Refusing to let the children see previous foster parents, cutting them off from their few slender roots was deeply wrong. Spoon-feeding them to pretend they were babies is sinister. Even parents adopting a new-born have to accept a child already has a history. Adopters playing make-believe perfect families is a recipe for later disaster. Honesty about a child's origins is extraordinarily important.
Adoption has a patchy record.
Problems often surface in adolescence when adopted teenagers may believe with a vengeance what ordinary teenagers feel anyway - they don't belong, their parents don't understand them, and somewhere else other parents would love them more. If newborn adoptions can turn sour, it's much harder for those like Jade and Hannah adopted after years of turmoil. Social workers were right to worry how the Bramleys would cope with seriously troublesome teenagers. The court has to decide what's best for these children now. The social workers should have taken them away within six weeks, when they first thought the Bramleys unsuitable.