that unfortuantely meant that they led into care. For some of them, they were still in care by the age of 12 and the likelihood that they were adopted would dwindle, all because they were too much hard work and trouble for the parents.
My second point is an experience as a teacher: I once taught a young child who was in foster care, unaware at the time that they were we chatted about parents. (I was completely unaware or I would have avoided it) This young child told me their circumstances that their parents didn't want them anymore because they were trouble, the more I eventually investigated into this child I found that they were basically telling me the truth. I came home that day devastated, because they said said "hey ho, I'm not like the others, I'm too old to be wanted by others" This child, in the time that I taught them was one of the brightest and lovely children I have ever met, with realistically a little cheekiness to them that really was a character trait not a flaw.

I thought that this child was a one off, that I was relating to them because of my personal experiences, what is sad for me is that they were not a one off. Apparently 40 a day! 14,500 children a year are put into care voluntarily.

It is just sad and I pray for them all.