Children in care homes are struggling to feel the holiday spirit during the holiday season with high emotional responses to abandonment issues and higher factors needed for families to be able to adopt. Written by Ishrat Hussain
This places an effect on the mental health factors which are seen to increase during the holiday season. Children often feel misplaced and grieve the loss of their family members who are not able to be with them. This leads to feelings of abandonment and loss as they navigate through life feeling alone. This can affect their mental and emotional well-being as they adjust to their new environment. Children are often placed in group homes and the adult to child ratio means children are struggling to get the love and attention that they deserve, with many wanting to be part of a family.
According to the Children and Young People’s Mental Health coalition, “seventy-five percent of the five thousand and five hundred children adopted in the UK each year have significant mental health issues.” This means “children who are adopted are also almost twice as likely to suffer from mood disorders like anxiety, depression, and behavioural issues and research has also found no improvement in children’s mental health four years after they were adopted.” Those in care have lost their biological family and could be struggling mentally and emotionally as they adjust to their new surroundings without their loved ones. These feelings increase over the holiday period when they have been brought up in group homes or interact with others who won’t understand the trauma care children are going through.
There is an increase of children without families over the coming years. According to government statistics the average duration of the final period of care which is when children are adopted into families has decreased to one year and eleven months in the year twenty eighteen with many young children then being returned to the care system. The decrease in adoptions are due to the fact that the decision making stage and the time to match families with children is now taking significantly longer than in previous years which means less families are willing to wait to adopt.
Many children are out growing the system now there are fewer families who are willing to adopt a child. This means more children end up with less support till they become eighteen and are left completely alone which could do further damage to their trauma as they get older. Families need to be made aware that children in care are dealing with a massive change in their environment and need to be careful when dealing with their emotional and mental health needs. If more families were able to have the time and patience to go through the process to adopt a child, then they could change that child’s life.
