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A family has reached an out-of-court agreement with North Lanarkshire Council after expressing concerns about the lack of support they received during their adopted teenage son’s period of crisis. The parents, who have asked to remain anonymous and are referred to here as the Walkers, also claim that the council shared information about the boy’s birth family with him, despite their explicit wishes for this not to happen. This disclosure, they say, played a significant role in the eventual breakdown of their family unit. The council has acknowledged its mistakes and issued an apology for any failures in handling the case.
Matt Walker and his wife adopted their son Mark when he was a toddler, and according to Matt, Mark flourished during his early years. “All the way through primary school he was like the golden child,” Matt recalled. However, difficulties began to emerge when Mark reached his second year in high school. During one summer, when Mark’s usual peer group was away on holiday, he started associating with a different crowd. His behavior quickly deteriorated, culminating in a three-day disappearance that left Matt searching anxiously in the rain. “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,” Matt shared.
Mark’s troubles escalated to include drug use, shoplifting, and violent acts. Although the family did receive some assistance from the council, it was not the specialized support they desperately needed. Matt expressed frustration when the professionals dismissed the situation as “just normal teenage behaviour.” At home, the family lived in fear for their safety—locking their bedroom with deadbolts and keeping a fire ladder close by due to Mark’s acts of setting fires in the community. The Walkers believe the council’s response was inadequate for managing such serious challenges.
Further complications arose when the council provided Mark with information about his biological mother, despite the family’s clear requests to prevent this from happening. Mark initiated unsupervised visits with his birth mother, which initially went well but eventually deteriorated. Matt criticized the council for failing to carry out proper risk assessments or inform the birth mother about Mark’s behavioral issues. “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,” he said. The Walkers pursued legal action not for financial gain but to hold the council accountable and bring attention to the need for better support for adoptive families.
Matt believes Mark’s early experiences caused trauma that warranted access to specialized mental health and psychological support—services that are often available to children in care but typically cease once a child is adopted. Many adoptive families face similar struggles. Fulton McGregor, an SNP MSP with a background in social work and convener of the Scottish Parliament’s cross-party social work committee, highlighted the difficulties families encounter in obtaining support as adopted children enter adolescence and explore their past. He advocates for adoptive families to have the same access to assistance as care-experienced children. “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,” McGregor stated. He also emphasized the profound effects of trauma many young people endure before adoption.
In response to the Walkers’ legal claim, North Lanarkshire Council admitted that various aspects of the case could have been managed differently, offering an apology for the distress caused by revealing information about Mark’s birth family. A council spokesperson affirmed their commitment to improving collaboration with the family to provide better support. While the council acknowledged shortcomings, it noted that no court ruling was made regarding the application of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right to respect for private and family life. Though Mark no longer lives with the Walkers, they remain in contact and are hopeful about rebuilding their relationship. Matt described the ordeal as “devastating” and something that continues to affect him deeply, saying, “It never leaves you.”
Read the full article from The BBC here: Read More
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