A new organisation representing people who have been adopted says plans for a National Care Service for Scotland create an important opportunity for the particular issues faced by adoptees to be flagged on medical and care records for the first time.

The Scottish Adult Adoptee Movement (SAAM) has been formed to support and campaign for the tens of thousands of adult adopted people who do not have complete medical histories, have little access to information about hereditary conditions, and who live with a substantially higher risk of not just chronic physical illnesses but also mental ill health.

Volunteer and founder, Fiona Menzies-Henderson – herself an adoptee who has endured adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) – has been telling healthandcare.scot that a new commitment to join up health and care data within the NCS could create the first opportunity for the health and care system to actively identify people who, having been adopted as children, now may need additional support as adults.

"SAAM has formed as a group of adult adoptees working together, all of us struggling in some way or another with the confusion of being adopted and the impact on our mental health and wellbeing of feeling that we were neither recognised nor understood.

We did our own research and started talking to people. And the more that we spoke to organisations and mental health experts, the more I realised that we were completely anonymous – in many cases not even recognised as care experienced people.

Over time things have built. We have had conversations with MSPs, organisations and campaigners around care experience and forced adoption, and we have contacted our counterparts in Australia where a historical adoption apology was given in 2012.

Adoptees are also trying to play our part in the 70/30 campaign – which the Scottish government is supporting – to reduce adverse childhood experiences by 70% by 2030. Adoptees are amongst those who suffer continuing trauma as a result of what we experienced as children and reaching that target will involve getting services right for both adults and children.

People who have been adopted live with a series of vulnerabilities that are lifelong, that start with a pre-verbal trauma and can very well continue as developmental trauma over years and be lifelong. Not being brought up by their own parent can be a factor. Many experience trauma prior to their adoption, during adoption and throughout childhood – and into later adulthood. Yet, these care experienced adults just fall off the radar. 

Ours is not a uniform group with the same story. We have a range of complexities to overcome: late discovery adoptees, adoptees of loss, intercountry adoptees, interracial adoptees. There are adoptees who feel very lost within the current systems. 

Then, on top of this, a lot of adoptees go back and they find their records are incomplete, or they're false. There are complex family reunions and damaging discoveries about your past. Adoption can be fraught with difficulty, compounding the feeling of being alone, utterly isolated.

And it takes its toll.

People have different triggers. Some are possibly unaware of the impact that adoption is now having on their lives.

For me, I've always known that there's something just underneath, just below the skin, just bubbling away that needs to be addressed, that I now believe were adoption adversities, untreated and undiagnosed childhood trauma.

Our own flag

There’s a section of the National Care Service Bill to create joined up records which we believe offers an opportunity.

If every record had some sort of flag, not just that someone has ACEs but also that they had been adopted, then I think  it would give a bit of acknowledgement that  this is something to consider when we’re unwell or seeking help.

As adoptees, we do not have a family medical history. So, when you're dealing with things like cancers or a long term, autoimmune disease, you're going to a specialist and they're asking you if you know your family history – but when you're adopted, you just don't know these things. Then, to be asked these questions repeatedly becomes quite difficult.

I think on top of that, there's also a vulnerability within the system that as an adoptee, you aren't recognised, that nobody’s joining the dots even though we are over-represented when it comes to poor mental health, addictions, alcohol problems, PTSD, complex PTSD and risks of suicide and self-harm.

So, I think that simple addition of this checkbox will create the opportunity to understand where an adoptee is coming from and how best to support them, and end the habit of, when someone tells a professional they are adopted, it being regarded as irrelevant.

Improving outcomes

I believe the ability to immediately identify adoptees will have a profound impact.

For more people, the conversation with their GP can become a coherent discussion of their physical health problems in the context of their wider problems and fears as an adoptee. The conversation about anxiety or addiction might start with discussing experiences as an adoptee.

We know there is limited funding, that health and social care resources are limited, and the third sector is limited in what it can do. But, if we have a two pronged approach of using our data systems to recognise and acknowledge adoptees, and then to make sure that the right support is there for health and care professionals to refer people to, then this new National Care Service could be a turning point for us.

It could offer a safety net for those trigger points throughout – maybe when someone becomes a parent or loses a loved one. It would encourage professionals to understand more about the particular issues and challenges for adoptees."

Read more: National Outcome on Care campaign gains momentum; The right to have needs met by the NCS; MSPs seek views on National Care Service Bill

 

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