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Listen to thisImagine you’re a mother arriving at court, fighting for the right to keep your baby who was removed from you just after birth. Your local authority now says your child should be adopted. Despite everything your barrister has told you about the rigour of adoption law, you will arrive in front of the judge today with even less trust than you had before.
And the reason you have lost your last shred of faith is because your council is one of 12 in England that have been shown to set targets for the number of children they aim to have adopted. As a result of several years spent reporting on care and adoption cases, I’m now a committee member of the Transparency Project, a Bristol-based charity dedicated to increasing understanding of family law. It was this charity that made the freedom of information requests that led to councils confirming that percentage or numerical adoption targets were being operated for children in care.
Some councils were open about it. South Gloucestershire’s answer, for example, stated clearly that its adoption target for 2014-15 was 12 children – up from nine the year before. Some denied using targets, but then sent – perhaps inadvertently – internal documents that demonstrated that they did. Cambridgeshire council, which said it didn’t set targets, emailed over a document stating that if its target of 40 adoptions was exceeded, it would need to recruit more staff.
The UK is unique in how vigorously it pursues adoption without parental consent.
Nottingham said it worked to a variety of benchmarks, and didn’t mention numerical targets: however it also sent a progress report submitted to the Department for Education that said: “NCC has set an ambitious target of ensuring 55 children exit care with an Adoption Order by 31 March 2014.” The East Riding of Yorkshire sent documents showing that the government had imposed targets during the year 2012-13 by way of an improvement notice.
The ultimate decision to place a child for adoption is always taken by a family court judge. But local authorities influence what happens in court, and councils having targets for the number of children to be adopted is ethically repugnant. The right to a family life – where this is safe – is a human right enjoyed by both parents and children. The decision to place a child for adoption must be focused solely on what is the right outcome for that child. Every professional involved should be driven by this motivation alone. Put simply, our laws mean that 100% of children in care being adopted could be the right number – or none at all.
This is not a matter of dry legalese: if you believe in human rights, targets in adoption are dangerous. One risk is that children are earmarked for adoption very young, even when their mothers are pregnant when, if priorities were different, alternative solutions might be found. There are also obligations in case law for councils to put in place support enabling families to stay together. But a number of published judgments have made it increasingly clear that those resources are often squeezed reluctantly out of council coffers, which are down to their last few pennies due to successive rounds of cuts.
Unlike the days when there was enormous social stigma attached to being an unmarried mother, virtually no parents these days voluntarily give up a child for adoption. The most recent figures nevertheless show that 4,690 children were adopted in the year ending 31 March 2016. While the UK is far from the only European country to allow adoption without parental consent, research shows that it is unique in pursuing it so vigorously. In the Netherlands, for example, the average number of adoptions annually is 28.
When the latest adoption statistics showed a drop, this prompted agonised hand-wringing from the government and pro-adoption charities which insist that more adoption, done faster, is the right way to go. In the context of cuts, combined with a sustained government push for more adoption, it is worth remembering that adoption is far cheaper for a council than a foster placement, costing around £35,000 per year – because once adopted, that child is off the council’s books for good. Adoption is cheaper too than providing services that might ensure vulnerable parents can care for their children safely within their birth families.
Compounding the ethical problems of numerical targets are indications from some of the FOI responses that children’s services departments have on occasion been judged by Ofsted inspectors on whether they meet them.
The Catholic church in England and Wales recently apologised for its role in removing children from their unmarried mothers for adoption in the period between the 1950s and the 1970s. Imagine that you, 20 or 30 years from now, found out that your adoption might have been the result of a council target. How much trust would you have in the quality of the decision-making that changed your life?
Earlier this year I received the following email from a family lawyer: “Many in Europe believe that in the future, the UK government will be apologising to a generation of children who were swiftly and forcibly adopted through our family courts.” The lawyer believes such concerns to be justified. So do I.
Louise Tickle
13 December 2016
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/13/breaking-up-families-councils-child-adoptions
