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INTRODUCTION

David Holmes CEO British Association For Adoption and Fostering:

Every child needs to be a part of a loving family committed to them for life. Adoption

has succeeded in providing that for thousands of children. But the system as a whole

is under severe strain and too often that directly impacts on children. The courts,

local authorities and the voluntary sector need to bear in mind that whatever

difficulties they encounter that it is the future life and prospects of a child that is at

stake.

Anne Marie Carrie, CEO Barnardo’s:

Adoption is one of the most profound interventions we can make in a child’s life and

there is overwhelming evidence to show how positive an experience it can be.

Dame Clare Tickell, CEO Action For Children:

Of all the options available to children who cannot stay with their birth families, we

know that adoption holds the greatest hope in giving them the stability and security

they need, offering them the best chance to thrive and flourish.

Andrew Flanagan, CEO The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to

Children:  

When children have been abused or neglected there is simply nothing more important

to aid their recovery than being cared for in a secure and loving family. As a society

we should never underestimate its importance, acting quickly will turn young lives

around.

Bob Reitemeier, CEO The Church of England Children’s Society:

Because there exists the sad reality in our society that some children should not

remain with their birth parents, adoption is a hugely important and vital service.

Anne Longfield, CEO 4Children:

For too many loving and caring families the dream of adoption sadly comes to

nothing. Families tell of a system which is off putting and inflexible which too often

feels that it is actively working against the very people that it was created to support.

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Meanwhile children are denied the opportunities that we know a secure and

nurturing home environment bring. We have to get a grip on the adoption system to

put children and families first.

Dr Chris Hanvey, CEO The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health

(writing in a personal capacity):

How have we, in the UK, got ourselves into a position where children languish in

care, prospective adoptive parents are sometimes perceived as an administrative

inconvenience and the system is driven by untried theory, rather than evidence based

practice?

Carol Homden, CEO Coram:

Adoption is the single most effective intervention for deprived and traumatised

children who cannot remain in their birth families. However valuable and caring

other forms of placement are, it is the legal status of adoption which underpins the

sense of belonging which can last a lifetime.

How can it be, when there is such unanimity about the transformational

impact of adoption, that numbers of adoptions in England are, historically

modest and, rather than growing, beginning to fall in number?

This report attempts to answer that question and identify why and how we

should seek radically to increase the number of adoptions in England and in

the rest of the United Kingdom.

Through most of my working life, both in working with offenders and then in

the children’s voluntary sector I have striven to defend interventions which

might, to some extent, repair the multiple disadvantages which face deeply

disadvantaged children who, in terms of their life chances, are at the bottom

of the pile. I have argued passionately for the cost effectiveness of

interventions which generally make a modest but significant contribution:

drug treatment and literacy training for offenders would be two examples

from my first career. Sure Start is an example from my time at Barnardo’s. But

none of these interventions, important as they are (and cost effective as they

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are) have the potential utterly to transform the life chances of a neglected

child in the way adoption can and does.

I knew a little of adoption when I arrived at Barnardo’s in 2005. Five of my

nephews and nieces were adopted and I was of course aware of how

successful adoption had been there, as the five grew up into adults who made

their fathers – my brothers – and their mothers, extremely proud. But in 2005 I

had little idea that this success could be replicated over and again,

particularly if adoptions took place while the child was very young.

What I discovered, first in parts of Barnardo’s, and then elsewhere, was an

approach to adoption which was at worst dismissive (one of the earliest

services I closed at Barnardo’s was one which helped to unite adopted

children in adulthood with their natural mothers but in a way which

suggested that the adoption – however successful – had been regrettable) and

at best apologetic. Much of the latter attitude persists today. One Chief

Executive of a major children’s charity, and someone whom I admire a great

deal, offered me a positive quotation about adoption but prefaced it with a

couple of sentences emphasizing the trauma of the child leaving their birth

family when, in so many cases, we are talking about something entirely

positive, rescuing children from abject neglect and giving them a family who

will love and value them.

Abject neglect is the sad reality for so many of the children we take into care. I

cannot emphasise that enough. Euphemisms like “chaotic” in social workers’

language so often mask the reality of the squalor and abuse which steadily

erodes children’s life chances. In just one London Borough, one third of the

children in care have been born to crack addicted parents. Are these children

to pay the price for that? We used to tolerate neglect and abuse much less and

intervene much more. The number of children in care in the eighties was

more than thirty percent higher than it is today. Does anyone believe that

better parenting has produced that fall?

The Times asked me to spend about eight weeks looking intensively at this

subject and I am extremely grateful to them for giving me this opportunity. In

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just two months and in a limited space I have not been able to look into all the

issues with the detail I might have liked and some issues, like adoption from

abroad, I have not been able to cover at all. But I am absolutely clear in my

conclusion, which is that we need to see many more adoptions and of much

younger children in the UK. At the moment we are denying far too many

children the loving and stable childhood which they need and deserve.

In preparing this analysis I have received invaluable help and advice or

support from a large number of organisations. Barnardo’s, and Jonathan

Ewen , Puja Darbari and Anne Goymer particularly so. David Holmes and

John Simmonds at The British Association For Adoption and Fostering

(BAAF) were extremely supportive and both helpful and patient as they filled

gaps in my knowledge and Carol Homden and Jeanne Kaniuk at Coram, who

are leading such innovative work, gave me great encouragement. Dr Chris

Hanvey at The Royal College of Paediatrics provided a guiding hand and

Action For Children, 4Children, The Children’s Society, the NSPCC, and the

Association of Directors of Children’s Services also contributed. Needless to

say however, all opinions here are my own and are not necessarily shared by

those who so generously gave their time.

I have made twenty recommendations which I believe are both pragmatic and

deliverable. But I do not minimize the challenge of their implementation.

There will need to be a sustained drive from government if we are to see a

dramatic increase in adoptions, and I am optimistic that we shall see just that.

In no small part that is because in thirty years in public service (which

included a decade at the most senior levels of the Civil Service) and then five

years leading Barnardo’s, I have rarely come across a Minister with such a

grasp of his brief as the current Children’s Minister, Tim Loughton MP. Over

the years he and I have sometimes disagreed as much as we have agreed. But

his encouragement of me in researching this report and his determination,

indeed passion, for increasing the lot of neglected children gives me great

hope that adoptions will grow significantly. As a consequence, we shall

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transform the lives of some of the UK’s most disadvantaged and neglected

children.

Martin Narey

July 2011

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CHAPTER ONE

TAKING CHILDREN INTO CARE

Adoption is the ultimate intervention in the life of a child and one that, we

know, can and does transform lives, particularly when the adoption is made

at an early age. But adoption generally only becomes a possibility when a

child has been taken into care, that is, removed from his or her birth parents.

And that process can often begin too late and then take far too long,

endangering the chances of a successful adoption (if that is what is best for

the child) or in some cases preventing adoption. Central to this report is my

belief that there is a very strong case for radically increasing the number of

adoptions in England and in the rest of the UK. But to do so will require us to

intervene earlier in the lives of large numbers of deeply neglected children

and to resolve their permanent future much more quickly. Delay in

intervention and then delay in achieving permanency for children is deeply

damaging.

The Family Justice Review, chaired by David Norgrove, reported in March.

This is what they had to say about the reality of delay for a child:

Delay really matters. All our understanding of child development shows the

critical importance of a stable environment and of children’s needs to develop firm

attachments to caring adults. Yet our court processes lead to children living with

uncertainty for months and years….

A baby can spend their first year or much longer living with foster parents, being

shipped around town for contact with their parent or parents, while courts resolve

their future. This represents a shocking failure, with damaging consequences for

children and for society that will last for decades.

The Family Justice Review’s concern is not new. But putting this right is not

simply about streamlining administrative and court processes. Frequently a

child is living in observed neglect for many months, years sometimes, before

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being first removed to care. One explanation for this, from my own

observations in running Barnardo’s for five years, is that many social work

practitioners and managers have significant objections about the propriety of

care. There seem to be three reservations of particular prominence:

• First, as The Times highlighted in April, we have interpretations of

attachment theory that encourages a view that, at almost any cost, the

relationship between birth mother and child must be maintained.

• Second, there is the issue of parents’ rights. Some practitioners and

academics believe passionately that in considering whether a child

should be taken into care there is a need to balance the interests of the

child with those of its parents.

• Thirdly, many practitioners, managers and politicians as well as parts

of the media have strongly held views about the negative

consequences of a decision to take a child into care: best summarised as

a belief that however bad things are at home, local authority care

makes things worse.

I believe all three reservations are misconceived and I address each in turn

below. But their cumulative effect in delaying early intervention in a

neglected child’s life in the UK means that when it does take place it may be

too late to achieve the stability a child needs. This is illustrated most strikingly

by the reality of the long-term outcomes for children taken into care at

different ages. As a highly regarded study by York University has confirmed,

very few children who first enter care under two are still in care at sixteen.

They have either returned home or become adopted. But children older than

two when first entering care are more likely to be in care at sixteen and those

entering care after the age of five are commonly still looked after when they

are aged ten to fifteen. Late entry into care has an extremely damaging effect

on the prospects of adoption. This is demonstrated by the depressingly stark

reality that fewer than half of one percent of children first taken into care after

their fifth birthday later become adopted.

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Attachment Theory

The evidence for the need for a child to form a close relationship with at least

one carer is not disputed. As The Royal College of Paediatrics teach:

• Babies and children raised in loving homes with at least one responsive parent

are likely to be securely attached. They are more likely to be resilient to the

ups and downs of life, be psychologically and physically healthy, do better at

school, make and sustain mutually-satisfying relationships, make a positive

contribution to society and be good parents themselves.

• Insecurely attached children may achieve such good outcomes but life may be

much more of a struggle.

• Those with disorganised attachments are most at risk and are more likely to

have mental health problems, misuse drugs and alcohol, become teenage

parents and be involved in anti-social behaviour and criminal activity.

Accounts of disordered attachment first appeared in the 1930s and 1940s

when a number of scholars observed the unhealthy consequences of raising

children in institutions. A psychiatrist, John Bowlby, emerged in the fifties as

very much the father of attachment theory calling attention to the acute

distress of young children separated from their primary caregivers

Bowlby asserted that a close mother–infant relationship was essential, saying

What is believed to be essential for mental health is that the infant and young

child should experience a warm, intimate, and continuous relationship with

his mother.

Bowlby’s work is not infrequently taken as the basis for the belief that the

natural mother and child must not be separated. In fact, that may be unfair to

Bowlby, who recognised the potential of an alternative, permanent carer to

build a bonding relationship. But in any case, certainly, by the 70’s, the

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interpretation of Bowlby’s work as stressing the unique bond between child

and birth mother was being re-examined. In 1972, Rutter demonstrated that

the main attachment between a baby and carer was not always with the

mother (in a third of cases it was with the father) and a warm bond with a

mother substitute could succeed.

Crucially, Rutter demonstrated that the baby’s attachment to a specific person

begins at about seven months and that successful attachments do not develop

simply because the baby spends a lot of time with one individual, the

intensity and the warmth of the interaction being more important than its

duration.

So, while attachment theory certainly points to the need for a loving bond

with one individual to be allowed to flower before a child reaches his or her

first birthday it does not support notions – held by many - that such a bond

can only be achieved between the child and his or her natural mother. What is

vital is stability.

In 1970, Professor John Rowe, an expert on attachment theory, demonstrated

the long term effects of a child having a number of carers before they were

aged four and the correlation between the number of different carers and the

emergence of problems such as sleeping difficulties, demanding attention,

eating difficulties, lack of concentration, temper tantrums and withdrawal.

In short, the evidence around attachment suggests that with an adoptive

placement a child’s physical, social, cognitive and emotional development

will compare favourably with children in the “normal” population,

particularly when the adoptive placement starts early.

The rights of parents

In 2010 the Institute of Public Policy Research published a paper of mine that

made the case for taking more neglected children into care. The Daily

Telegraph summarised the report. This prompted some correspondence from

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front line social workers – most of which was positive – but some criticism

from academics, including one Senior Lecturer teaching a Social Work Degree

course. She told me that I did not understand that a social worker always had

to balance what was best for the child with that child’s parents’ rights. This

was not a lone view. Some correspondents to the Daily Telegraph were

supportive of the academic’s stance. I believe they are mistaken and that

legislation is absolutely clear about this.

The 1989 Children’s Act first established what is known as the paramountcy

principle, that is that the child’s welfare is the paramount consideration.

