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Adoption: Government Set To Overhaul System To Make It Easier For Potential Parents

Adoption

Huffington Post UK   First Posted: 22/12/2011 07:28 Updated: 22/12/2011 07:49

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The government is planning to revamp the adoption system amid concerns the current system is like the “Spanish Inquisition”.

Children's minister Tim Loughton said the current system was "putting people off" and more adopters were "desperately" needed.

A group of experts will draw up plans to overhaul the system, working with the coalition's adoption tsar, former chief executive of the charity Barnardo's Martin Narey, to work out how to streamline and remove bureaucracy from the system.

"This is a significant moment. We made the system work more quickly in the past and have increased adoptions, only for numbers to fall back again. But this will, I believe, ensure a permanent increase," Narey said.

"I am simply delighted that the children's minister has decided to set it aside and start again. This is a significant moment. We made the system work more quickly in the past and have increased adoptions, only for numbers to fall back again. But this will, I believe, ensure a permanent increase."

Statistics show children have to wait an average of 21 months before being adopted, and in 25% of cases it can take over three years.

Loughton said he was "determined to change this": "I have this week set up a new expert group to look at radical reform of the assessment process. I want it to be quicker and more effective at approving adoptive parents and matching them with children. We cannot afford to sit back and lose potential adoptive parents when there are children who could benefit hugely from the loving home they can provide.”

David Holmes, of the British Association for Adoption and Fostering, welcomed the review but cautioned that speed "isn't everything".

"We want the process to be as efficient as possible, to work as well as possible and really importantly, to be as consistent as possible across the country because we know how important it is to have a supply of adopters ready and waiting to adopt those children who are waiting," he told BBC Breakfast.

The group will start work in the new year.

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The government is planning to revamp the adoption system amid concerns the current system is like the “Spanish Inquisition”. Children's minister Tim Loughton said the current system was "puttin...
The government is planning to revamp the adoption system amid concerns the current system is like the “Spanish Inquisition”. Children's minister Tim Loughton said the current system was "puttin...
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Marchmont
75 Fans
01:52 PM on 12/22/2011
Tim Loughton, the Children’s Minister, has announced a new strategy to overhaul the presently deplorable assessment process for adoptive parents in this country. The present set-up is little short of a national scandal and though the new system will still be stringent and scrupulous, it will be faster, less intrusive and much less bureaucratic. Adoption clearly provides the best outcome and children must not be stranded for years in the care system in the forlorn hope of returning them to their biological parents. Many excellent adopters are turned down because they are not the right ethnic match or do not fit some other trivial requirement of the idiotic forms filled in social workers. There has been a lack of common sense so total it is almost a thing of wonder and too many adopters simply give up and adopt a child from the Far East or Eastern Europe. The consequence of this stupidity is that black, Asian and mixed-race children wait three times longer than white children for placement and most never get adopted at all. Safeguards designed to protect the young and vulnerable during the process of adoption have grown so complex and burdensome they fail those they were crafted to protect. The coalition’s intervention is laudable but a vast amount still needs to be done and, in particular, our family courts remain a byword for dilatory incoherence.
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Compassionnotreligion
Be awed & humbled by nature & empathy -not Juju.
282 Fans
12:47 PM on 12/22/2011
Couldn't come too soon.

It's a national disgrace when banal box ticking in order to cover one's back becomes more important than the welfare of these children. People who are trying to adopt are doing something very noble - they should be applauded, not made to feel like criminals that are guilty until proven innocent. This culture needs to change drastically.

Not blaming the social workers - they obviously have to follow the guidlines set, but I suspect they are not entirely blameless either. That's the problem with giving so much power - it can go to their heads. They should be judged on successful adoptions and time criteria.

If they actually DO something RADICAL instead of the usual namby-pamby trying-to-please the self-appointed and ironically named "moral majority" (who in reality are the opposite), this will be one of the few things they will have done in genuine service to the good of the country and society.
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stevesheff
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01:36 PM on 12/22/2011
First of all, it isn't social workers who formulate adoption policy - it's their Social Services Department employers. These in turn are overseen by local authority councillors.
It's true that many, if not all, social services departments adopt a policy of matching children with adoptive parents on the basis of, AMONG OTHER THINGS, ethnicity but perhaps there's more fundamental problem: why are there so many children from ethic minority groups in care in the first place?
The reasons are mainly cultural. In some BME communities, if a couple cannot have a child, a member of their wider family will act as a surrogate, have a baby for them' For better or worse, this form of adoption is never recorded. Then there are some cultures where, if a couple cannot have a child, another branch of the extended family will 'give' them one of their children. The decision over which child is made by the birth father and can cause a lot of resentment on the part of the birth mother.
It'll be an uphill struggle but a key to solving the problem is to persuade some cultural groups to look beyond their own families if a couple cannot have children of their own.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Compassionnotreligion
Be awed & humbled by nature & empathy -not Juju.
282 Fans
02:59 PM on 12/22/2011
Yes fine - whomsoever formulates the adoption policy then - and then doesn't evidently give social workers enough leeway to use their own common sense.

Here are the criteria councils apparently match/consider before they'll place a child :health, education, family past, religion, culture. Surely they are not decreeing that a child has a religion??? The parents might have have one, but a child definitely doesn't - until one is brainwashed into them.

Otherwise that would be akin to saying that a child is also born with a red or a blue label?!

I don't know about if or why there are disproportionately more "ethnic" minority children - perahps because of such stupidity as the risk of 'honour killings" (what an oxymoron) being a issue in some groups. Either way, I agree that it might be better for a child to have at least one adoptive parent who would have first hand experience of race issues, but it certainly doesn't have to match exactly - which is what is happening in some cases at the moment.
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HUFFPOST BLOGGER
Lawyer13
retired Lawyer, General and Psychiatric Nurse, wit
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12:10 PM on 12/22/2011
This has come not a moment too soon, these pc Social Workers are a disgrace, they need to be taught about real life, kid need love and a family, not unobtainable goals set by ill informed people.
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stevesheff
116 Fans
03:49 PM on 12/22/2011
don't forget that the social worker only makes recommendations. Their report goes to a local Adoption Panel which has about 10-12 members. These members include individuals who were themselves adopted and adoptive parents. With in this mind, there isn't much scope for radicalism. If the adoption works out, it's ratified by a judge.
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fredgladys
Your Micro-bio is empty, I know, stop nagging.
725 Fans
10:34 AM on 12/22/2011
'Spanish Inquisition-style' adoption system to be given re-vamp.

I know I shouldn't but I can't help myself - Nobody Expects The Spanish Inquisition.
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stevesheff
116 Fans
01:48 PM on 12/22/2011
A way to avoid the 'Spanish Inquisition' approach is to limit social workers to asking a fixed set of questions, probing enough to uncover essential information and avoid causing unnecessary embarrassment to the potential adoptive parents (i.e. a 'tick box approach! only joking!)
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