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The state makes for a bad parent. The number of children it brings up should be kept to a minimum
Children leaving care are more likely to end up in
prison than university. So it is excellent news(£) in The Times this morning
regarding the Government's determination to reduce the number of children in
care, by increasing the number placed for adoption.
It reports:
Babies taken into care will be looked after by the families who hope to adopt them under government plans to reduce the disruption young children suffer in early life.
David Cameron has told The Times that ministers will legislate to make fostering by approved adopters “standard practice” for infants under 1, so they can have a more stable start.
3,660 children under the age of one are in care. It takes an average of two years and three months for a child to be adopted – invariably being shunted around different foster carers including those providing respite care.
This cause great emotional damage, so often there is a grotesque self-fulfilling prophecy. The social workers decide that the child has become too wild in its behaviour for prospective adopters to cope, and the child remains in care.
Of course, the length of the bureaucratic delay is a scandal and should be sharply reduced. The delay varies sharply from one council to another as the transparency rules have now made clear.
But it also makes sense that, for however long the
delay, the child should be placed with the couple lined up to adopt it, with
the couple's status being foster carers.
The arrangement is not perfect – the prospective adopters would have the
intrusion of endless social worker visits until the adoption was confirmed.
There would also be the possibility of the adoption not being confirmed, and
the courts deciding that the child should be taken from them and returned to
its birth mother. But the foster first arrangement is still better than the
alternative. The charity Corum trains prospectve adopters who are willing to
foster first – "concurrent planning" as the arrangement is called. Of the 57
children placed, three were not adopted, but of the 54 who were, the results
were a success.
The change will come in under the Children and Families Bill will also prohibit that pernicious piece of political correctness that denied a loving home to black children on the grounds that an "ethnic match" could not be found in placing them for adoption.
Unfortunately it is necessary for some children to be taken into care. Their birth mother might have become a heroin addict and be incapable of looking after them. Indeed often the delay is too long before action is taken to rescue the child. But the presumption should not be for the child to stay in care for a prolonged period but to be placed for adoption.
For those children who do remain in care where possible they should be with foster carers rather than institutional children's homes. However boarding schools provide excellent results and far more children in care should be placed with them.
Following the evidence to secure the best interests of the child should triumph – not the ideological prejudices of left wing social workers.
It also makes financial sense. There are 65,520 children in care, costing the taxpayer £3 billion a year. Most are shunted around foster carers. But around 11% are in institutional children's homes at a cost per child per year of £126,000 (Eton costs £31,000 a year).
There is nothing inevitable about the number of children stuck in the care system rising. In Hammersmith and Fulham, where I am a local councillor, the numbers have steadily fallen from 394 in 2006 to 223 now.
The state makes for a bad parent. The number of children it brings up should be kept to a minimum.
Harry Phibbs
6 July 2012
