FIND ME A FAMILY: Channel 4
As part of Channel 4’s Britain’s Forgotten Children season, Find Me a Family tries to find homes for the children who no one has come forward to adopt. The three-part documentary – fronted by David Akinsanya, an adoption campaigner and journalist who grew up in care – follows three households of would-be adopters as they take part in a pioneering project. Created in collaboration with three leading adoption agencies, the programmes set out to provide the would-be adopters with hands-on experiences to encourage them to consider adopting the children who, too often, get overlooked.
Monday 11 May 2009
9:00pm
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As an experienced foster mother and adoptive parent I am appalled at the programme I have just watched. Children with special needs should not be foisted on to unsuspecting families in this way.
The couple highlighted had set out to find a child who was a suitable match for their family and especially for their own daughter Rachel. Instead they were paired with a little girl whose very image caused the father to burst into tears in the knowledge that she obviously had some disability that he couldn’t cope with. However, they were then persuaded that the child’s late development was due to her difficult early life. I am sure this is not the only reason for it and she will continue to have developmental problems that will be detrimental to Rachel for the rest of her life.
I think you’ve missed one of the points that the programme was aiming to address re disabled children (or children with additional needs). The father started to cry because for him at that point he had a very low level of disability/diversity awareness and associated a child who looked disabled with being a burden. Having spent time, however, with some learning disabled young people & children he and his wife realised that this would not necessarily be the case and their outlook widened. Yes, it did seem like a simplistic ‘conversion’ in the programme but obviously they can’t show you everything in the time allocated!
It’s worth you noting that siblings with developmental problems don’t necessarily cause detriment to siblings. Certainly, a child doesn’t have to have developmental problem to create issues for his/her siblings!! To think in this way is extremely narrow.
I applaud the programme for raising these issues & exploring them in this way.
I found it difficult to watch but at least it raised awareness for adoption. I felt any only child could react in the way that the young girl did.
On a different note, does anyone know what breed of dog they had, it was so cute!
I did not miss the point at all and was well aware of all that was being said, however you are entitled to your opinion just as I am to mine.
As an adoptive parent myself I thought the treatment by the programme makers of these heroic people was trite banal
and insulting to the viewers intelligence.
Why do programme makers believe we need a 5 minute update at the start of every section following the Ads? is it because we are all too stupid to follow the plot?
The time could have been better spent exploring the issues in more depth.
Why did they feel it was necessary to inject tension into the final decision and drag it out like that, this isnt Masterchef its peoples lives and families.
A worthy subject reduced to the level of a gameshow for cheap infotainment purposes.
I wish all the participants concerned good luck with their new family, adoption is a wonderful life affirming experience, a pity the production team concerned have such low values.
As a foster carer for many years, I felt I needed to comment on the issues raised about looked after children taking out their anger on pets. In my experience, the LAC documents containing information about the children when they come into your care, more often than not state that the child is heavy handed with pets or the child has been seen strangling the cat/dog. Let us please remember that most of these children have never had a pet, some have never even seen an animal, and quite often never shown any love and affection. These chilren in most cases need to be shown how to handle animals as you would show a young toddler with no experience. Most of the children with this information written about them, form a bond with the animal before the people who care for them, when shown how to give and recieve affection. Animals show their love and affection in different ways, the children will pick up on this affection and respond and sometimes this can be seen as strangling the animal, but if shown and nurtured in the correct way, looked after children can find animals to be a big breakthrough by finding someone who will listen to them, who wont shout or hurt them and who has trust in them, and accepts them for who you are, no matter what background you come from. On the other hand in a few cases, yes the child has been seen to kick the dog when angry, but I feel this quite often is found to be learnt behaviour, either the child has seen this being done and thinks this is how you treat pets, or others who are ‘below you in the pecking order’ and it is our job as a carer and a good role model for the child, to help the child to understand that this is not the right thing to do, and show them with care and lots of patients and understanding how to treat animals and people with care and respect.
Janie Gey The dog was a yoodle (yorkshire terrier/poodle mix.