Council apologises to family over lack of support for adopted teenager

The family wanted to remain anonymous

A family has won an out-of-court settlement and an apology from a council for failing to support them when their adopted teenage son was in crisis.

The parents say they did not receive enough help and that information about the boy's birth family was shared with him against their wishes.

The couple, who want to remain anonymous and we are calling the Walkers, claim this contributed to the breakdown of the adopted family.

North Lanarkshire Council said it had apologised for any shortcomings.

The boy was adopted as a toddler by Matt Walker and his wife.

Matt says that Mark thrived initially.

"All the way through primary school he was like the golden child," he said.

"It wasn't until he got to second year at high school that things started to go awry."

'Just normal teenage behaviour'

While Mark's usual friends were on holiday during the summer, the 14-year-old took up with a different crowd.

Matt says that within a few weeks, Mark's behaviour totally changed.

At one stage he went missing for three days.

"I was driving around the city with tears in my eyes trying to find him in the rain, I didn't know where he was," said Matt.

Mark became involved with drugs, shoplifting and acts of violence.

The family say they did get some help from the council – but not the specialist support they needed.

Matt says that when he explained to the council about what Mark had been doing, he was told that it was "just normal teenage behaviour".

"My wife, my daughter and I were sleeping in a bedroom with deadbolts in the door so he couldn't kick it in and a fire ladder because he'd been setting fires all over the community," said Matt.

MSP Fulton McGregor says families can find it difficult to access support

The family feel that other mistakes were made.

Matt said one of the biggest errors came when the council gave Mark information about his birth family – even though the Walkers repeatedly asked for this not to happen.

Mark made contact and began unsupervised visits to his biological mother. Things went okay at first, but that relationship then began to unravel.

Attempts to reunite families should be carefully managed and require a lot of support. Matt says this was not provided.

"They didn't do a risk assessment and they didn't tell her about his behaviours," he said.

"I felt they could do significantly better at ground level in their practice and their attitudes. The very organisation that created our family systematically destroyed it."

'Extra support' for families

Matt believes Mark had suffered trauma as a young child and should have had access to specialist psychological and mental health support.

He says this is available to children who are in care – but that this ends after they are adopted.

Many adoptive families have experienced the same issues.

Last week a BBC investigation for File on 4 told the stories of parents from across the UK who said they felt let down by a lack of support as they struggled to cope with the needs of their adoptive children.

SNP MSP Fulton McGregor, who has a background in social work, is the convener of the cross-party committee on social work at the Scottish Parliament.

He says it is quite common for families to find it difficult to access support when a child becomes a teenager and starts exploring their past.

Mr McGregor wants adoptive families have the same access to help as care-experienced children.

"We have to make sure that when families require that bit of extra support it can be given to them seamlessly and they don't need to feel like they're begging for it or that they're a failure," he said.

"The trauma that some of these young people could have experienced in their days, months or even years before their adoption is something probably most of us could never even imagine."

Council apology for any shortcomings

The Walkers said they launched a legal action against North Lanarkshire Council to make the authority accountable.

For them it's not about seeking a payout. They hope improvements will be made for families in the future.

The family secured a five-figure sum from the council, which they say covers the expense of taking the action to court.

The council admitted that "matters could have been handled differently in a number of respects".

It also apologised for the distress caused by giving Mark access to information about his birth family.

A spokesperson for North Lanarkshire Council said its social work team was "committed to developing their relationship with the family so they can work together to provide the best possible service".

The council said it had written to the Walkers "to acknowledge where we could have handled matters better and have apologised to them for any shortcomings.

"It should, however, be noted that no determination or findings were made in relation to ECHR Article 8 by a court in this case."

This article protects the right to respect for a person's private life and family life.

Mark no longer lives with his adopted family, but they are in touch and the Walkers desperately want to re-establish the relationship.

But Matt said the whole experience has been "devastating" for him.

"It never leaves you," he said.