Furthermore, the so called welfare check list – a key tool used during the

process - says that the child’s wishes and feelings must be considered whereas

the parent’s wishes and feelings are not a primary issue.

The academic who chastised me quoted the need to abide by Article 8 of the

Human Rights Act.

Article 8 says:

• Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and

his correspondence.

• There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this

right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a

democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the

economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for

the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and

freedoms of others.

But, as Liberty make clear:

Separation of family members will normally constitute an interference with

the right to respect for family life, although such interference may be justified,

for example where a child is taken into care for his or her own protection.

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Paramountcy has not been challenged either by the European Court of

Human Rights or by the UK Courts. Indeed in recent family law cases at the

House of Lords it has been found that the paramountcy principle and Article

8 are consistent.

Legislation and case law therefore sends a clear message that the job of social

workers, the courts and all those involved in the child protection process is to

be unequivocally the champion of what is best for the child. But I believe that

doubts about this will continue to linger and need to be removed by a firm

Ministerial direction.

Care Makes Things Worse?

When I left the management of the Prison and Probation Services to join

Barnardo’s in 2005 I was seized with a conviction that being taken into care

was damaging to children. In my defence, I had met so many prisoners who

had spent time in care that I might have been forgiven for concluding –

however erroneously – that their care experience is what had propelled them

to prison. Nevertheless, saying, as I did in August 2006, that the state, as a

parent, fails [children in care] terribly was both wrong and unfair. But I was

hardly out of step with general opinion. That view had been long established

and it has changed relatively little since. As recently as April of 2009, Barry

Sheerman, then Chair of the Select Committee on Children Schools and

Families talked of:

the perception that entering the care system is catastrophic for a child’s future

prospects.

Certainly when I added my voice to those making this simplistic and

fundamentally misconceived assertion, it brought only praise and an

invitation from Alan Johnson, then Secretary of State at Education to lead an

independent working group to examine the scope for reducing the numbers

of those in care. I was delighted to do so and confident that the significant

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drop in the numbers in care, which started in the eighties, could be given

extra impetus.

A brief history of the numbers in care

The fall in the numbers of children in care in the eighties was not the first fall

in recent decades. After the Second World War the number of children in care

fell steadily, dropping to a little over 50,000 in the mid fifties and stayed at a

relatively low figure into the sixties. But, in the seventies, the numbers began

to climb steadily as the reality of child neglect and abuse began to take hold in

the UK. By 1981 there were 92,000 children in care in England an increase of

almost 50% or 30,000 children on the figure just twenty-five years previously.

Of this 92,000, almost two thirds, about 58,000, lived in residential homes.

So there were almost as many children in children’s homes in 1981 as there

are in all forms of care now (that needs to be remembered when it is argued

that the current care population is too large). Inevitably, the costs of almost

60,000 children in residential care were seen as unsustainable and in any case,

a number of high-profile abuse scandals brought the residential sector into

disrepute. The large institutions began to close as the voluntary sector rapidly

abandoned its orphanages.

In the working group I led for Alan Johnson I was keen to help further drive

down the numbers in care seeing that reduction, incontrovertibly, as a good

thing. No one suggested otherwise, at least not publicly. But, sometimes, in

the margins of consultation events or at conferences, front line social workers

would sidle up to me to whisper their anxiety that the direction of travel was

not as clear as I thought. The whispers grew, I became nervous about my

initial certainty, and eventually my working group concluded, almost

certainly to Ministerial disappointment, that we should not have targets for

further reducing the numbers in care.

At about this time I started to see a little more of Barnardo’s own work in this

area. I recall a particularly fascinating day in one of our services talking to

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parents – or more specifically mothers – who were seeking the return of their

children from care. Our job was to assess their readiness to re-assume their

parenting responsibilities. What I saw made me uneasy.

My practice whenever I visited a Barnardo’s service was to reflect for a day or

two on what I had seen and then to share my thoughts with senior colleagues

and Trustees. After this visit I wrote:

[I was worried that staff] seemed to be working in a context which required them

not to do what was unequivocally the best for the child, but instead one which

tasked them, whenever possible, with keeping children with their mothers. One

family was described to me as being guilty of the most abject neglect of their

children who were filthy, suffered exceptionally serious dental decay and were not

attending school. Now fostered, the children, 10 and 14, were doing reasonably

well and were both at school. Meanwhile we seemed to see success in this case as

eventually returning the children to a mother who, I was told, had very limited

awareness of the inadequacy of her care for her children. I wondered why on earth

we would contemplate taking such a risk and the answer that “blood was thicker

than water” certainly did not convince me.

I went on to observe:

Part of the problem is, I fear, that these seem such illiberal things to think, much

less write. But I left this visit seriously perturbed that staff were working in a

context, overly influenced by considerations of what a Court might opine, in

which the interests of the child were not the overwhelming consideration they

should be.

As I began – tentatively at first – to utter publicly the view that we might have

to think about taking more, not fewer children into care, my motives were

attacked. Some correspondents said I was drumming up trade for Barnardo’s

Children’s Homes (ignoring the fact that the last one had been shut two

decades earlier). John Hemming MP dismissed my view without debate

blogging, simply, ‘Martin Narey is wrong’ and there was a great deal of

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offensive comment on the internet. Meanwhile, at successive presentations to

staff from Children’s Services Departments in two northern counties, each

host Director referred to my views, respectively as unorthodox and challenging.

But amongst the abuse, letters I received convinced me that this was a debate

worth having.

Meg, a Social Worker with decades of experience wrote to say:

I am 57 and started my career as a child care social worker but I found myself

unable to tolerate the incredibly low standards that were tolerable within the

childcare services...Thank Goodness someone is speaking up for all those children

whose lives are witnessed and about whom nothing is done.

I did not know it at the time but there was no shortage of very sound research

to back up my anxieties about the children we leave in neglectful and abusive

homes.

The reality is that care can be much improved and the current Children’s

Minister is right to be impatient about achieving such improvements. But,

even as it is, care is much to be preferred to leaving a child in neglect. As

Professor Mike Stein from the University of York has said:

The simplistic view of care as failing 60,000 young people should be confined

to the dustbin.

Extensive research, much of it commissioned by the Department for

Education confirm the Stein view. Very recently, in 2010, DEMOS were

commissioned by Barnardo’s to take a comprehensive look at the evidence.

DEMOS confirmed that:

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• Stigmatisation of the care system, combined with concern about the

upfront costs to the state, means that some children who might benefit

from the care system do not do so.

• When the care system is used effectively in this way it can be a powerful

tool for improving the lives of vulnerable children and young people.

• The mistaken belief that care consigns all looked-after children to a lifetime

of underachievement and poor outcomes, creates a culture of uncertainty,

increasing delay and leading to instability later on.

• There is now a substantial body of academic evidence that provides a

longer-term and more nuanced perspective on looked- after children’s

lives, taking into account the nature of their pre- care experiences and

comparing them with more appropriate control groups. This evidence

shows that care can be a positive intervention for many groups of children.

• Some groups of children whose entry to care is delayed by indecision or

drift are at risk of experiencing a longer exposure to pre-care adversity;

higher emotional and behavioural problems; placement disruption and

instability

More recently, and more vividly, Becky Hope’s All In A Day’s Work, published

in April of this year offers a frequently moving record of the experiences of a

social worker who has spent twenty years working in child protection. Her

preface could not be more stark when she says:

Children whose basic needs for responsive loving care are not met, and who are

left to flounder, have been found to suffer clear detrimental effects to their brain

development long before they reach anywhere near their first birthday. It has also

been found that children who have experienced severe neglect as tiny babies, but

are placed in long term adoptive homes before the age of six months are able to

make far greater progress overall than a child placed after that age.

[But} at present this research is not infiltrating social work practice in a way that

best supports the children who depend on us. To allow these research findings to

  16  

change our practice will require a change in the mind-set of all involved in the

process of child protection.

She captures the sad reality that too often we wait too long before removing a

child from parental neglect, sometimes because of an unjustified optimism

about the capacity of parents to improve. As Jonathan Ewen the Director who

leads for adoption for Barnardo’s told me:

Speeding up the decision making after a child first comes to the attention of

the authorities is key; research shows that most parents who are going to

significantly improve their ability to look after their child do so in the first six

months of the child’s life. If that doesn’t happen, then we need to be bolder –

and quicker - in making the decision to remove that child permanently.

It needs to be stressed here that I am not talking about cases where there is

room for doubt over whether or not a child has been neglected or the capacity

of the mother to become an adequate parent. This is not to deny that mistakes

are not sometimes made and that, however occasionally, decent and loving

parents suffer the horror of having their children taken from them without

justification. But front line practitioners know that those cases, however

regrettable, are overshadowed by a much larger number of cases where we

leave children too long and until neglect turns into abuse. I believe that most

lay people, most parents, would be deeply shocked both at the conditions in

which we routinely leave children and at our continued consideration of

returning a neglected child to the circumstances which led to his or her abuse.

In All In A Day’s Work, Hope describes her experience with a typical case

where a child had been physically abused, was in care, but seeing her mother

regularly (known as contact) with the possibility of a future reunion. The

child is Sarah and the mother, Julia:

Over the weeks since Sarah had been taken into care, Julia was often very late for

contact meetings and a couple of times she forgot to come altogether. Sometimes it

was suspected that she was high on something, at other times there was a

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suspicious smell of alcohol about her person. It was a frequent event for it to be

reported that she had spent her time reading a women’s magazine at contact and

often had very little time for Sarah at all, just making the very barest attempts to

interact. Sarah said little after these contact sessions but reacted silently with the

inevitable wet beds, disturbed sleep and very difficult behaviour at school.

Before her birthday Sarah was getting very excited about the prospect of a party

and presents and, during contact the week before, her mother had made repeated

promises in terms of presents, building up Sarah’s hopes. Sadly, when the pre-

birthday meeting with the mother took place, nothing appeared, her mother

arrived both an hour late and empty-handed. The long promised bike, the puzzle

and the skipping rope – all evaporated in vague excuses. Not even a card. Sarah’s

behaviour at the remainder of this contact session was of hesitation and confused

silence, but later her hurt came out in tremendously angry outbursts and

terrifying nightmares, plus some fights at school. This was the culmination of

months of disappointment with her mother’s disinterested behavior.

Why do we allow children to be damaged in this way? Sometimes it is

because sustained changes in parenting capacity can be and are achieved. But

the current system is gripped by an unrealistic optimism about the capacity of

deeply inadequate parents to change. Making the birth family successful

should be our first option, and I am not arguing that mothers should not be

given a second or even a third chance, just not a fourth, fifth and sixth.

This unjustified optimism in the capacity of deeply inadequate and

sometimes uncaring parents to change condemns children to a childhood of

neglect and sometimes abuse and damages their chances of leading a

successful life in adulthood. We should and do help parents to change and

when that is successful that is a great achievement. But we have to tackle the

naïve optimism that paralyses the system. And we have to stop letting

children down by returning them to parents only for them to be neglected

once again. This is not simply my view. Research supports it. In Case

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management and outcomes for neglected children returned to their parents: a five

year follow-up study (2010), Professor Elaine Farmer followed the fortunes of

138 children who had been taken into care and then returned to their parents.

She discovered that:

• [There was] a tendency over time for abuse and neglect to be

minimised so that referrals about harm to children [did] not lead to

sufficient action to protect them.

• Plans made during care proceedings did not work out in three fifths of

cases, often when children were returned to parents because of an over-

optimistic view of the possibility of parental change by guardians and

expert assessors, in the face of long histories suggesting the contrary.

And, most troublingly, she found that two years after those children had been

returned to their parents three in every five (59%) had been abused or

neglected once again. We cannot let children down in this way.

Findings from a University of York study (Jim Wade, Nina Biehal, Nicola

Farrelly and Ian Sinclair) also published last year echo Professor Farmer’s

findings. This study compared the progress and outcomes of a sample of

maltreated children some of whom were returned home from care with those

who remained in care. It was found that outcomes for the children who

remained looked after were better than for those who went home with respect

both to stability and well-being.

Judicial opinion

We shall not see many more adoptions, and significantly we shall not see

more of the most successful adoptions, until we begin, as a society, including

social work professionals, the courts, the media and politicians, to accept that,

  19  

however well intentioned, we leave some children, too long in neglect. As I

have argued here, a frequent reason for this is this strongly held but

misconceived belief that however bad things are at home, care will make

things worse. It is vital that Judges appreciate that this is not so. But in two

presentations to Family Court Judges last year there was bemusement at my

suggestion that care made things better, not worse, for neglected children.

