The Belay foundation helped us with exactly what we really needed - a trauma-trained physical person, in the home (or out of the house), spending time with Olly and catching up with me about how we can work together to help him/teach him specific things. Her help gave me much needed time to catch up with the huge amounts of admin that goes with having an adopted child with special educational needs.

Adoption in today’s society is not, as often portrayed on TV, a young mother forced to give up her baby because of social or religious pressures and leading to a beautiful reunion later in life. Sadly, now we have generations of children who have suffered neglect or abuse because their parents have addiction and/or mental health problems (increasingly social media related), or are under pressure from criminal gangs. Social workers try their hardest to help families turn around, but when everything has been tried they need to protect the children. When children are taken, often forcibly, from these environments, all those experiences are ‘caught’ in the body and neurological systems of the child and can only begin to be addressed once they feel safe – which is often at the stage of adoption. As Sarah Fry, CEO of the Belay Foundation says, 'we parents of adopted kids with special needs are like mental nurses 356 days a year with no pay,, no weekends off, no holidays, no pension, no colleagues no training and no IT or HR.’ It's really true. We absolutely cannot do this by ourselves - it needs both professionals and a geographical community who understand enough to be able to help our families.

The only pot of government funding for adopted children and those in 'special guardianship' has just been slashed by 40% per child (April 2025) and is severely limited in its scope. This is frightening to many families who urgently need help with some violent, suicidal and addictive behaviours still caught in our children’s bodies. We know we can turn it round, but families cannot do this on their own. If we don’t get the help we need, adoption breakdown can follow – costing local councils £7500 a week per child. For £50 a week (depending on the child’s needs), the Belay Foundation can help people employ an SSW like we had for Olly, turning our most vulnerable, angry and sad children into some of the wisest and most emotionally adept. Like some of the placards at the protest in London on 3rd May say, ‘Fund now, or pay later…’

By the way, 'Special Educational Needs' (SEN) does not mean that a child is unintelligent - Olly is very intelligent and loves to learn, often getting top marks in maths, however he is 'hyper-vigilant', a feature of both ADHD and Trauma, which means his brain is taking in too many signals from around the room to be able to focus on school work without help, especially in a class of 30 children.

Olly is testament to how children can change and get over the early negative behaviours associated with overwhelm, trauma and the other diversities which come with early adverse childhood experiences. When people show kindness and give the right support at the right time like our SSW did, and like Belay does in different ways for many families, the child's nervous system can relax and begin to believe that the world outside our house is not a dangerous one and that it is the role of a human to be helpful and kind. I notice on shows like Desert Island Discs, the disproportionate number of successful people who were adopted - making use of these hyper-vigilant brains and replicating the kindness and generosity they were shown as children.

During Belay zoom Board Meetings, Olly sometimes snuggles up to me and has regularly chipped in with good ideas from the point of view of a child. At the last meeting he said it would be his ‘pleasure’ to raise money for The Belay Foundation as someone who has benefitted from it.