Adoption reforms: Couples freed from ‘slow, unnecessarily bureaucratic’ system

December 22nd, 2011

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

By
Steve Doughty

Last updated at 9:02 AM on 22nd December 2011

The red tape used by social workers to prevent couples from adopting children will finally be swept away by common sense reforms, ministers said today.

They condemned the current system as ‘slow and unnecessarily bureaucratic’ and for leaving thousands of children abandoned in state care.

Would-be parents have frequently been prevented from adopting children because they were the wrong race, overweight, or because in the past they had smoked.

Seeking adoption: Chloe, nine, and Katie, six. In September this year a devastating set of figures showed numbers of children in care had passed 65,000

Couples who have looked to adopt have complained they were insulted and abused during the assessment process.

Children’s Minister Tim Loughton announced the overhaul which will see a panel of experts devise a new system for choosing adoptive parents.

He said: ‘Children are waiting too long because we are losing many potentially suitable adoptive parents to a system which doesn’t welcome them and often turns them away at the door.’

He added: ‘The assessment process for people wanting to adopt is painfully slow, repetitive and ineffective.’

The reform pledge follows months of deepening anger among Tory ministers at the failure of social workers to put their own house in order, despite overwhelming evidence that a high proportion of children in care have been wrongly denied the chance of a better life with a new family.

In September official figures showed that the number of adoptions of children from care had fallen so low that only 60 babies were found new families in the course of a year.

In October, David Cameron ordered a name and shame campaign against councils where social workers delay or derail adoptions.

There have never been any published figures on the numbers of couples turned away for spurious reasons or because of the apartheid-style rules social workers use to decide which families are racially fit to adopt.

But this week adoption agencies reported a surge in applications after a BBC Panorama programme told the stories of six children desperate to find new homes.

In the 1970s around 20,000 children a year, many born to single mothers, were adopted by new families.

Numbers plunged in the 1980s alongside improved benefits and free housing for young single mothers, and the development of an anti-adoption mentality among social workers.

Over a 12-month period to March this year only 3,050 children were adopted from the care system (picture posed by models)

Social work chiefs decided that they ‘no longer want to see babies farmed out to middle class mothers’.

Race rules were taken up which said a child could not go to a new family unless they were a close ethnic match. But little independent evidence supports the contention that people cannot bring up a child from a different racial background.

In September this year a devastating set of figures showed numbers of children in care had passed 65,000.

Those growing up in state care – children’s homes or temporary foster care – suffer a high risk of leaving school without qualifications and going on to lives of joblessness and crime.

But over a 12-month period to March this year only 3,050 children were adopted from the care system, 5 per cent down on 2010 and 8 per cent down since 2007.

The new panel of experts will include representatives of organisations which have been deeply involved in sustaining the old, discredited process.

However it will work under the guidance of Martin Narey, the Government’s adoption adviser, who has been among the strongest critics of the social worker bias against adoption.

Mr Narey said: ‘The more I have visited local authorities and voluntary adoption agencies over the last few months, the more exercised I have become about a parental assessment process which is not fit for purpose.

‘It meanders along, it is failing to keep pace with the number of children cleared for adoption, and it drives many outstanding couples to adopt from abroad.’

The panel will consider a recruitment process which will not see couples coming forward being ‘lost to the system’.

It will be asked to speed bureaucracy and stop ‘over-prescription regarding information collected about prospective adopters’.

BLIGHTED BY RED TAPE

Adoption bureaucracy was illustrated in a documentary which showed children left waiting years for their future to be settled.

One child was shown being returned to state care just a fortnight after being adopted.

Another group of a brother and two sisters left their adoptive family after living with them for three years, and are likely to be split up if they are to be adopted again.

Adoption agencies said there had been a rush of couples coming forward to offer a home to a child following the BBC Panorama documentary.

David Holmes, of the British Association for Adoption and Fostering, said: ‘We need more people to consider whether they could give a home to a child through adoption.’

The documentary said some adoptions break down but no information is collected to try to prevent future breakdowns.

Here’s what other readers have said. Why not add your thoughts,
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It is the system itself which slows things down not the social workers. They are cogs in a large machine which needs an over- haul. No I am not a social worker but have first hand experience of the system which is understandably complex.

– summer, North East, 22/12/2011 09:00

I know the DM enjoys showing just one side of any argument but to see ‘Blighted by Red Tape’ as a heading for 2 adoption breakdowns is unbelievably pitiful journalism. Adoptions break down for many reasons. One major reason is that prospective adopters frequently do not appreciate the enormous task they are taking on, these are children who have very complex needs in many cases due to the abuse they have suffered. Red tape is not a cause of adoption breakdown, the reality of parenting an adoptive child is. I anticipate that within 10 years time there will be an inquiry into this speeding up of the process, an inquiry resulting from the death of an adoptive child and that inquiry will find that speeding up the process meant people were approved as adopters who were not capable of parenting these children safely.

– Liz, UK, 22/12/2011 08:39

Nothing that relies upon common sense can possibly succeed!

– Wendy, oxford, 22/12/2011 08:32

Gee thanks for cutting down the waiting time just as my husband and myself, both well respected professionals and sadly infertile, cross the adoption finish line in a time of 2 years, 9 months and 5 days!
(Not counting the 5 years wasted in the assisted conception clinic)

– Louise, Huddersfield, 22/12/2011 07:26

I think it very important that the adoption process be improved so that the likes of Chloe and Katie can be helped. I also think, however, that it is morally wrong for mothers to give birth to children that will go straight into care. For this reason I think the foetuses of deadbeat mothers should be aborted. Red arrow me if you like, but we can’t keep paying for the thousands who spend their lives in care and who grow up to be troublemakers.
– des, scotland, 22/12/2011 01:02
Des,
What is your definition of a “deadbeat mother” then? Who would enforce this, how and where would the line be drawn.
That’s a ridiculous statement.

– littlem, Manchester, 22/12/2011 07:16

Des, maybe if they have loving, permanent homes they won’t grow up ‘in care’ and troublemakers.

– Dee , New Zealand, 22/12/2011 06:09

My guess is the social workers and local authorities will ignore what the minister has to say and continue with business as usual, correctly classing it as meaningless government spin

– Rich, Chicago, 22/12/2011 01:12

– des, scotland, 22/12/2011 01:02

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