This is hardly surprising when shortly after his appointment as President of

The Family Division, the most senior Family Law Judge, the much respected

Lord Justice Wall said:

What social workers do not appear to understand is that the public perception

of their role in care proceedings is not a happy one. They are perceived by

many as arrogant and enthusiastic removers of children from their parents

into an unsatisfactory care system

Social workers may sometimes get it wrong. I accept entirely that there may

be cases where intervention is inappropriate and unnecessary (although

sometimes, those who are concerned about such cases jump to the conclusion

that such errors mean all interventions are unnecessary). But it is very clear

that generally children are not removed from their parental home unless there

is the clearest evidence of their abuse and neglect. Even in the wake of Baby

Peter when applications for care increased significantly and there was some

speculation about social worker over reaction, research from CAFCASS found

that none of the additional interventions were premature.

The reality of care is best captured in an article published in the Journal of

Social Policy in 2009. Forrester, Goodman, Cocker, Binnie and Jensch

reviewed all British research since 1991. Their conclusion was that:

The studies consistently found that children entering care tended to have

serious problems but that in general their welfare improved over time. This

finding is consistent with international literature. It has important policy

implications. Most significantly it suggests that attempts to reduce the use of

public care are misguided and may place more children at risk of serious harm.

Judges must understand the truth of those simple sentences.

  20  

Recommendations:

I recommend that the Children’s Minister

- takes an early opportunity to advise local authorities of his,

Parliament’s and the Courts’ view on the absolute primacy of the

child’s interests when deciding whether a child should be taken into

care.

- ensures that the overwhelming evidence that care improves life for

neglected and abused children be communicated to Local Authority

and Voluntary Sector Children’s staff.

- ensures that the research evidence on the positive effect of care is

effectively communicated to Family Court Judges.

.

  21  

CHAPTER TWO

ADOPTION: A BRIEF HISTORY OF ADOPTION AND CHANGING

ATTITUDES

Adoption has been in existence for centuries and has generally taken place

without state supervision or interference. It was only in the 1920s that

adoption became legally recognised in Britain and then adoptions were seen,

primarily, as a way of providing security for war orphans and for raising - in

respectable circumstances - children born to unmarried mothers.

Pressure for legislation began after the First World War, influenced in part by

the concerns about war orphans, but also to discourage the advertising of

babies for financial gain: sometimes known as baby farming. At the same time

there was a growing concern about the suitability of some adoptive parents

but also about the need to give them some rights. Before legislation, biological

parents could, and did, appear at any time to demand the custody of a child

which they might not have seen for years and to whose upbringing they had

not contributed.

Despite the recommendations of a 1921 Committee on Adoption which

concluded unequivocally that adoption should be put on a legislative footing

there was significant government resistance. Eventually the 1926 Adoption

Act was a modest affair intended to allow adoptions which had already taken

place to be regulated and not intended to encourage a flood of new adoptions.

But, in fact, when the backlog of old cases had been cleared, the number of

new adoptions began to rise steadily, reaching 5,000 a year by 1936.

After 1926 political attention turned toward the regulating of the adoption

societies. A few of these were suspected of less than rigorous checks on

potential adopters with some of the smaller societies coming under huge

criticism and being seen as largely disreputable. Concerns about baby

farming re-surfaced.

  22  

In response the Departmental Committee on Adoption Agencies (the

Horsbrugh Committee) was appointed in 1936. The Committee’s work

covered not only legalised child adoption and the societies which organized

them but also the continuing and large number of informal adoptions which

continued to take place outside the jurisdiction of the 1926 Act.

The recommendations of this Committee led to the 1939 Adoption of Children

(Regulation) Act, which required a local authority to be notified of any

informal adoption of any child under nine years and made it illegal for

adoption agencies to advertise children for financial reward. The outbreak of

war meant that the implementation of this Act was delayed. Some believed

that this suited the Home Office, which continued to be unenthusiastic about

adoption legislation and regulation. But concerns in the early forties,

particularly in the media, that the abuses identified by the Horsbrugh

committee were on the rise led to the Act’s implementation in 1943 and from

that point Local Authorities were able to withhold registration from adoption

societies whose standards were not satisfactory.

Between the wars therefore, adoption had developed from being an entirely

informal process, standing outside the law to a reasonably regulated process

intended to ensure adoptive parents were of sufficient capability and

commitment and to afford them parental rights over their adopted child. The

1939 Act was of particular significance, establishing for the first time the

primacy of the child’s interests in adoption, something to be made emphatic

fifty years later by the 1989 Children’s Act.

Babies adopted from unmarried mothers

After the Second World War and until well into the seventies the emphasis in

adoption was in finding homes for a steady supply of babies born to mothers

unable to care for them. These included, very sadly, many babies born to

unmarried mothers who might desperately have wished to bring up their

child but for whom societal stigma made that impossible. But the extent to

which this was the case as we entered the modern era is sometimes

  23  

exaggerated. Many people believe that almost all the babies given up for

adoption in the seventies were born to unmarried mothers. But in 1974, for

example, of the 22,000 children given up for adoption, nearly half were born

within marriage.

Whether born within or without marriage the number of children placed for

adoption by their mothers meant there was a steady supply of babies who

were seen as very adoptable because they were newborn, developmentally

normal and white. The availability of such babies meant, shamefully, that

many children not seen as perfect, including black and mixed race children,

were classed as unadoptable. At the same time there was no shortage of

prospective adoptive parents and, in consequence it became possible to

restrict adoption by age, marital status, professional status and even wealth.

But from the mid seventies as abortions increased, steadily fewer children

were given up for adoption, and the availability of newly born white babies

rapidly diminished. The decline however was not a direct and immediate

consequence of the 1967 Abortion Act. There were more than twenty

thousand adoptions a year until the mid seventies and numbers did not fall

below 10,000 until 1983.

Attitudes to adoption as an option

Pregnant women in the UK are mostly seen to have a choice between giving

birth and bringing up their child or aborting the pregnancy. What seems to

have disappeared in the UK - certainly in comparison to the USA - is

consciousness about a third option: of going to term but allowing the child to

be adopted. Planned Parenthood, an American organisation that provides

reproductive health care and advice, which has recently and unfairly been

severely criticised for promoting abortion and whose funding has been under

attack in a number of US States, offers an entirely neutral view to those who

seek their advice:

  24  

Millions of women face unplanned pregnancies every year. If you are deciding

what to do about an unplanned pregnancy, you have a lot to think about. You

have three options — abortion, adoption, and parenting.

By contrast, and in the UK, any young woman approaching a range of

advisory services and local authorities is unlikely to find much

encouragement even to consider adoption as an option

A Times reporter, posing as a woman with a pregnancy she didn’t want,

contacted Marie Stopes to ask about her options and was immediately sent

material on abortion procedures. When the reporter asked whether there was

any other way, perhaps adoption, she was urged to come in and see a nurse

about the “treatment options” Only when she pressed about exploring the

adoption route was she told that they could “help with some phone

numbers.”

To their credit Brook For Young People did mention adoption as an option

and the Times reporter was told that it was completely up to her what

decision to take. But an advisor at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service,

when pressed about adoption hesitated before telling the reporter that their

specialist area was abortion, that she didn’t know much about adoption, and

that the reporter would have to approach other agencies.

Local authorities approached by phone referred the reporter to voluntary

organisations. On line, local authorities are, at best, silent about adoption. At

worst they dismiss it. This deeply unbalanced reference is on the website of

one large local authority :

A parent who is considering placing their baby for adoption must be offered

counselling and must be given time after the baby is born to reflect on their

decision. Many are sad about not being able to raise or have a relationship

with their child. Some have said that they eventually adjusted to the loss of the

child, but that the pain and grief lasted a very long time. Others have said that

life was never the same after placing the child.

  25  

Again, Planned Parenthood, while not denying the possible hurt after

relinquishing a child are more balanced. They say:

Many women who make this choice are happy knowing that their children are

loved and living in good homes. And they feel empowered in their role as birth

mother. But some women find that the sense of loss is deeper than they

expected. You may feel some grief after the adoption is complete. Or you may

be reassured by knowing that your child is in good hands. A range of emotions

is normal. And your feelings may be complicated for a while.

I believe that a woman with an unwanted pregnancy should be able to

consider all three options, including going to term and giving up her baby for

adoption. Pregnancy advisory charities, children’s charities and local

authorities need to highlight that third option better. I have hesitated to

express this view, so easy is it for it to be caricatured as an attack on abortion.

So I need to stress that I am, emphatically, in the pro-choice camp when it

comes to abortion. But a woman with an unwanted pregnancy, who at least

wants to explore the adoption option, should not be discouraged from doing

so.

Professional antipathy to adoption

The relative marginalisation of adoption in the UK reflects a growing

antipathy on the part of an increasing number of practitioners and academics.

Misunderstandings about the effect of state intervention, Human Rights

legislation and attachment theory (which I discuss in chapter one) have

contributed to that. But these misconceptions do not explain an antipathy

towards adoption which has reached the point where, in the eyes of many

practitioners and academics, it is seen as appropriate in only the most

exceptional circumstances. As one practitioner put it to me, adoption is now

viewed as a failure, a failure to make the birth mother’s parenting a success.

  26  

And there is sometimes a marked unwillingness to view the adoptive parents

as the parents. One local authority says this on its website:

It is an important part of an adoptive parent's role… to help a child or young

person deal with their feelings about being part of two families and it is

essential that efforts are made to keep a child's birth family "alive" for that

child.

This view of the adoptive child as having two families, the adoptive and the

real family, even when adopted as a baby or tiny child, is not uncommon but

must offend and hurt those who raise adoptive children unequivocally as

their own as well as sometimes confusing and distressing the child.

This view that adoptive parents can never be the real and only parents has

been given academic and practitioner credibility through the work of various

writers, most notably, Nancy Verrier, author of The Primal Wound (1994).

Verrier, herself a mother of an adopted child has written an undoubtedly

moving book. But its conclusions about adoption are wholly negative. She

talks of the primal wound:

As having been caused by the separation of the child from his or her biological

mother, the connection to whom seems mystical, mysterious, spiritual and

everlasting.

She is dismissive of any notion that adoption can have a happy outcome and

the adopted child being content with his new parents, saying:

Adoption is a traumatic experience for the adoptee. It begins with the

separation from his biological mother and ends with his living with strangers.

Most of his life he may have denied or repressed his feelings about this

  27  

experience, having had no sense that they would be acknowledged or

validated… He is wounded as a result of having suffered a devastating loss.

This is sharply at odds with the experience of many adopted children who

feel entirely secure in their acquired family. Verrier dismisses this as denial on

the part of the adoptee. And a mother contacted by her birth child in

adulthood but continuing not to want a relationship doesn’t know her own

feelings according to Verrier. The birth mother may be:

in a state of denial about her pain or she has some fear about other members of

the family rejecting her. Often the birth mother negates the importance of the

birth bond and convinces herself that the child had a good upbringing and

doesn’t need her. This is rationalization.

I accept that this book has had a profound effect on some adoptees and

adoptive parents but it offers an almost entirely bleak view. Some US

adoptees have been brave enough to say so. For example, the following two

entries were on an online discussion board where Verrier’s book was being

reviewed:

I was very disappointed to see how one-sided this book was, and I don't believe

in the philosophy that every adopted child has this primal wound. Making

such a broad generalization like this is very harmful to those who are learning

about adoption, and for the many adoptees who do not feel this way. This book

pigeonholes adoptees into being victims regardless of their situation.

Or:

As an adoptee myself, there was absolutely nothing in this book that I related

to. I never felt wounded or rejected because I was adopted, and after reading

and talking with women who have placed children for adoption, I can only say

  28  

that I look on it as an act made for the benefit of their babies and for the loving

parents out there who cannot biologically have children.

But in the adoption world in the UK I found an unwillingness to speak out –

at least on the record - against the bleak conclusions of this influential book

which is quoted extensively on anti adoption websites. BAAF might be

commended for publishing The Primal Wound in the UK but, I would suggest,

they need to be a little less generous in their praise of it (they refer to it as the

adoptees Bible). Rather, and in considering its effect on prospective adoptees,

who will find this book through the BAAF website, they need to make plain

that Verrier’s is one view and does not remotely reflect the experience of all

adopted children and parents.

Legislative interpretation

The interpretation of some key legislation does not help here and encourages

the view of adoption as something only to be considered when all else has

failed. Government guidance on Family and Friends care, issued this year is

very clear about the steps to be taken in accommodating a looked after child.

