In Worcester a few days ago a doorbell rang. The occupants of the house opened it to find a newborn baby, wrapped in a hessian bag. The baby, biblically named Joseph, is doing well say the nurses. The mother is nowhere to be seen and her state can only be guessed at. Those who know about this type of thing say it’s possible she was concealing the pregnancy but this is speculation. There is a lot of speculation about babies right now, not all of it joyous.

Two infants, to be born days apart in the uncustomary heat of an English summer. While Kate and William seem delightfully grounded, it can be safely said this baby will have all its needs met and more. Cared for around the clock, doted on, protected, loved and given the best that money and social status can buy, he or she will have every opportunity. This is not carping, it is simply fact. And what of ‘Joseph?’ Though only a few days old, his opportunities in life are already closing. If his mother is found, authorities will have to determine if she can, wants to or is able to look after her baby. If she cannot, then Joseph will go into care. At that moment his life has already diminished. Joseph will join over 60,000 children in the UK in care, many who have and will spend their whole lives there. Local authorities and courts will produce a mass of paperwork and have endless discussions purporting to be about Joseph’s welfare.

The care system as it stands in the UK is unable to care for the kids it is supposed to protect. Born without any knowledge of the world and no cares, just like William and Kate’s baby, Joseph’s life will take a very different trajectory. The inept bureaucracy of the system will ensure that he is shunted between foster families, standing little chance of bonding with anyone. If he does find a foster family who love him, the authorities will probably move him. He may begin to exhibit difficult behaviour as a toddler as he wonders if anyone loves him or cares about. He is likely to be a slower learner (even though he was probably not born that way), potentially disruptive at school and may engage in anti social activities.

His chances of youth crime, drugs and being a runaway are high, far too high. His chances of being adopted by a loving family are low. Not because there are no adoptive parents but because the system makes it very hard for people to adopt. And so while Joseph languishes in care, developing emotional and physical problems, his potential family will attempt to navigate the councils and authorities and probably find it too difficult. If they do manage to adopt they will be given zero support. One day when Kate Middleton is doing her charity work, she might visit him, in prison or if he’s lucky, in care. She’ll tell everyone that she has a little boy or girl too and all children should be loved and looked after. They should. But they aren’t.

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?

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.

We had to go to Mexico to escape UK’s twisted system: How one couple who wanted to adopt got round council bureaucracy

Twice, my husband and I have tried to adopt children through our local authority. Twice, the over-bureaucratic, ideologically-twisted local authority has stood in our way.

Eventually, we had to travel halfway around the world, to Mexico, where  thanks to a far more efficient, orderly, sane system we now have a beautiful three-year-old daughter, Gaia, and one-year-old son, Luca.

The adoption system in Britain is a mess. The average child will wait two years and seven months to be adopted and during that time they will be bounced around the system while their birth mother – often addicted to drugs or alcohol – continues to neglect them.At the same time, the desperate adoptive parents are forced to jump through every hoop the local authority asks them to.

One of the most pernicious ideas in current thinking is that children should be placed with parents who exactly match their racial make-up.
I am white and Italian – although I have lived in Britain for 16 years – and my husband is white and British.

Our local authority, Ealing in West London, rejected our application immediately without even seeing us in the flesh. Apparently they deemed we were too white and middle class. Although we are medically able to have children, we chose to adopt. I have an adopted younger brother and I have seen at first hand the wonderful benefits of adoption.

We were a perfectly ordinary, decent, suburban couple hoping to provide a child with a loving home. We were both in full-time employment: my husband Rick is an ex-banker who works for an energy company and I used to be global communications director for Greenpeace.

We didn’t even smoke – often a problem for prospective adoptive parents.But we were treated like criminals. We were presumed guilty until proven innocent. The local authorities will talk to your parents and your relatives, get bank references and work references. It’s extraordinary – why would we be prepared to go through all this if we didn’t want to be good parents? It was extremely frustrating and invasive.We already owned our own home but we had to renovate it in order to satisfy the local council even before the process of being approved for adoption had begun.

After they had rejected us, Ealing even admitted they had a cap on the number of white parents who could adopt black children and in a farcical twist, after denying us the chance to adopt a non-white child from the same postcode, they suggested we adopt abroad. Mexico was a bit of a roll of the dice, chosen partly because I could speak Spanish. The Mexican end of the process was wonderfully efficient. Our caseworker met us within a week, and talked us through the process.

