We have always wondered what is meant by children’s rights since those bodies and laws that purport to give them often do very little to advance the causes of kids. Take the Hague Convention for example. This piece of legislation was written to avoid corruption, i.e. the trafficking of children. It hasn’t managed to fulfil that remit. Instead it’s become a barrier for countries adopting out children who they themselves cannot look after. Russia closing down adoptions in an episode reminiscent of the Cold War, will mean that tens of thousands of babies live their lives in orphanages, possibly being maltreated. China has closed down adoptions because it has not the appetite to meet the the rules of the Hague Convention. Guatemala cannot deal with the bureaucracy. What do these countries have in common? They’re all riddled with corruption and poverty. This is stuff that spreads and infects across borders.

Faced with such obstacles, potential parents know they have no hope. Those who pinned their hopes on one country (as the system setup demands you do) who fail, find they have no guts left for the fight. Or money. So what happens? Kids sit in orphanages, many of those establishments not deserving of that name. Meanwhile the Hague Convention is impotent. It has stopped the potentially good actions and has not made a dent in the evil ones. How does that work?

Given the amount of bandwidth and the media’s insatiable desire for more stories, it’s easy to generate noise. But does that translate into real and meaningful action?

It’s a little misleading to see the government issuing an Adoption Bill rather than what it has done so far which is pronounce ‘guidelines.’ The fact is the laws they are talking about already exists. In 2000 a White Paper  from the Labour party became the Adoption Children’s Act in 2002. A year ago, Tim Loughton issued new guidelines on interracial adoptions.

So what has been achieved so far? Nothing.

The reason is that the government is still standing outside the circle, continuing to pass blame on to local councils and social workers (not always unwarranted) while insisting on not taking actual responsibility. A year ago Tim Loughton told me he was confident this would happen; that we might have measures in place to create, enforce and monitor those Councils and Social Workers and make the guidelines stick.

Eleven months later the prime minister has had to intervene to impose stricter measures. Meanwhile, time has been wasted and let’s be clear here, we’re talking about lives that are not just on hold, but being ruined. The longer a child is in care the less likely he or she will find a stable, loving family home.

Adoption With Humanity continues to call for action and for the government to set up a National Adoption Authority to address the crisis the system is in at present. Not just for the children’s sake. But for all of us because the impact of unloved children is not just personal, it’s social.

I was a little hesitant, as I am these days, after considerable media exposure where I have found – as many do- that it’s not what you think it’s going to be. But I was both surprised and delighted; Myleene and her team were absolutely adorable.

I told her I was impressed that she had included adoption as a core part of her series: she’d also included gay parenting. This was a breath of fresh air compared to my experience so far. On most websites (including that big mums one!) and in magazines, adoption usually hardly rates a mention. It is still, it seems, akin to an illness that afflicts some very unlucky people. In a world where IVF and other forms of conceiving are talked about, this feels plainly wrong.

I was struck and reassured by Myleene’s warmth. It’s the mother in her I totally admire. She is genuinely into her role as a parent and mum: during the breaks in filming  she peppered me with questions about my childcare arrangements when I am working or travelling and how I dealt with those inevitable tantrums.

We talked about dilemmas involved in finding someone to look after your kids. Let’s face it you can find women with great skills but will they love your kids the way you would want them to ? We exchanged experiences on how unforgiving kids can be if you slip up and don’t accompany them to school on one day, even if you have been consistent in doing so before. I told her that when it happened to me I found Gaia at the school door, all cocky and careless, saying: “Go away mamma!”.  But really she was just confused in her own little way.

It was one of my more pleasant media sessions, and, as I left, Myleene briefly interrupted her phone call to shout: “Stay strong as they are all out to get us! Forget about all this other stuff, being a mum is the hardest job in the world!”

Thanks Myleene for such a lovely experience.

Click here to see the video of us together.

It was horrible. It made you feel small. And useless. That’s nothing compared to how it feels to not be adopted. As I write adoption in the UK is in a sadly dysfunctional state. The system is broken and it means that there are thousands of children awaiting adoption- 4000 approximately at present. In the past year, there were less than 300 adoptions.

It’s not for lack of potential parents either. Each year there are hundreds of couples who apply and go through one of the most searching processes just to be allowed to adopt. And often they give up.

Why? Because local authorities and councils are applying rules of their own making, something is wrong. The authority vacuum and the lack of any leadership on the part of the government means that it takes at least 2 years and 7 months for a child to be adopted. But first they have to be removed from the family that can’t or won’t look after them. And that isn’t happening because the system thinks that keeping a child in a family that can’t or won’t love them is better than finding them someone who will.

By the time a child is adopted they may be around four years old.

By the time a child reaches five, it is put into the too hard basket and is less likely to be adopted.

And if you’re a black or mixed race child, forget it. It probably won’t happen.

These children will have suffered first at the hands of a family that neglected them and secondly at the hands of social workers and local authorities who simply have no motivation to place children with new families. Instead they try to keep them in the place that has made their childhood a memorable one for the wrong reasons.

You can make a difference. Please, please respond to this by clicking here and signing our petition and urging your friends and colleagues to do the same.

For their sake.

Like yesterday, the situation is so dramatic that it will require dramatic intervention.

Too much time has passed and too little has happened. Tony Blair tried to help the issue by setting adoption targets. It helped a little – but too little to make a real difference and we know targets don’t work.