It says that where a child cannot be returned home the local authority

must “give preference to” a placement with a person who is a relative, friend

or other person connected with the child.

If family and friends OR? carers can offer loving and stable care (as they often

can) this is entirely proper But, as BAAF told me, this has sometimes

encouraged countless assessments of family and friends carers who are

patently inadequate. In one case where adoption was being recommended by

the local authority, the Court ordered six separate viability assessments of

  29  

family members. In another, the Court ordered an assessment of a homeless

relative. I address Special Guardianship, (the status often achieved by family

and friends carers who take over the parenting of a child) in chapter six. It is

clear that it can sometimes offer the stability a child needs. But it is vital that

local authorities and the courts do not search fruitlessly – and often

consecutively - for family carers and unnecessarily delay the eventual

adoption.

Recommendations

While in no way seeking to limit or discourage any woman’s access to

abortion, I recommend that local authorities, pregnancy advisory services and

children’s charities reflect on how going to term and allowing adoption might

be presented as a valid option for a woman with an unwanted pregnancy.

I recommend that the Children’s Minister ensures that where the best

interests of the child are clear and adoption seems to offer the best prospects

of permanency that it should not be delayed by the assessment of family and

friends OR? carers when there is clear evidence of their unsuitability.

  30  

CHAPTER THREE

WHAT’S HAPPENED TO ADOPTION RECENTLY? NUMBERS AND

DELAY

Although when compared to numbers in the seventies, adoptions are now

relatively few in number there has been a measurable recovery since 1999

when Tony Blair made increasing adoptions a personal priority.

In 1999, there were about 2,200 adoptions from care and this number rose

steadily, reaching about 3,500 by 2002. But as the sense of this being a Prime

Ministerial priority began to waver, so too did the rise in numbers. Very

modest growth continued until 2004 and then began to flat line and from 2006

numbers began to fall, dropping by about ten percent in two years. A modest

recovery in 2008 has not been maintained and, in the view of the Department

For Education, numbers “may have plateaued” at around 3200.

At the same time Special Guardianship orders (which I review in chapter six)

have grown and since 2005 when they were established increased in number

to more than a thousand a year. But these too have since fallen back a little.

Local Authority differences

There are striking differences in the number of adoptions completed by local

authorities. Although 9,600 children have left care for adoption in England

during the last three years, more than 300 have left care from some authorities

and fewer than ten in others. Even allowing for differences in authority size

these differences are hard to explain. Moreover, while some authorities have

been cautious about Special Guardianship (fourteen local authorities had no

such orders in 2009 -10 and four had none in any of the last three years) some

authorities have seized upon this new option and in eleven of them

Guardianship is as well used or more used than adoption. That may be

troubling as I explain in chapter six.

  31  

There are similar and inexplicable differences in the ratio of children adopted

in each authority relative to the number of looked after children. This varies

from one percent to ten percent. Why is it that, in the North East, Hartlepool

consistently finds adoptions for more than twenty percent of children leaving

care (23% in 2010), but in nearby Middlesbrough the figure is only around

eleven percent (7% in 2010)? In the North West why does Bury consistently

find adoptions for more than twenty percent of its children leaving care (30%

in 2010) while Warrington does so for only around 13% (9% in 2010)? And in

the West Midlands, why does Walsall find adoptions for around a quarter of

children leaving care (27% in 2010) while Coventry can only do so for around

ten percent of their children (8% in 2010)?

What seems very clear is that these contrasts cannot be explained by

differences between the type of children in care in different local authorities.

On the contrary, according to DfE the explanation is that:

Decisions about adoption must have been influenced by local policy and

practice and different views about which looked after children might benefit

from adoption

Delay

At the same time the length of time taken to complete adoptions bears little

resemblance to the time limits laid down in national guidance. One reason

why there were only seventy babies under 12 months adopted last year in

England is that the process takes so long. As BAAF told me, even when

adoption is identified as the best option at birth, and when the mother makes

no opposition, that adoption may not be completed until the child is well past

their first birthday.

After a child has entered care (and, as I argue in chapter one, there may have

been considerable and unnecessary delay before that happens) the decision

about whether or not a child should be adopted is required to be taken within

  32  

six months. But as The Times revealed in May, only one England and Wales

local authority managed that on a consistent basis last year. Once the

decision to move for adoption is taken, local authorities are required to place

a child with adoptive parents within 12 months. But fewer than 28% of local

authorities managed that in 2010.

This is not simply the fault of the Courts. But there is an urgent need to

address delay there and the recent Family Justice Review, chaired by David

Norgrove provides a brilliant analysis of the problems. As he says in the

introduction to the interim report published in March:

Cases now take a length of time that is little short of scandalous.

Reducing delay at court both for care proceedings and for adoptions and

moving quickly on David Norgrove’s recommendations needs to be pursued

with urgency by The Ministry of Justice. But even with court processes

streamlined there would still be unnecessary delay caused by a failure in local

authorities initially to pursue adoption and through time consuming

processes which are later duplicated at court.

One experienced practitioner told me that immediately a child is taken into

care, his or her case should be treated as an emergency with every and

immediate effort made to achieve stability and permanence. Instead, the

child, once in care, is considered “safe” and any sense of urgency in arriving

at permanence is lost. This view is supported by the fact that the average time

taken between a child being taken into care and being adopted is now two

years and seven months. And this despite the very clear evidence that the

chances of effecting a successful adoption are reduced for every month of

delay. The contrast with the USA is distinct. There the system is driven by the

imperative of preventing foster care drift and this is reflected in federal time

limits for the amount of time a child can languish in the care system. Our

  33  

failure to grip this as the Americans do has troubling consequences. As

Barnardo’s told me:

The key is doing everything faster. The younger the child, the more likely they

can be adopted successfully, the easier it is to find carers and the less likely it

will be that their plan will change and will cease to be for adoption. At the

moment it is believed that 25% of children’s plans change from adoption

because it is thought that they become too old and difficult.

Targets?

There is an argument in favour of the government re-introducing targets for

adoptions and such a re-introduction was a key recommendation from the

recent DEMOS report In Loco Parentis. Claudia Wood one of the authors of the

report argues:

Without a push from central government we will continue to lose adoption

numbers. There was a significant increase in adoption orders following Blair’s

targets.

But targets are not without their problems in such a complex area. The post

Tony Blair targets included financial inducements for local authorities and

this led to some suspicion that decisions on adoption were being taken

inappropriately. My sense is that what matters here is leadership. Targets for

local authorities should not be necessary if there is a clear steer from Michael

Gove and Tim Loughton, or better still the Prime Minister, that adoptions are

a priority. If Ministers (as I recommend in Chapter one) remind local

authorities about the absolute primacy of the child’s interests and that taking

a child into care should not be delayed or avoided because of misconceptions

about the effect of care or the Human Rights Act. And if adoption is promoted

as an option which should be considered much earlier for children in care I

  34  

am confident that we would quickly see the beginning of a sustained

recovery.

But that does not mean that local authority performance should not be

measured. My experience in senior public and voluntary sector management

roles is that comparative performance information, including league tables,

has a dramatic effect on improving overall performance. I recommend that

DfE regularly produce comparative information for local authorities

identifying rolling totals of adoptions finalised along with the time taken to

complete those adoptions. The recently DfE publication of a data pack on

adoptions has provided a good basis on which to build.

I am instinctively cautious about calling for organisational change. My

experience is that it can divert attention and resources and can delay

improvements when a concentrated grip on an issue through existing

organisational structures can succeed relatively quickly. But there is an

argument in favour of changing the way we manage adoption and ceasing to

rely on the sometimes limited enthusiasm of local authorities. Dr Chris

Hanvey, currently Chief Executive of The Royal College of Paediatrics and

Child Health, an ex Deputy Chief Executive at Barnardo’s, and CEO of Coram,

but writing in a personal capacity makes the argument well:

Adoption is the supreme expression of Richard Titmuss’ gift relationship. It is

driven by altruistic acts, which give new life to children in need while also

enriching the “donors”. How, then, have we, in the UK, got ourselves into a

position where children languish in care, prospective adoptive parents are

sometimes perceived as an administrative inconvenience and the system is

driven more by untried theory, rather than evidence based practice?

Three actions are now necessary. Firstly, the establishment of a National

Adoption Agency that takes over the responsibility of local authorities.

Despite the attempts by former Prime Minister Tony Blair to breathe new life

  35  

into local authorities, the evidence is that they have failed to provide high

quality services over many years.

The Agency should have two elements. To begin with, national adoption

targets which are annually reported to the Secretary of State with the freedom

to work across all local authority boundaries. Secondly, a vastly speeded up

process from the assessment of potential carers to the placement of children.

There is no reason why an assessment should take six to nine months to

complete. A new model, based on the American practice of recording tangible

facts, rather than subjective judgements, should be introduced. The Agency

should have a very focused research arm, evaluating trends, informing

adoption workers and promoting best practice based on research.

The second major action needed is the total replacement of local authority

adoption panels with regional boards that are part of the new National

Adoption Agency. They should not only be responsible for approval and

matching, but also progress chasing, measuring trends and ensuring that

annual targets are met. And, of course, the big advantage of a National

Agency will be the ability to match adoptive parents with children – in

whatever part of the country. This would resolve the current postcode lottery

of matching.

Thirdly, the family court system and legal processes need streamlining, in

order to speed up the time scales, reduce legal barriers and provide another

check on regional adoption boards. The current tragedy of a child’s chance of

adoption being reduced due to the length of time they languish in care must no

longer be tolerated.

Ministers need to keep this option open and make it plain to local authorities

that it will receive serious consideration unless, across the board - not just in a

few large local authorities whose improved performance might boost the

  36  

national average - there is a step change in the numbers of children adopted

and the speed at which those adoptions are completed.

Recommendations

I recommend that the Children’s Minister

- look at how pre court processes might be shortened, with particular

reference to removing duplication with the work of the Courts.

- regularly produce comparative information for local authorities

identifying rolling totals of adoptions finalised along with the time

taken to complete those adoptions.

- make it plain to local authorities that the option of a national adoption

agency will be pursued unless there is an across the board increase in

adoptions and the speed of those adoptions (and not just in a few large

local authorities whose improved performance might boost the

national average)

  37  

CHAPTER FOUR

ADOPTION BREAKDOWN AND THE CASE FOR MORE ADOPTION

SUPPORT

Sometimes even those sympathetic to adoption express caution because of

what they see as a worryingly high level of adoption breakdown. They are

right to be concerned: a breakdown in adoption simply adds to the instability

which can be so damaging to a child.

I would not advocate adoption for many more children if I believed that

amongst the additional number there would be a high proportion of

breakdowns. But the truth is that when adoption takes place early in a child’s

life the chances of breakdown are genuinely minimal. But even adoptions

taking place when a child is older break down less frequently than is often

believed.

Sometimes the competitiveness of the voluntary adoption agencies can be

unhelpful. Action For Children, for example, claim on their website that the

breakdown rate for AFC adoptions is just 3% but they compare that with an

average breakdown figure of between 25% and 30%. The Guardian recently

estimated adoption breakdowns as running at 20%. In Adopting A Child, a key

BAAF publication and just re-printed, the 20% figure is quoted. I believe there

is significant evidence that estimates of 20% and more may exaggerate the

reality of adoption breakdown.

Evidence from Romanian adoptions

The reality is that we do not know, with any certainty, what proportions of

adoptions break down, and, as with so much debate around adoption,

  38  

anecdote sometimes dominates discussion. However, two recent studies of

long term outcomes following the adoptions of highly challenging children

suggest that the breakdown rate may be lower than traditionally quoted.

Over some years and as Chief Executive of Barnardo’s I was told frequently of

the tragic experiences of children adopted from Romanian orphanages and

the very high breakdown rates as damaged children wore out parents unable

to compensate for the harshness of the treatment experienced by these babies

and young children while in public care in Romania.

These children’s treatment in Romania was certainly harsh. As Professor

Michael Rutter described in 1998, this was the experience of children in

Romanian orphanages which was exposed by the fall of Ceausescu in 1989:

In most instances the children were mainly confined to cots; there were very

few toys or playthings ,and sometimes none at all; there was very little talk

from caregivers; no personalised caregiving; children were fed gruel by bottles

using teats with large holes, often left propped up without any caregiver being

involved; and there was a variable, but sometimes harsh, physical

environment. The children were often washed down by being hosed with cold

water.

