Megan Pleva

The slammed door. The small refusal that detonates. The rage that arrives faster than you can respond to. For many adoptive parents, the hardest behaviours in their child are the angry ones, and the hardest truth about them is that the anger is almost always grief wearing a different face.

FASD, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, is estimated to affect a significant proportion of children in the UK care and adoption system. For many adoptive parents, it is the diagnosis they eventually consider when the trauma, the attachment work, and the sensory profile do not quite add up to the whole picture.

At panel, the financial conversation is usually about adoption leave. Five years in, the financial picture often looks completely different. The therapy that no longer fits in the funding pot. The reduced work hours that nobody planned for. The sensory equipment that adds up faster than the household budget can absorb. Here is what is rarely said about the long-term financial reality of adoption in the UK.