Tim Loughton has introduced some new guidelines to allow white parents to adopt non-white children. These rules are being ignored by local authorities and social workers. The reality is the intervention of the government has been too little too late. And let’s face it, there is no compunction on the part of local authorities to follow these passive guidelines. There is no comeback or reinforcement from the government.

Adoption with Humanity will soon be launching a petition to ask the government to intervene in a way that will require local authorities and others to act. I will let you know more soon. Because our present system is more than stupid, it is immoral. In a world where thousands of children languish in care while there are safe, loving families who want them, we have to do something. And we are going to try our very best.

Martin’s work in the criminal justice and prison system for twenty years convinced him that putting children in care was the moment a child’s life turned for the worse. He believes the problem with unwanted or neglected children lies not only in the current processes used to deal with them but also the general attitude surrounding adoption. Fundamentally it is not accepted in society. The idea of middle class people parenting working class children is not seen as inherently good but something to be pitied – a kind of last resort even when it all works out successfully. .

In The Times, Martin sums it up: “There is bad use of the research. There is the system itself — hopelessly slow — and there is some troubling confusion in both the legal system and among social workers about the Human Rights Act and how that affects the rights of parents and children.

“On Day One I want to persuade Tim Loughton, Michael Gove and David Cameron to lay down the line that children’s interests have primacy when it comes to intervention, to make clear that the Children’s Act puts children first and the Human Rights Act does not undermine that.”

Martin believes we can double the number of adoptions over the next two years and his report contains 19 recommendations which you can read here.

His proposals include performance league tables for local authorities to avoiding an often followed route where case workers place the child with a member of the extended family. As Narey says in the piece, this is, “often just another branch of the same dysfunctional family.”

In what is bound to be a major talking point he recommends that adoption be offered, as part of counselling, to pregnant women who do not want their child. I can see his thinking, especially as his research indicated that services which ‘help’ women with unwanted pregnancies, do not offer adoption as an option. He is scathing about the way social services appear to go with the flow, telling teenagers they will make good mothers and leaving them alone.

From The Times: “For six months we are all over her telling her how well she is doing and then she is on her own. What we are doing is cowardly. Adoption should be a third option to abortion or keeping the child. It is an attitude that must be allowed to grow. In the US mothers who give up their children for adoption believe they are giving them a great start. Here it is viewed as a success if we talk them out of it.”

After years of muddy compromise that leave children with a minimal shot at a decent life at best, I welcome his recommendations. They are clear, concise and go to the heart of what is wrong. I support the idea of allowing pregnant women to decide for themselves if they would like to have their child adopted as soon as it is born. This would certainly assist in cutting down the time (and misery) for children. Instead of languishing for years in foster care during which their chances of becoming dysfunctional and therefore unattractive for prospective adoptees, they would literally start life from the beginning in a better place.

Bruce Oldfield made this point in the foreword to my book Mexican Takeaway, saying that children do pass their ‘sell by-date.’ People find it harder to adopt older children and when they have been shunted through the system for years, they become more challenging as time goes on. And that’s the main cause of adoption failure, not colour or religious differences as the authorities would have the public believe. If we can make this dramatic change it will be literally life-saving.

I’m behind Martin and congratulate him. He is brave and no nonsense. I am also grateful to The Times for their relentless campaign and commitment to the children in care in this country. We have a target: doubling the number of children adopted out of the care system into loving homes regardless of creed, colour or culture. The government needs to grasp these recommendations and make things happen. Whether they are brave enough to take more than baby steps remains to be seen.

We also talked about my book, Mexican Takeaway which will finally make it into the stores on May 1st.

My involvement in this issue began with me deciding to write the book and use it as a vehicle to raise awareness of such a crucial issue and bring about positive change.Because of that, I am thrilled that even before it’s been released, it’s helping to make things happen. It’s funny how you start something and have no idea where it will go. Of course, we have much work to do but it seems now that the scandal and tragedy of the way in which adoption has been handled for so long in this country is about to become a major issue.

A friend recently asked why I was still doing this. “What do you mean?”

“You know,” he said. All this activity you’re generating. Surely you don’t need to worry now you have your children.”

That’s not the point. We didn’t set out to simply procure babies and move on. We set out to give a child a home because we believed then, as we do now, that all children deserve a stable and loving family situation. So if we follow through from that, then it’s not all about our cosy little family. While it might not be totally desirable for us to be in the spotlight, I know it won’t be forever. This is a phase, and then the campaign will move on to another one where I will increasingly be (hopefully) pushing and pulling behind the scenes.

I’m not going to change the world. But if my exposure helps to take adoption to a place where one, two or more children find a loving home, then I will have achieved what I have set out to do.

John himself was a neglected child who, as he wryly puts it, was brought up by “Her Majesty’s prison system.” In an amusing aside he pointed out how his time in prison cost more than it did to educate David Cameron at Eton!

The need for John’s work is inextricably linked to the way in which children begin their lives. Lack of a loving stable home will almost,always result in a problem be it large or small. Every year around 4000 children are removed from their birth families where they have been subject to neglect or abuse, either intentionally or not. On average they will have probably spent a year ‘waiting’ while the social care system tries to sort out foster parenting. Of these about 1000 never find a home and are shunted around the care system. Needless to say, their futures are not hopeful. Around one-third will not take GCSEs. Children in the care system are three times more likely to be unemployed and twice as likely to have a criminal record.

I’m not saying this means they’ll end up homeless but whether they end up with a home for life is another story. The way in which children are shunted around the system slowly means that with each birthday they become less likely to get adopted. And that’s why the issue has to be tackled holistically, something John instinctively understands.