Professor Rutter followed the fortunes of 165 of these children adopted into

the UK and aged up to three and a half years of age but concentrated on those

(98 of the sample) who had lived in these appalling conditions until at least

the age of six months. They were followed until they reached their fourteenth

birthday.

It is significant to point out that at the time these adoptions took place that

their failure was widely predicted. Many local authorities did all they could

to prevent them taking place and in the event some of these children,

immensely challenging as they were, became adopted by parents who would

not have been approved for the adoption of a UK child, perhaps because they

  39  

were too old or they had children already. This encouraged the dire

predictions of catastrophe and – as I experienced subsequently – confident

assertions that the predicted breakdowns had indeed occurred.

When arriving in the UK the children provided an immense challenge. Rutter

described the children as having a developmental level which was severely

impaired. But while other studies followed the fortunes of those children who

remained in Romanian institutions and whose psychological impairment did

continue, Rutter found that in all cases the children adopted into the UK

caught up developmentally and of the 165 children studied there were only

two breakdowns. That is not to say that some of the adoptions had not been

difficult, particularly for children who experienced the emotional poverty of

Romanian care for more than six months, half of whom experienced

psychological problems as they grew up in the UK. But contrary to popular

opinion their parents had not given up and those problems had been

managed. Very significantly for wider adoption policy, Rutter found

psychological problems in children who left the orphanages before they were

six months were negligible, leading him to conclude that psychological

deficits are uncommon even after profound institutional deprivation, as long

as that deprivation lasts only some months.

UK breakdowns after older adoption

The second study which places some doubt on estimates of up to 30% for

adoption breakdown was of older and more challenging children placed for

adoption in the UK. If a general adoption breakdown rate of 20% or 30% were

accurate we might expect the breakdown rate for this group to be much

higher, perhaps 60%. But in 2006 Rushton and Dance published research into

a group of children, all adopted between the ages of five and eleven, a very

  40  

high risk group. The children were followed until their fourteenth birthday

by which time only 23% of adoptions had broken down.

This suggests that the overall adoption breakdown rate may be rather lower

than the 20% to 30% figure which is quoted so often. It may be much nearer to

10%. I found BAAF’s consideration of this thoughtful and convincing and

they suggested that the breakdown rate for the over five group might be

generally around the 23% figure discovered by Rushton and Dance. But they

believe that the figure for those adopted between one and five might be

nearer to ten percent and for those adopted under 12 months just three

percent. All this reinforces the point that adoption, compared to almost any

other sort of social work intervention is dramatically successful. Even for

those adopted after five, success is achieved in nearly 80% of cases. For

younger children and babies the chances of disruption are genuinely minimal.

Post Adoption Support For Older and/or Particularly Challenging

Adoptions

The learning point when looking at the correlation between the age of

adoption and breakdown is to ensure that more adoptions are completed

early: that completion is seen as a matter of urgency on a par with the way we

view the importance of prompt medical treatment for a child’s illness. Some

adoptions take place so late as to put the adoption in increased peril of break

down. And then, when breakdown does occur, that failure is used to discredit

adoption generally. As Coram put it to me:

Adoptions take place too late and then, when they break down, this is taken as

proof that adoption doesn’t work.

In an ideal world there might be post adoption support for all adoptive

parents. But to make such a recommendation here would be unnecessary,

when adoptions of babies and young children overwhelmingly proceed well,

  41  

and self indulgent, when public spending is under such pressure as to make

universal support impossible. But there is a case for exploring the cost

effectiveness of post adoption support for the adoption of older and

challenging children where the likely break down rate is higher.

A recent cooperation by The Cass Business School and the Accountants Baker

Tilly and led by Baker Tilly’s Head of Charity and Education Advisory

Services, Jim Clifford, has made a compelling case for greater support for

such adoptions.

The study looked at twenty adoptions of difficult to place children arranged

by Parents and Children Together (PACT) which has for some years now

specialised in finding adoptive families for children with exceptional needs.

PACT’s preparation of adoptive parents pre adoption and support afterward

is impressively comprehensive. Post adoption support includes:

24 hour phone support;

regular one day workshops focusing on issues of interest to adoptive

families;

linking adoptive families who have had previous experience;

advocacy work where parents are requesting a service from another

agency;

access to a play therapist;

local groups and a fathers’ group;

training on specific issues; and

informal “buddying”

Baker Tilly and Cass looked at the social return on investment, broadly

speaking the value of benefits achieved after taking into account any

additional upfront costs. Their methodology is widely used and entirely

credible.

  42  

In looking at just twenty PACT placements which have a very low disruption

rate and after taking account of the costs incurred by local authorities in

buying in support from the voluntary sector and then calculating longer term

savings to the state (from, for example, the costs of a child remaining in care

and then after care, reduced levels of state support than had they left care at

adulthood, better educational attainment and greater employability) the

study concluded that the twenty adoptions would save the state more than

£20 million.

Almost everyone I spoke to about post adoption support singled this out as

something which might make an immense difference, particularly for some

children who, because of their age, are seen as increasingly hard to place. The

Children’s Minister told me that his instincts were to prioritise investment in

this area as soon as resources allow. The problem in the short term however is

that resources do not allow, certainly not in local authorities. However, those

resources are often available now in voluntary sector organisations and there

may be a role for them in carrying the burden of the initial costs, being

refunded by local authorities when the adoptions are stable. This Social

Impact Bond approach is something I also recommend so as to allow the

spread of concurrent planning adoptions (see chapter five)

In the shorter term it is vital that the provision of post adoption support does

not get worse as financial pressures on local authorities encourage short term

economies. As Jonathan Ewen at Barnardo’s told me:

The 2002 Adoption & Children Act gave a clear message about the need to

provide adoption support, to whom it was to be provided and a framework for

assessment and planning. The awareness of and commitment to this is

extremely variable even at the placement stage. At a time of financial cut backs

it is the area most vulnerable to being jettisoned. The Social Return on

Investment calculations of offering support to adoptive families is very clear

but short term budgetary concerns take precedence in many cases.

  43  

Any retreat on post adoption support would put at risk the success of more

adoptions and would be exactly the opposite of what I know the Children’s

Minister wants. He needs to ensure this does not happen

Recommendations

I recommend that the Children’s Minister

- ensure that the evidence of the success of adoption – particularly early

adoption - (including low breakdown rates) be communicated to local

authorities, the voluntary sector, the press, the courts and the public.

- explore with the voluntary and private sector the scope for applying

the principles of social impact bonds to adoption support for older and

particularly challenging children.

- engages with the Association Of Directors of Children’s Services to

ensure – whether or not as a consequence of spending pressures - there

is no short term retreat on post adoption support.

  44  

CHAPTER FIVE CONCURRENT PLANNING AND A GREATER ROLE FOR THE

VOLUNTARY SECTOR

From almost the moment I arrived at Barnardo’s in 2005 colleagues spoke to

me enthusiastically about concurrent planning, a practice whereby a child in

care is placed as soon as possible with foster carers, who, in the event of

adoption becoming necessary, will adopt the child. The family provides foster

care for about a year during which time the birth parents have contact with

the child and are helped to make themselves suitable to reassume the care of

their son or daughter. But, at the end of the twelve month period, if the birth

parents are deemed not able to care for the child, formal adoption by the same

foster carers takes place. It is a model of practice first developed in the 1980s

in the USA. Its import into the UK was in the belief that it would lead to

speedier resolution of legal procedures and achieve earlier permanency for a

child in care in place of the drift which characterizes most pre adoption

processes. Putting a child in the foster care of the family who might

eventually adopt it does not assume adoption is the only way forward.

Prospective adopters are required, during the fostering period, to work with

the birth parents and where possible facilitate the child’s return to those

parents. That does sometimes happen and concurrent planning provides an

emotional challenge for would be adopters who may have to give up a child

they have cared for over many months. But, in most cases, adoption follows

and the child experiences the security, stability and attachment to one set of

carers: its future parents.

Evidence for the effectiveness of concurrent planning in the UK has been

emerging over the last ten years. It has been successfully championed in the

UK by the excellent voluntary adoption agency Coram who have worked with

  45  

five London Boroughs (Harrow, Camden, Hammersmith and Fulham,

Islington and Waltham Forest) Coram have now placed 56 children, most of

them aged under 12 months, into concurrent planning placements. Many of

the babies had been exposed to alcohol and addictive substances pre birth

and to poor ante natal care. All but three of the babies were subsequently

adopted by the parents who had fostered them.

This is a recent case study from Coram:

Chloe and Daisy’s Story

Chloe and Daisy are twins who were adopted in July 2010 at the age of 15 months.

They were born 3 weeks premature and on their discharge from hospital were placed

with concurrent carers Millie and Jack. They only had to contend with that one

move from hospital to their carers who later adopted them, so although the court

process was prolonged, they have benefited from placement at the earliest opportunity,

providing the optimum possibility for the development of secure attachments.

Chloe and Daisy’s birth mother is Jill. It is not known who their birth father is.

The decision to place the twins with concurrent carers was made because Jill and her

previous partner Darren had not been able to look after their two older children Jacky

(4) and Ben (2). Both children had been removed from Jill and Darren’s care a year

previously having been severely neglected, both parents had alcohol problems and

there had been serious domestic violence in the household. These children were placed

for adoption with another of Coram’s adoptive families, and all the children have

contact with their siblings several times per year. The older children not only came

into care later, but also experienced several changes of foster carers.

By the time Chloe and Daisy were born, Jill, had made some changes in her life: she

had terminated her relationship with Darren and had attended a programme for

alcohol misuse. However despite some progress, Jill remained very isolated in society

and did not have a model of ‘good parenting’ from her own childhood, having been

  46  

brought up by drug using parents and suffering serious neglect. The prognosis of her

being able to meet the twins’ needs was poor from the outset, given her history.

For the concurrent carers, Millie and Jack, the period of fostering whilst care

proceedings were under way was stressful. The care of baby twins was demanding

and they also brought Chloe and Daisy for contact with Jill three times per week,

which disrupted the ordinary routines that babies need. In addition they had to

manage the uncertainty of not knowing whether the twins would stay with them.

In the event Jill found it difficult to maintain her abstinence, and her former partner

reappeared, which resulted in further instances of domestic violence. By the time the

final hearing arrived, Jill could see how settled the twins were, and how well their

concurrent carers looked after them. She also felt confidence that they understood

how difficult it had been for her, and that they would help the children to understand

that she loved them and wanted the best for them. She therefore did not oppose the

final hearing.

(Names and some details have been altered to preserve anonymity)

Coram’s partnership with Harrow

Local Authorities have been generally been cautious about giving a wider role

to voluntary adoption agencies (believing, wrongly, they are more expensive)

and even more nervous about embracing concurrent planning, some

accepting that the results are impressive but believing the process is too

expensive and that they would need to employ more social workers at a time

of extreme budgetary restraint. Harrow Council deserve great credit for

taking the first step in both giving a greater role to the voluntary sector and in

trialling concurrent planning by, in 2006, inviting Coram to provide the

Borough’s adoption service, working alongside local authority staff.

This has involved the management of all adoptions, not simply introducing

concurrent planning placements. The results have been impressive. Since the

establishment of the partnership the proportion of children leaving care in

  47  

Harrow, either for adoption or special guardianship has increased nearly

seven fold (from 3% to 20%). And because children were leaving care at a

faster rate – and almost uniquely - Harrow has not seen an increase in the

overall number of children in its care. Like all other local authorities, and in

the wake of Baby Peter, they saw an increase in children coming into care but

children were leaving care just as quickly.

As well as the process working faster the Coram approach had 100% success

in finding adoptive parents for all Harrow children for whom adoption had

been identified as the likely way forward. This included children considered

difficult to place. Up to now the disruption rate for Coram adoptions at

Harrow is zero. Seven of these successful placements have followed the

concurrent planning approach.

There were some additional costs for Harrow when bringing Coram into the

authority. Coram imported additional staff to work alongside the Local

authority social workers. But the medium and longer term savings as

fostering and residential home costs were reduced cannot be in doubt and

have been validated by KPMG.

KPMG looked at the 38 children adopted between 2006 and 2010 and

estimated the likely costs falling to Harrow had accelerated adoption not

taken place. Overall and taking account of the costs of the partnership with

Coram, Harrow avoided expenditure of £440,000 in 2010/11 alone.

Coram are now on the verge of replicating the Harrow partnership with two

other local authorities. That will almost certainly benefit adoption work in the

round and it will give a boost to concurrent planning.

