Sadly this is pretty much how governments have conducted themselves in dealing with pressing issues in both the adoption process and the care system which is a part of it. Sure there has been much murmuring from Michael Gove and Tim Loughton about making ‘big changes’ to the process. The former is himself adopted so I guess I’d hoped for more action but instead, we just get more pronouncements.

So I sit here looking at the same disturbing facts over and over. Black and Asian children find it hard to be adopted into a permanent, stable home. The numbers of children going into care are also increasing  - on average around 1000 each month. Meanwhile there are prospective parents coming forward, many of them ready to jump through the countless hoops that will be put before them. And we have a society that embraces alternative concepts of creating a family, one where even surrogacy is becoming more accepted. So why is adoption so complicated, so bureaucratic, so uncaring and unaware of the people it affects the most? Why isn’t it a leaner, more transparent process that gives hope instead of discouraging those who want to make it work?

The reality is that in nearly four years the government hasn’t even attempted to alter the the forms on the Home Study questionnaire to ask if parents would consider a child of a different race.

You know, I receive calls each day from people desperate to open their hearts to a child who needs a loving home. These people tell me they have been turned down as adoptive parents due to race. I find that even more troubling in a country that spends a fortune on ensuring ‘diversity’ in its workplaces. The number of children adopted last year was the lowest in ten years and England lags behind any other so called ‘developed’ country when it comes to the way it handles the children left to languish in care. Their lives are destroyed before they have a chance to begin. And still the government sits there, intellectually and morally constipated uttering passive words. Non-announcements are not only depressing, they are insulting to the children and those of us who care about making life better for them.

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 don’t think we’re any way towards meeting the problem with the reforms it needs. In conversations with both Martin Narey (newly appointed Adoption Czar) and Tim Loughton, the Minister for Children I was impressed with the way both men understood the problem. And I think their intentions are there. However I am not convinced that they are going to generate any substantial mileage in terms of really making any difference – the kind of difference that will change the appalling statistic that out of 4000 children up for adoption in 2010, less than 300 were adopted.

Why is this the case? Again I am loathe to apportion blame on social workers and local authorities as they are merely instruments of the system. It must be said they have used that to make not wholly safe judgements that have tended to be in the interest of keeping families together, rather than finding care and safety for the child. It is the DfE and the government who need to be more accountable though, for their parts in this immoral and often, inhumane circus.

We live in cash strapped times. Councils have always known they can save money, rather a lot of money, by keeping children in care instead of helping them towards adoption. This is going to exacerbate the situation. Sure you can save yourself a bit of money in the short term. And when those neglected kids fail to complete school and end up in prison then what? Because the statistics show us what happens and David Cameron knows it too.

A government that won’t take responsibility for something so fundamental to the well being of children and society is not behaving like a government Government. What we want to see is the government using its weight to enforce any measures with  Local Authorities, Social Workers and Family Courts.

Otherwise Local Authorities will do what they have done before and ignore them and hide behind them. We still won’t have the clarity of direction we need.

That’s why we need a National Adoption Authority which will be able to impose guidelines and ensure there are penalties for not following them. We need much more of course, like a more streamlined process in the family courts that does not aggravate the delays already present in the system. But most of all we need David Cameron to take the lead.

I feel great because of the recent national media interest in my adoption campaign as the momentum builds up for National Adoption Week which starts tomorrow when I will be delivering our Adoption with Humanity petition to 10 Downing Street with my daughter Gaia, fellow founders Alex Bemrose and Stevan Whitehead, and Alex’s young son Jose. I hope this petition helps to make a difference and provide love and security for children who have been left to languish in care. Do look out for us this week on Sky News, ITV and Channel 4, as well as in the press.

This article appeared in today’s Sunday Times and also included the story of how Rick and I adopted two babies from Mexico, as well as a picture of us spanning six columns at the top of the page. It’s case studies like this which reinforces to the public and politicians the need for change, and we believe that setting up a National Adoption Authority would be the best solution.

Here is the Sunday Times article, with Gaia looking cute in her Halloween dress!

David Cameron’s adviser on adoption is to crack down on councils that ban white people from giving homes to black children, or bar smokers and the obese from adopting