The authorities were a  hundred times more caring  than in Britain. Here, we never once met our caseworker at the Department for Education. Whenever we sent them an email, we got an automated email response, saying we couldn’t contact them; they’d have to contact us.

The only problem in adopting Gaia came from the British end. It was a shambles every step of the way. We were approved by our local authority and the Department for Education before going to Mexico. But once we got to Mexico, the British Department for Education lost our papers, and we had to wait three and a half months for them to post the documents to us.

Finally, when we came back through Heathrow, our two-and-a-half-month-old daughter was detained for six hours by immigration authorities, and we were accused of being child traffickers. But Gaia settled in happily and we began to think about adopting again.

When we returned to Ealing to tell them that we wanted to adopt another child, we thought our chances were better as a mixed-race family. No chance. The local authority told us we could only adopt another Mexican baby, from Ealing. What were the chances of finding a baby with that exact background in that exact postcode!

So we returned to Mexico and adopted Luca. This time, the process took only three months (it took six months for Gaia, because of British inefficiency). To adopt a baby in Britain takes nearly three years.

In February, the Government tried to reverse this farcical state of affairs, laying down new guidelines covering ‘transracial’ adoptions, saying that race should not be an issue. But inter-racial adoptions haven’t increased as a result, because local councils and social workers blithely ignore the guidelines and refuse to make the interests of vulnerable little children a priority.

“We bought our dream family,” was not exactly what I expected to see at the top of the page. A big part of my belief about adoption is that children should not be exchanged for money in any circumstances, though sadly this does happen in many places around the world. In my book, Mexican Takeaway I make it very clear how I feel about children as transactions.

So thank you so much Jackie because this isn’t just personal as you know. I hope that my exposure in the media can contribute to a more humane adoption system in the UK, and internationally, so that more children can leave care for a permanent loving home. Thanks for listening, being professional and sticking to your promise.

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.

This is what I know. I know that though I am not their birth mother, I am their real mother. It feels pretty real to feed and dress them, nurse them when they’re sick at night, watch them walk and grow. I am the one who takes them to nursery and wonders if it is right for them. I think about their future; about school, possible bullying, their interactions with other children and adults. I plan birthdays and picnics and feel my heart skip a beat if I think anything is wrong with either of them. I laugh (a lot) and if I go away with my husband overnight I miss them and rush through the front door to make sure all is well. As it should be.

Meanwhile I am very aware of the birth mothers, the women who carried them. I make sure they also know it by reading special stories to them, by telling them their life stories before we came into their lives. I know that the mothers will think of them on their birthdays, and that is just the way it is. But, like other adoptive parents, I have to be careful. There is far too much complexity to happily say, “oh wouldn’t it be nice to have them in contact with their birth mothers for occasions like this one.” Whatever I choose to tell them, and however we decide to manage this complex issue where there is no such a thing as doing the ‘right thing’,  our children have one mother and one father.

In our case, the women who gave up their babies did so not because they couldn’t afford them, but because adoption was the only way out of their respective situations. For their own reasons, they could not have these babies with them – ever. They had a plan for them, as all the mothers who were at the VIFAC Institute in Mexico did.

That is why they were there. They were not in a public hospital, laying there, undecided. They knew the Institute would ensure their children were adopted by a good family and had requested no further contact. This may sound odd to people who simply can’t envisage it, but they wanted to cut ties and leave.

There is no ideal way to do adoption, However, if they’d been abandoned or neglected until they ended up in the system, they may well have been stuck there. Rick and I don’t kid ourselves that we are birth parents. Why would we? But that doesn’t make our ties any weaker.

Pragmatism aside, yes there are days when I would love to reassure Gaia’s mother that this tiny baby has grown into an independent, strong, happy and laughing three-year-old. I would love to introduce her to Gaia’s friends and grandparents and show that she has established a life and now has a sibling to look after (and annoy).

On Gaia’s birthday she did as she has the previous year: she lay in her bed, in her relaxed, undeniably Mexican pose with her hands behind her head waiting for us. We came in with gifts, hugs, kisses and songs. It is our routine and one I hope that my children will have for a long, long time. I am so proud to be a mother and grateful that we are in a position to make a child’s hopes and dreams happen.

Gaia and her new brother Luca have a family who love them unconditionally and feel fortunate to have them. That is how real adoption feels. That is what being an adoptive parent feels like.