But concurrent planning needs to be rolled out much faster than this. Despite

the emerging evidence of effectiveness, there remains a distinct lack of

enthusiasm for this approach. At one point Coram’s partnership with the five

London authorities to provide concurrent planning placements was on the

verge of failing due to a lack of referrals and concurrent planning was tried in

Brighton but has not flourished, in part I was told, because of judicial

antipathy and concerns on the part of judges and social work professionals

  48  

that a concurrent planning placement was a fait accompli. One Director of

Children’s Services, otherwise very committed to adoption, told me that he

saw concurrent planning as having limited scope.

There seem to be two obstacles to a much faster expansion of concurrent

planning. The first is the negative shift in attitudes toward adoption which I

discuss in chapter two.. The second obstacle is financial. A typical voluntary

adoption agency fee in London is in the region of £30,000. The Coram

concurrent planning fee is between £38,000 and £42,000 and may increase.

Local authorities will often find such fees hard to swallow even when this

expenditure will deliver longer term savings for the local authority. (I was

told of one local authority that had postponed adoptions toward the end of

one financial year, because the dedicated adoption budget was spent even

though this meant expenditure in care and fostering costs would rise more

substantially).

Voluntary Adoption Agency Costs

Greater use of voluntary adoption agencies (VAAs) by local authorities -

whether to boost concurrent planning or more generally - has been resisted

primarily because of a consistent local authority view that VAAs – however

good they might be - are too expensive (this was one of the first things I was

told by a local authority colleague when I arrived at Barnardo’s in 2005).

VAAs have often been sceptical about this believing that in comparing a fee

from a VAA to the cost of an adoption provided in house, local authorities fail

to take account of their own, often considerable on costs, not least the costs of

pension schemes which are now generally much lower in the voluntary and

private sector.

This has been substantially resolved by research in 2009 at the University of

Bristol (Julie Selwyn and others) which, using 2008 figures, compared local

authority costs (the fee for an adoptive family provided by another local

  49  

authority, at about £12,600) with a VAA fee (of around £20,000 with an

additional sum of around £3,000 for post adoption services). Selwyn found

that local authorities belief that LA costs were smaller than VAA’s was

misconceived and that the true cost of an adoption placement whether

provided in house or by a VAA was around £36,000 (meaning that most

VAAs save significant money for local authorities).

This demonstrates the value for money of using voluntary adoption agencies.

But it does not remove the challenge for many local authorities, right now, to

find the additional upfront cash. The answer here is for local authorities to

allow voluntary organisations like Coram to provide adoptive parents but for

the voluntary organisation to pay the upfront costs, being later compensated

by the local authority – with interest - when the adoption is secure. Not all

VAAs may be able to do this. But many have significant reserves which –

entirely properly – they invest to protect their future. Some of that investment

could be directed toward adoption and the return on investment could at

least match financial market returns. This needs further exploration and the

return on the VAA investment might need to be varied dependent on the age

of the child and the likelihood of breakdown. A return on a VAA fee of, say,

£30,000 might be as high as 30% a year for a hard to place child, meaning a

payment to the VAA, two years after the adoption of around £50,000. This

form of Social Impact Bond for adoptions would provide very significant

savings for local authorities while boosting the role of VAAs. It needs further

exploration but the informal reaction of two VAAs, both leading players in

the voluntary sector, when I put this to them was positive. I make a similar

recommendation in chapter four on the application of an SIB approach to post

adoption support.

Recommendation

I recommend that the potential to apply the principles of social impact bonds

to adoptions but with an emphasis on boosting concurrent planning

placements be explored by the Children’s Minister.

  50  

CHAPTER SIX

SPECIAL GUARDIANSHIP

Adoption is not the only means of obtaining greater stability for a looked after

child.

Long term fostering can often achieve that. But it does not always allow the

child or young person to feel a sense of security and belonging. And however

long term the fostering arrangement, the foster parent does not have parental

responsibility and therefore has no legal right to have a say in the decisions

involving the child or young person they are raising.

A residence order provides greater security for the young person and gives

parental responsibility to the person holding the residence order. But the

parental responsibility is only equal to that of the birth parent(s) and therefore

agreement between the holder of the residence order and the birth parents

has to be obtained for all decisions affecting the child. And residence orders

generally terminate when the young person reaches 16

An important option which falls short of adoption is Special Guardianship.

The Adoption and Children Act 2002 introduced special guardianship and

special guardianship orders both of which came into existence in 2005. Special

Guardianship is an order made by the court that allows the Special Guardian

to exercise parental responsibility to the exclusion of all others. At the same

time the child retains links with his or her natural parents. The order expires

when the child reaches their eighteenth birthday. Crucially, the making of an

order means that the child is no longer in the care of the local authority and

that authority withdraws from the child’s life.

Special Guardians are able to make all the day to day decisions regarding the

child although for decisions of significance they need to consult the birth

parents. But for most decisions, even if the birth parents object, the guardian

  51  

has primacy (in for example deciding which school the child attends).

However, a special guardian cannot, for example, override a parent’s refusal

to consent to the adoption of the child.

There is no doubt that, in some cases, special guardianship may be more

appropriate than adoption, for example when an older child would struggle

to deal with the status of being adopted – or as frequently happens – there is a

close relationship between the carers and the parents, when, for example, the

carers are the child’s grandparents, and contact with the birth parents is likely

to be frequent.

In many cases, special guardianship is an ideal arrangement. But there are

two principal worries. The first is that it may be significantly disadvantageous

for carers to become Special Guardians because their new status may lead to a

withdrawal of financial and other support. If this anomaly were fixed we

might see a significant increase in special guardianship arrangements.

But an increase in special guardianship, and perhaps the increase we have

seen in recent years, is not necessarily a good thing. We need to be sure that

special guardianship arrangements are not put in place when adoption might

provide significantly improved prospects for the looked after child. Special

Guardianship should not be seen as a compromise and one in which the best

interests of the child are relegated.

Withdrawal of financial support

Under the Special Guardianship Regulations 2005, local authorities may

remunerate Special Guardians who were formerly foster carers for two years

after the granting of the order. But after the end of the two year period

support is likely to be withdrawn.

Malcolm Phillips, the manager of Fosterline told Community Care last year:

We believe there are hundreds of cases where special guardians are saying ‘this

is not working out the way I wanted. We are struggling to cope.

  52  

When financial support is given it is often significantly less than the fostering

allowance. In Islington, according to Community Care, a foster carer is paid

£337 a week for one child aged 0 to 10 years. The special guardianship

allowance for a single child is a maximum of £134.

Grandparents, and others, willing to become parents for a second time, and

when their income may be modest should not be penalised for relieving local

authorities of their legal and heavy financial responsibilities. The extent to

which these arrangements are limiting the effective use of Guardianship

needs to be explored.

Special Guardianship as an unhappy compromise

A glance at the most recent adoption statistics shows us that Special

Guardianships seem to have replaced what would have once been adoptions.

In many cases that can be welcomed achieving as it can the essential stability

needed by children.

But we need to be confident that Special Guardianship is not being used

when adoption might be in the better interests of the child. Some

professionals believe that is happening. Last year, one adoption team

manager told Community Care

In many cases, SGOs work well, but there is dispute about when they are

appropriate. In my authority we’re seeing increasing numbers of children

under four being looked after by relatives, often grandparents, even though we

recommended adoption.

Often a family or friend carer will come forward and an SGO might seem

cheaper, easier and more pragmatic. But too often this decision is made

without thinking through the long-term implications of placing a child back

into a dysfunctional environment for 18 years.

  53  

There aren’t always enough checks to ensure family and friends, particularly

grandparents, haven’t been pressured into applying for an SGO, and that

children are being kept away from the negative influences that led to the care

application. I expect to see large numbers of children coming back into care in

my authority because of disrupted SGOs.

And as one senior official in the Department For Education told me:

Special guardianship may simply mean that the child ends up in a different

branch of an essentially dysfunctional family

The same official shares the view of the adoption team manager quoted above

and believes that the number of special guardianship breakdowns are high.

But, troublingly, no one knows. Such information is not collected. As BAAF

told me:

We do not have any reliable data on this…. and there really should be. Part of the

difficulty with special guardianship is that the greater majority of these orders are

to family and friends carers. [So} if for instance a child moves back to mum or dad

or to another family member permanently or temporarily, there is no requirement

to notify anybody.

Essentially, this means that a child who has previously been abused or

neglected by his or her parents can be returned to their care without anyone

knowing.

This is very troubling when one considers the number of babies being subject

to guardianship orders. When Special Guardianship was introduced it was

intended, primarily, for older children, including those considering

themselves too old to be adopted. But the number of orders for older children

has been much smaller than anticipated. Of those aged between five and

seventeen and leaving care in the three years to March 2010, only about five

  54  

percent left for guardianship. By contrast some local authorities and courts

have turned to Special Guardianship for babies and small children with

enthusiasm. For the youngest and most vulnerable children leaving care

(aged 0 – 4) the proportion leaving for Special Guardianship is almost twice

the proportion for older children and in one authority has reached 21%. I

found widespread suspicion that some of these Guardianship arrangements

were compromises as far as the best interests of the child were concerned. A

firm steer is needed to ensure that this valuable option is not used when

adoption would be better for a child’s future. It is significant that in Harrow,

where adoption is really gripped, that there have been relatively few special

guardianship orders.

Recommendations

I recommend that the Children’s Minister

- review the financial support which applies when a fostered child

enters the Special Guardianship of its foster carers, to ensure the

potential of successful Special Guardianship placements (and longer

term savings for local authorities) are not frustrated by the foster

carers’ financial difficulties.

- urgently commissions research into Special Guardianship orders made

in the last few years to establish the extent of the their breakdown.

- ensures that Special Guardianship is not used as a compromise when

the interests of the child suggest that adoption would be a better

option.

  55  

CHAPTER SEVEN

ETHNICITY

We live in an increasingly multicultural society and one where, quite

properly, the stereotyping of people because of their race is discouraged. An

Asian, Black or mixed race adult born in the UK is accepted as being just as

British as a white British adult. Mixed race marriage and other permanent

relationships are common and mixed race children have long ceased to be a

novelty. The UK has moved on. But not in the case of adoption where there

is, in my view, a continuing and unjustified obsession with ethnicity

The adoption industry, local authorities and voluntary agencies, have

enthusiastically embraced the potential of gay parents successfully to adopt

and to be able to overcome the inevitable prejudices facing a child as he or she

grows up in a family very different to the norm and with an emerging sexual

orientation unlikely to be shared by either parent. As Chief Executive of

Barnardo’s I was proud of our support for gay adoption and I spoke out

frequently in its support. And personally I have just had the pleasure of

witnessing the joy of gay adoption as a colleague and friend and his partner

adopted their second child. Whatever the difficulties which might result in a

gay adoption we know we can overcome them.

But this approach is in stark contrast to the continuing inflexibility,

intolerance and illiberalism around the adoption of black and minority ethnic

children. The now long established determination to find the right ethnic

match for a child is, I would argue, based on a dubious emphasis about the

  56  

significance of culture and heritage – particularly when we are talking about a

baby – and is certainly and demonstrably damaging to black and mixed race

children where delay is persistent and unacceptable.

History

Well into the sixties black and minority ethnic (BME) children were

considered as unadoptable. We are right to be ashamed of such

discrimination. That began to change in the early sixties and the British

Adoption Project established in 1965 and which reported in 1970 sought to

establish whether more black children could be successfully adopted by white

parents. It concluded, in the words of Sir Frederic Seebohm that

Children who are of minority race in Britain today can find adoptive parents

who will love and cherish them.

In 1965, the year of the study, there were more than 400 such adoptions and

this was seen as a liberal breakthrough. What is evident from the study was

an optimism that race need not matter. That of course is not so and it may

have been the case that these early adoptive parents, pioneers as they were,

were unaware of some of the challenges they and their children might face,

not least because of the much more explicit racism of Britain in the seventies.

As a consequence, some of the children adopted in the sixties and seventies

have expressed bitterness about their experience.

David, now an academic and of dual heritage - white and Arab - was adopted

by a white couple in the sixties. He told The Observer in 2008 that in his

experience the love of his white parents had not been enough:

  57  

The experience of racism had a profound impact on me. It would have been

helpful for people around me to have had an understanding of that and of the

cultural issues that one inevitably struggles with. It's about a sense of

isolation - one never fits in with either community.

This is not a lone voice and a number of professionals I interviewed accept

that some of the challenges were under estimated in the sixties and seventies.