Martin Narey, former chief executive of Barnardo’s, the children’s charity, warned that local authorities could face a legal ban on preventing couples from adopting children of another race if they do not voluntarily change their practice.
He blames the barriers put up by many councils for the sharp fall in adoptions and the delays of more than three years endured by large numbers of children before they are given a stable home. The insistence by many social workers that black children should only be adopted by black parents is, said Narey, “preposterous”.
Narey, appointed adoption tsar by the prime minister earlier this year, said in an interview with The Sunday Times he was “appalled” by councils that refused to consider smokers as adoptive parents.
He said removing unnecessary barriers could cut the amount of time it takes to assess people for suitability as adopters from more than a year to four months, as already happens in some areas such as Harrow, northwest London.
He said enough suitable couples initially came forward to adopt, but there was a shortage because so many were put off after being “ground down” by a process that can involve a dozen visits from social workers and filling in health and safety forms that went into “ludicrous” detail.
Recent figures showed the number of adoptions had fallen 8% since 2007 and that just 60 babies a year were being placed permanently with families, compared with 4,000 in 1974.
Narey, speaking ahead of announcements by Cameron on adoption this week, warned that black children were three times less likely than white ones to be adopted from care homes, partly because of a shortage of black couples willing to adopt and because so many white ones were being turned down.
He said guidance from the Labour government in 2000 had not been followed, adding: “Michael Gove [the education secretary] has issued fresh guidance to say that seeking an ethnic match should not delay adoption.
“We need to see whether that guidance is listened to … By the end of the year, I think I will have a pretty good picture. If it hasn’t, then my advice to ministers … will be that they will have to go beyond guidance … possibly to legislation.”
He added: “In some US states it is illegal to take account of ethnicity in adoption. It can’t even be mentioned and trans-racial adoptions are hugely successful there.
“Race does matter, but there aren’t enough black adopters. I believe that to suggest a white couple can’t raise a black child and be supported to help with the racism that child might encounter is just preposterous.”
He said he had been “told by the British Association of Social Workers that the reason they don’t support trans-racial adoptions is that they break down in large numbers. It is simply untrue, there is no evidence”.
Martin Narey wants councils to take quicker action on children living in squalor (Matt Lloyd) Narey, who is also a former chief executive of the National Offender Management Service, was brought up in Middlesbrough as the eighth of nine children with “25 or 26” nephews and nieces, including five who had been adopted.
“It was irrelevant that they were adopted,” said Narey, who recently wrote a report on the adoption system as part of a campaign by The Times. “They were just my nephews and nieces.”
He said he believed it was vital to expand adoption, and for councils to become more willing to remove children from neglectful parents and put them in care homes before adoption.
“I am talking about children living in squalor, not being fed properly, not being loved, not being nurtured, being brought up without any aspirations, seeing violence, being the subject of violence,” said Narey.
Ministers taking a strong interest in adoption include Gove who was adopted as a baby after just four months in care.
Narey also backed a call by Tim Loughton, the children’s minister, who while speaking about adoption earlier this month at the Tory conference in Manchester said: “If you smoke, come forward.”
Some councils bar or heavily restrict smokers from adopting and fostering, even if they are otherwise well qualified.
Wiltshire council, for example, will not allow smokers to be given children under the age of five, or older boys and girls with respiratory problems.
Last month it emerged that Clare and Paul Baker had been told by Essex council that they were not fit to be foster parents after Paul admitted to smoking two cigars in 18 months.
Narey added: “That is not to say you shouldn’t be saying to a parent, ‘Look, you should be thinking about your smoking’ … but it is like saying we are not going to allow parents to conceive if they are smoking. It is a nonsense.”
He also said obesity should not be a bar to becoming adoptive parents. Two years ago a couple from Leeds were turned down for adoption because the husband, Damien Hall, was classified as morbidly obese.
Narey said it was “entirely typical” for some councils to take a year or more to approve carers. He singled out safety forms drawn up by the British Association for Adoption and Fostering and used by most local authorities.
“I want a rigorous system, I don’t want an adoptive child to go to carers who haven’t been properly vetted,” said Narey. “But we can do it much more quickly and we have to accept we can’t head off every possibility. Checking there are locks on the cutlery drawer is not a very valid part of a family’s ability to adopt children.
“The social worker has to complete a health and safety check that runs to five or six pages, checking such banalities as, for example, if there is a trampoline in the garden, does it have a safety net?”

Picture courtesy of Paul Vicente, Sunday Times

Having the power to change laws so that more children can be placed in loving homes is surely the most wonderful achievement. It’s one I am hoping our government will act on very soon and I eagerly await an announcement from David Cameron during National Adoption Week which starts on 31 October.

One of the greatest media advocates for adoption reform has been The Times, and particularly its Social Affairs correspondent Rosemary Bennett. The paper’s headline yesterday could have been spoken by me, “‘Set up a national agency’ to run adoption services”. These are words I have actively been promiting for our Adoption with Humanity campaign as we believe a National Adoption Agency is desperately needed to provide an efficient adoption service in the UK.

However, this time, the words were said by Dr Chris Hanvey, head of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, who is appalled by the “disgraceful” small number of children adopted each year in the UK.

He accuses adoption services of succumbing to prejudice, and ignoring the fact that the younger a child is adopted, the more successful it is likely to be.

Writing in The Times Thunderer column, he says: ” It is time to set up a national adoption agency, answerable annually to Parliament for its performance and committed, through a regional network to develop standardised measures aimed at boosting the number of number of children adopted each year.

“A national service would have a number of advantages. It would allow a greater flow of information on adopters, and children waiting to be matched, preventing local authorities for hanging on to ‘their’ adopters. If organised on a  regional basis it could abolish local authority adoption panels, which are subject to the vagaries of individual members.”

Thank you for speaking out Dr Hanvey. I hope those who can bring about adoption reforms will take note of your wise words which we believe in too.

However, it is a day tinged with sadness following the death of one of the greatest men, Steve Jobs, a perfect example of how adoption can work beautifully. Please read about it here.

Yet we are still agonising over whether adoption should or not be first choice for children languishing in care.

This morning I was on the Vanessa Feltz show on BBC radio discussing the merits of mixed race families with her. This afternoon on ITN London Tonight. I was yet again calling on David Cameron to step up to the challenge facing thousands of children in care today. During his Conservative Party conference speech this week, he said “this might not be the biggest issue facing this country but it is the biggest issue facing these children”.

I am asking the father in him to make this his biggest issue to solve. Now. For their sake.

You can help too by signing our e-petition which urges the government to take action.

“David Cameron needs to lead on this issue and our focus should be to put children first. That means doing away with a system that keeps children in neglect until it is often too late and focuses plainly and squarely on their needs. That won’t happen until we see adoption as a first resort.”

Happily, I read in today’s Times that he plans to “tear up Britain’s adoption rules and end the scandal of thousands of children lost in the care system”.

We will have to wait and see how far he plans to go, but I very much hope the government will listen and consider our Adoption with Humanity proposal when preparing their policy on adoption reforms. Children’s lives and their happiness depend on it.

Please do look out for me on ITV London this evening at 6pm where I will be talking about this.

And please do sign our petition if you share our views too about making desperately needed changes to the present adoption system. You can sign it here.

Here is a link to my full interview with the Standard.

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.

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.