Beyond Adoption – Expanding the Community, Reframing the Focus

PATCH – Passionate Adopters Targeting Change with Hope was founded by an adopter and then built by adopters. But in a short time, the depth and breadth of the problems faced by adoptive families became painfully clear. PATCH’s mission has since grown—it now extends far beyond adoption.

Initially, PATCH highlighted how adopters were often viewed punitively for struggling to manage the symptoms of trauma in their children. But the realisation came quickly: these were not isolated experiences or failures of parenting—they were symptoms of deeper, broader, and more dangerous systemic gaps.

Systemic failings affect all permanence carers—kinship carers, special guardians, and foster carers—raising children whose early lives were marked by trauma, and whose recovery is still not prioritised. The child’s experience is too often overlooked, unmeasured, and unsupported by any meaningful plan for healing. Care plans focus on risk, harm, and statutory requirements. Reports used to justify removals offer detailed chronologies—of incidents, concerns, developmental risks, and projected future trauma. But where is the focus on recovery? Where is the commitment to healing, repair, and long-term wellbeing?

What has become increasingly clear is that a critical bridge is missing—a connection between learning, psycho-social education, and systemic practice. This is not a minor oversight; it is a structural void. While theory and training often speak the language of trauma-informed care, systems consistently fail to apply it in meaningful, lived ways.

We need to be the hands that hold the scaffolding for that bridge to be built—a bridge that leads to recovery, repair, and care.

And while some trauma can be healed, we must also recognise that some conditions—like FASD and other neurodevelopmental differences—are organic and lifelong. In these cases, it’s not about ‘recovery’, but about understanding, acceptance, and creating space for our children to be seen, supported, and valued exactly as they are.

There is no magic wand. Not six sessions of therapy. But we can and must push for real, meaningful, evidence-based, trauma-informed, neurodiversity-aware, and recovery-focused pathways— Pathways that hold space for all children, all carers, across all systems. And most importantly—pathways shaped by us.

This journey has shown that these are not just adoption issues—they are permanence issues. And the impact is systemic. PATCH advocates for children’s sur-thrival—not just survival. We fight for plans that heal, not just hold. We stand for every child and every carer walking the path of permanence, recognising that permanence doesn’t end at 18. Family is for life, not just a paper-based time frame.

Love is not enough—no matter where, or from whom, it comes. Real change is needed to stop children and families from being harmed by the very systems meant to support them.

PATCH challenges those systems that have lost sight of the child—where process overrides ethics, the lens is blurred, expert voices go unheard, judgement punishes, and children pay the price—first, last, and always. And where carers—regardless of their role or title—are not seen, respected, or valued in the way they deserve to be.