That may be so although, in the case of David and other children like him, the

reality is that the only alternative to adoption at that time was spending his

childhood in an orphanage or shuttling between foster carers. It is a fair bet

that he would not then have become an academic.

Part of the problem is that the voices of black children adopted by white

parents and who are positive about their childhood are perhaps heard less

frequently or they simply speak out less often.

British actress Helena Cullinan is an exception. She was adopted at the age of

five months by a white couple, who already had four biological children. In

January of this year she told the Daily Telegraph:

I had a fabulous upbringing in Kent where my father was a GP. I was the only

black child in a ten-mile radius and that was fine… I felt very special. What

children need is love, nurturing and stability; and if a child is mixed race it’s

ridiculous to assume their black genes take priority. Identity is informed by

the way a child is brought up, not simply where their parents came from.

I am not suggesting that race or heritage or culture do not matter. I am very

clear it is advantageous in securing an adoption for the adoptive couple to

  58  

reflect – at least to some extent - the race of the adopted child. But that

advantage should be just one factor in many when considering adoption. It is

however, not just one factor, it is all too frequently the dominant factor. For

some years now, prospective adopters with everything else in their favour,

with a willingness to dedicate themselves to the care of a child, have been

thwarted simply because of their race, essentially, because they are white. I

simply do not believe that if we were ever to have an over supply of white

children relative to white prospective adopters that we would turn otherwise

well qualified black adopters away. We would conclude that decent black

parents could, with preparation, become effective adopters. We would argue

that in a multi cultural Britain that race shouldn’t matter.

In the USA Social workers are not allowed to emphasise race or ethnicity

when matching children with parents. But in the UK examples of the rejection

of prospective adopters on the grounds of race or ethnicity are frequent.

Adoption UK, a national charity supporting adoptive parents, conducted a

survey in 2010 and found that a quarter of people who expressed an interest

in adoption were turned away. The experience of Judith Woods writing in The

Daily Telegraph in January is not untypical

There we were, two middle class professionals, with a happy, healthy five-year-

old daughter, living in a nice house with a garden being vetted about our

suitability to adopt a child in care, desperately in need of a family where he or

she wouldn’t be sexually abused or emotionally starved or physically

mistreated.

Yet as far as the Camden adoption authorities were concerned, we just didn’t

make the grade. At least they actually came to verify for themselves that we

were unfit parents, however, unlike our own borough, who dismissed us in a

single phone call.

  59  

“What’s your racial heritage?” the woman on the other end of the Adoption

Team helpline asked wearily, although she could tell by my accent I was yet

another over-optimistic time-waster.

“British,” I replied hesitatingly - I could already sense this wasn’t going to

end well…

“Sorry, we don’t need any white adoptive parents.”

The consequences for black children

However well intentioned the actions of practitioners in seeking a close or

perfect ethnic match for a child – and in my experience practitioners are

invariably well intentioned – the consequences for BME children are

incontrovertible. As The Times put it in April: they face an adoption apartheid.

White children in care are three times more likely to be adopted than black

children. Black as opposed to BME children fare particularly badly. When a

child is taken into care the decision whether or not to pursue adoption should

be taken after six months. It is troubling enough that for white children that

decision is not taken for eleven months. It is indefensible for black children to

wait 17 months for that decision. For those who are eventually adopted, being

black extends the time lag to adoption by almost a year (345 days). Worst of

all the option which we know offers the best prospects for a child’s future,

adoption, is extended to only about 10% of black children leaving care and

only about 15% of Asian children while 35% of white children leaving care

become adopted.

Legislation is often cited as justification for such unequal treatment. And it is

true that the the Adoption and Children Act (2002) demands that when

arranging adoption, due consideration be given to the child’s religious

persuasion, racial origin and cultural and linguistic background. But at the

same time an overarching requirement of the Act is that, whenever a court or

  60  

an adoption agency is coming to a decision they must at all times bear in

mind that, in general, any delay is likely to prejudice the child’s welfare.

The reality is that the over arching warning against the damaging

consequences of delay – based on a wealth of research - has for some years

now been ignored in favour of a rigid interpretation of the ethnicity and

cultural provisions in the Act, the effect of which is to leave black and Asian

children languishing in care.

This is an issue often informed by little more than anecdote and good

intentions and a great deal of confusion. In a recent University of Bristol study

published earlier this year and which looked at the process of ethnic matching

(and which confirmed that BME children are disadvantaged), Julie Selwyn

found that:

Mixed ethnicity children in the sample were likely to have been living with a

single white mother within a white community and to have a birth father who

had not been part of their lives or whose ethnicity was unknown. Their social

workers were often uncertain about whether they should be placing the child

to preserve his or her present identity or to enable the development of another

ethnic identity to which the child had a genetic connection.

In the same study:

Social workers commonly used the term ‘ethnicity’ interchangeably with

‘culture’. When talking about culture, they were often referring only to ethnic

categorisations, even though ethnic labels did not necessarily help in

understanding a child’s cultural background. There was often insufficient

information available regarding the child’s cultural background. For instance,

  61  

the part of the Assessment Framework which should have provided

information about the child’s earlier cultural experiences (for example, the

types of food eaten, festivals celebrated and so on) was often blank or

incomplete.

At the risk of being dismissed for insensitivity I am afraid that I find

arguments that we need to construct some sort of ethnic identity with a father

who has abandoned his child unconvincing. Similarly, for babies at least, the

suggestion that a child’s earlier cultural experiences including food eaten and

festivals celebrated should have such a significance in adoption (and may

sometimes thwart adoption) seem to me to be dubious.

This government has moved quickly to address this, issuing fresh guidance in

February of this year. Speaking before the launch of the new guidance,

Secretary of State Michael Gove said

Edicts which say children have to be adopted by families with the same ethnic

background and which prevent other families adopting because they don’t fit

left- wing prescriptions are denying children the love they need. As a result

children from ethnic minority backgrounds languish in care for longer than

other kids and are denied the opportunities they deserve. This misguided

nonsense punishes those who most need our help and that is why this

government is sweeping it away.

The new guidance makes plain that that it’s not enough to deny a child a

loving home with adoptive parents only on the basis that they don’t share the

same ethnicity.

I do not doubt Michael Gove’s nor Tim Loughton’s determination here. And I

believe I know what they want which, as Tim Loughton put it at the same

launch event, is to stop the nonsense of

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having to grapple with the absurdity of some adoption agencies treating a

child’s ethnicity as the only deciding factor in their placement, when we know

that we should be looking at all of a child’s needs, rather than one that might

only serve to end their chances of finding a permanent family.

The problem is - as many of us who have argued the need for greater

flexibility know all too well – that since 2002 legislation and guidance have

always insisted that ethnic matching must be compromised if undue delay is

the consequence. This new guidance further stresses that but my fear is that

little will change. Too many practitioners are too fiercely wedded to putting

ethnicity before all else for new guidance, on its own, to change their

behaviour. The British Association of Social Workers (BASW) made their view

clear shortly before the new guidance was published. Nushra Mansuri from

BASW told Community Care:

What is being overlooked is the evidence that while some transracial adoptions

work, many have had a profoundly negative impact on children's development

and identity formation.

While it's essential that a prospective parent can provide love and a secure

base, these are not the only factors needing consideration, a parent also needs

to provide a sense of belonging that is key to a child's identity, self-esteem and

development and will affect how they mature into adults.

It's a fact that we don't have enough adopters from diverse communities and

we need to look at this and make the system more inclusive - we should also be

looking at why there is an over-representation of black children in the care

system in the first place and addressing issues of inequality and

discrimination to prevent this.

I see little evidence to date of the new guidance having any measurable effect

on adoption practice. Anyone turning to BAAF’s otherwise excellent Be My

Parent magazine would not conclude that ethnic and cultural identity issues

were just one of the factors in adoption matching. For every child advertised

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in the magazine – of all races – and waiting for adoption in England, the first

requirement for prospective parents is that they are able to reflect or develop

the child’s ethnic and cultural identity. One little girl was born to a drug

abusing mother and after her birth had to be treated for drug withdrawal.

There are concerns about both her health and development and she has

asthma which has resulted in more than one hospital admission and has

sickle cell trait. A baby boy, born prematurely, has global developmental

delay, both his speech and chewing have been delayed and there is

uncertainty about his future development. The challenges facing the adoptive

parents of either child are considerable. But the primary requirement as listed

in each of their adverts is for parents who can reflect or actively develop their

ethnic and cultural identity. That is plainly wrong.

In BAAF’s defence their wording reflects the new guidance and therein lies

the problem. I fear that interpretations of the new guidance may continue to

thwart the intentions of Ministers. As their speeches have made clear they

want the significance of ethnicity to be relegated, for it to become just one

factor in many.

But there is little sign of local authorities making any such adjustment. A

Times reporter called five large local authorities posing as the male of a white

couple interested in adoption. No authority turned them away but on each

occasion explained that they might be eligible because they currently had

white children waiting adoption.

Current practices, well intentioned as they might be, need to be swept away

and we need to see evidence of a different approach, more transracial

adoptions and a closing of the gap between the time black and Asian children

wait for adoption when compared to white children. If a family who shares

the same colour skin as the child and can help that child to develop a sense of

its identity can speedily be found then fine. But as Jonathan Ewen at

Barnardo’s put it to me:

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Where families do not share the same ethnicity but can demonstrate ways in

which they can provide this they should be considered without

delay. Children need a sense of belonging and being valued for who they are

at all times - this cannot be put on hold

Recommendations

I recommend that the Children’s Minister

- ensures that the new guidance on ethnic matching in arranging

adoptions is changing local authority and voluntary sector behaviour.

- ensures that ethnicity data on the number of adoptions of children

from care, and the time lag between entering care and adoption is

published frequently.

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CHAPTER EIGHT

SOCIAL WORKER PREPAREDNESS

During my five years at Barnardo’s I was, overwhelmingly, impressed with

the social work staff I worked with. But, significantly, they were generally

older than their local authority equivalents and often they had qualified as

social workers before the introduction of the Social Work Degree in 2003.

There are many local authority staff every bit as good and I had the privilege

to meet many of them. But it was also the case that from the moment I arrived

at Barnardo’s in 2005 I listened to concerns about the calibre and

preparedness of newly qualified social workers, most of whom were working

in the public sector.

This was most vividly put to me by one newly qualified social worker, an

extremely impressive, caring, dedicated and bright young man who had

qualified in about 2007. From time to time in my five years at Barnardo’s I

met him to gain a better sense of what life was like for a newly qualified social

worker, working in a deprived local authority. He wrote to me with some

reflections on his training shortly before I left. He said:

I successfully completed a Masters in Social Work. The University had a good

reputation and any assessor looking down the list of modules that I completed

would probably feel confident that I was being trained in the necessary areas.

However, the actual content of the course and its delivery was grossly

deficient. The course was too focused on academic ability and essay writing

skills. There was no training for the real nature of social work. I wrote many

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essays on theoretical viewpoints but I was never once taught how a statutory

team in children’s social services worked… When I started my first job (in a

child protection team) I had never herd of an initial assessment form or ever

seen or been schooled in the strategies for questioning parents… I never had

any quality child development training and I never had sessions on how to

work directly with children… I can say in all honesty that I started my first

day in a child protection team as competent as I would have been never having

attended the University’s Masters Course.

He is not alone. As one of the most outstanding social work managers I

worked with at Barnardo’s told me:

I have spoken to a number of newly qualified SW’s who have been shocked by

the realities of Child Protection work and feel that their training has not given

them sufficient experience or knowledge to do the work effectively.

The last government acted on this, setting up The College of Social Work

which is designed to champion and support the profession and give social

workers a voice in national debates and improve the profession’s public

image. As a media manager at the College told The Times

We’re also there to provide professional leadership, to set the standards for the

profession and to go about raising professional standards.

It is encouraging that in both government and in the Association of Directors

of Children’s Services there is a clear acceptance that training needs to be

more vigorous. The lead on adoption for ADCS, Andrew Christie, told me

that although he was optimistic that things were on the mend that:

Standards in social work in terms of training and the quality of the workforce

deteriorated sharply about five years ago.

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Accordingly, the College will emphasise development during a social

worker’s first year on the job. This will involve extra support, lower

workloads, and extra training. All this is to be welcomed but the gravity of

the challenge must not be under estimated. As the recently published Munro

Report said:

Not all newly qualified social workers are emerging from degree courses with

the necessary knowledge, skills and expertise; and they are especially

unprepared to deal with the challenges posed by child protection work.

Degree courses are not consistent in content, quality and outcomes – for child

protection, there are crucial things missing in some courses such as detailed

learning on child development, how to communicate with children and young

people, and using evidence-based methods of working with children and

families.

Theory and research are not always well integrated with practice and there is a

failure to align what is taught with the realities of contemporary social work

practice.

It will take some time to put all these things right and produce a newly

qualified workforce in which we can have confidence. But at the same time

we do that we shall need to address the deficiencies of many post 2003

graduates. As my young child protection social worker told me:

I would like [The College of Social Work] to address the serious issue of

training for all those workers such as myself who have been pushed into front

line roles without adequate training and who will not benefit from future

amendments to the degree course.

Adoption Awareness in Social Work Training

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As the reform of social work training is taken forward it is important that

adoption is not forgotten. Indeed it must be given a greater role. The evidence

of its effectiveness is clear. There is no other intervention in the life of a

deeply neglected child that can have such a transformative effect. So it is

surprising that this subject appears to be covered superficially or, more

generally, not at all in social work degree courses.

A course leader at Huddersfield University said that adoption permeates a

lot of things which are taught on the degree course and in the final year there

is an optional module on children’s welfare which includes a week and a half

on adoption. Little as this is, it is considerably more than appears to be taught

at most other Universities. Three others were contacted and all confirmed that

adoption was not covered on their courses. Why this should be, I am not sure.

But I believe it may reflect in part the long term and deep seated antipathy

toward adoption by some academics and some practitioners who, put very

simply, do not like it. This needs to be addressed urgently. Social Work

graduates should not leave University oblivious of the potential to turn

around the lives of some of our most disadvantaged children.

Unqualified staff

As the College of Social Work concentrates on the development of qualified

staff I urge the government not to forget the role of those not qualified. My

experience at Barnardo’s led me to believe that we could quickly obtain

greater confidence in child protection work by better exploiting the talents of

unqualified staff. I do not question the need to have graduate social work

professionals, not least in supervisory and managerial positions. But

alongside an inevitably young, inexperienced and raw qualified workforce

there is much more that can be done with older, experienced, resilient

unqualified staff, many of whom have brought up children themselves and

have a solid grasp of child development issues and are sometimes better able

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to recognise neglect and to confront parents.

In recent years we have moved away from a mixed workforce and in doing so

have lost a great deal. As one experienced Director of Children’s Services told

me last year, she has seen her child protection workforce, part qualified and

part unqualified and with an average age of thirty five be replaced with an

entirely graduate staff, with an average age of twenty two.

It is not that many of the unqualified staff I met both in Barnardo’s and

elsewhere are not of graduate calibre. They are but they often have families

and for financial and other practical reasons cannot countenance giving up

work for a three year degree course. I know I am not alone in the view that

unqualified staff can raise, not lower, standards in child protection work. As

the Barnardo’s manager told me:

I have met and worked with volunteers and unqualified workers whose

intuition, experience, empathy and courage have helped safeguard children

more effectively than qualified workers.

And as Barnardo’s told the Munro Review last year:

Greater recognition needs to be given to the fact that there is not necessarily a

correlation between formal qualifications and calibre, commitment and

determination. More could be done to maximize the potential of unqualified

social workers who can be just as good at engaging difficult families and often

have excellent skills in child protection.

It is rare to be able to offer a recommendation which is likely to increase

effectiveness and lower costs. But that is what is at hand if we were to use

unqualified staff more effectively.

Changing social worker attitudes

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Better training of social workers will provide a more able professional

workforce, particularly if supported by mature unqualified staff. But

alongside better training, social workers need to be very clear about their role

in child protection and understand that it is, unequivocally, to protect and do

what is best for the child and not simply to support the family. I am not

suggesting that social workers present themselves as police officers or that

they do not work hard at gaining the confidence of parents. But there is a lot

of evidence that social workers put too great an emphasis on this and

sometimes forget that they are the champion of what is best for the child,

even though that may not be in the parents’ interests. Some social workers

seem unable to get this balance right and some may not have the

competences. As I was told by the same outstanding Barnardo’s manager:

The fact is that some people drawn to social work do not have the qualities to

engage with neglectful parents in order to understand the impact on their

children. In addition to this many feel that their training has put undue

priority on sustaining family life.

Andrew Christie from the Association of Directors of Children’s Services told

me that he recognized the challenge of moving social workers’ approach so

that they saw their role as being primarily about ensuring the safety of the

child and not simply about helping families. One of the problems is that the

necessary role is much more demanding than the helping families approach

and young social workers need a great deal of support to carry it out. I was

impressed with what I heard about peer support arrangements in

Hammersmith and Fulham and their recognition of the weight of the

challenge.

Being an ever supportive friend of the family, rarely challenging behaviour

and hoping that over time through trust and support improvements to a

child’s welfare might be obtained might work with some families but not all.

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Frequently, and in cases where a child is at greatest risk, a different approach

is necessary. Many social workers do not share that view. Last year, in

Professional Social Work the journal of the British Association of Social

Workers, Claudia Megele wrote a sensitive piece suggesting practical ways in

which a social worker on a home visit might check on the welfare of the child.

She encapsulated the necessity of ensuring rigour in the visit and not being

too easily satisfied that all was well, particularly important when, in my

experience, some parents develop an ability to “handle” social workers and

become schooled in saying the right things. Ms Mengele said that after

completing a home visit she reflected on how much she had been able to:

challenge the parents and ask the difficult questions that should have been

asked…. To what degree was the service user able to manage their actions,

reactions, anger etc.

Alongside this she offered some practical advice about probing beyond

parental responses. She recommended asking for a glass of water so as to be

able to check the kitchen cupboards and holding the baby to check that no

bones were broken and she or he was of reasonable weight. She suggested

that where a male perpetrator of violence to either the mother or the child has

been removed from the home that bedrooms might be discreetly checked for

men’s shoes and the bathroom to see how many toothbrushes are present.

What was depressing about this contribution from someone very clear about

where a social workers’ responsibilities lie was the response from other

professionals. One wrote that:

It’s difficult to see how the author reconciles the practical checks suggested

with the values of sensitivity, partnership and honesty.

Another, a social worker and lecturer was outraged insisting that, for

example, holding a baby to check for broken bones was wrong:

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Social workers are not doctors and should never make medical judgements.

She went on to say:

Most of the tactics were underhand and less than honest and this is directly at

odds with the Social workers’ Code of Practice which explicitly states that they

must establish and maintain the trust and confidence of service users and

carers.

Ironically, this correspondent neatly captures the dilemma. In child protection

the “service user” is the child. Stressing a relationship of trust with parents

who may be neglecting and abusing that child is directly equivalent to a

police officer compromising the safety of a potential crime victim by seeking

to develop the trust and confidence of the criminal.

This is not just a training challenge. Primarily it is a managerial challenge and

it is to ensure that social workers continue, wherever possible to work with

the family in child protection cases but always with an awareness that they

are there to protect the child and some policing of family attitudes toward a

vulnerable child is necessary.

Recommendations

I recommend that the Children’s Minister

- ensures that adoption is given greater prominence on social work

training.

- looks at how the contribution of unqualified staff can be better utilised

in child protection work.

- ensures that the role of the social worker as the unequivocal protector

of the interests of the child as opposed to that of friend of the family is

communicated to the social work profession.

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FINAL REFLECTION

I believe passionately that we can and should significantly increase the

number of adoptions. First we need to make a concerted effort with those

already in care. Genuine flexibility around ethnic matching and post adoption

support for older and challenging children will achieve that. But the greater

population deserving adoption are those we allow to languish in neglect in

inadequate and damaging homes, born out of a seemingly unfathomable

optimism that their parents might become better parents. Too often we wait

for neglect to turn into abuse before we intervene and rescue a child.

Why do we hesitate so, even in the wake of cases like that of Baby Peter?

Sometimes, as I argue in chapter one, because we believe care will make

things worse. From the moment I first worked with offenders in a Borstal in

the North East in the early eighties I was aware of the link between being in

care and imprisonment. As I have explained, my conclusion, that the

experience of care was propelling children to custody, was born out of a

confusion between correlation and causation. Thirty years later when I visit a

prison I still meet large numbers of prisoners who have spent some time in

care. But I now know that care was not at fault. What damaged so many of

the young adults I see in prison was being left at home, living in neglect and

intervention by the State which – if it came at all - often came too late.

I am not arguing for a radical increase in the number of adoptions simply to

reduce the drift of young people to custody. But I am quite clear that more

adoptions will arrest some of that drift. Because when we leave children in

homes where neglect and abuse are the norm we destroy any chance of them

developing the stability and confidence which grows out of being brought up

in the stability of a loving home. As The Royal College of Paediatrics and

Child Health confirmed to me, when children fail to develop secure

attachments, when their attachments are “disorganised”, they are more likely

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to have mental health problems, misuse drugs and alcohol, become teenage

parents and be involved in anti-social behaviour and criminal activity.

We need to stop simply talking about putting the interests of the child first

and start ruthlessly doing so. When we do that we shall see more children

taken into care and more of them adopted and at a much earlier age. By doing

so we shall give them the stability they need and deserve. But if we continue

to fail neglected children by not putting them, unequivocally, first, if we fail

to grip the opportunity adoption offers to give a fresh start to damaged lives,

we shall continue to fill our prisons with children who have been in care.  

SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS

Chapter One

I recommend that the Children’s Minister

- takes an early opportunity to advise local authorities of his,

Parliament’s and the Courts’ view on the absolute primacy of the

child’s interests when deciding whether a child should be taken into

care.

- ensures that the overwhelming evidence that care improves life for

neglected and abused children be communicated to Local Authority

and Voluntary Sector Children’s staff.

- ensures that the research evidence on the positive effect of care is

effectively communicated to Family Court Judges.

Chapter Two

While in no way seeking to limit or discourage any woman’s access to

abortion, I recommend that local authorities, pregnancy advisory services and

  75  

children’s charities reflect on how going to term and allowing adoption might

be presented as a valid option for a woman with an unwanted pregnancy.

I recommend that the Children’s Minister ensures that where the best

interests of the child are clear and adoption seems to offer the best prospects

of permanency that it should not be delayed by the assessment of family and

friends carers when there is clear evidence of their unsuitability.

Chapter Three

I recommend that the Children’s Minister

- looks at how pre court processes might be shortened, with particular

reference to removing duplication with the work of the Courts.

- regularly produce comparative information for local authorities

identifying rolling totals of adoptions finalised along with the time

taken to complete those adoptions.

- makes it plain to local authorities that the option of a national

adoption agency will be pursued unless there is an across the board

increase in adoptions and the speed of those adoptions (and not just in

a few large local authorities whose improved performance might boost

the national average)

Chapter Four

I recommend that the Children’s Minister

- ensures that the evidence of the success of adoption – particularly early

adoption - (including low breakdown rates) be communicated to local

authorities, the voluntary sector, the press, the courts and the public.

- explores with the voluntary and private sector the scope for applying

the principles of social impact bonds to adoption support for older and

particularly challenging children.

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- engages with the Association Of Directors of Children’s Services to

ensure – whether or not as a consequence of spending pressures - there

is no short term retreat on post adoption support.

Chapter Five

I recommend that the potential to apply the principles of social impact bonds

to adoptions but with an emphasis on boosting concurrent planning

placements be explored by the Children’s Minister.

Chapter Six

I recommend that the Children’s Minister

- reviews the financial support which applies when a fostered child

enters the Special Guardianship of its foster carers, to ensure the

potential of successful Special Guardianship placements (and longer

term savings for local authorities) are not frustrated by the foster

carers’ financial difficulties.

- urgently commissions research into Special Guardianship orders made

in the last few years to establish the extent of the their breakdown.

- ensures that Special Guardianship is not used as a compromise when

the interests of the child suggest that adoption would be a better

option.

Chapter Seven

I recommend that the Children’s Minister

- ensures that the new guidance on ethnic matching in arranging

adoptions is changing local authority and voluntary sector behaviour.

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- ensures that ethnicity data on the number of adoptions of children

from care, and the time lag between entering care and adoption is

published frequently.

Chapter Eight

I recommend that the Children’s Minister

- ensures that adoption is given greater prominence on social work

training.

- looks at how the contribution of unqualified staff can be better utilised

in child protection work.

- ensures that the role of the social worker as the unequivocal protector

of the interests of the child as opposed to that of friend of the family is

communicated to the social work profession.