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.

Author and adoption campaigner Francesca Polini, 41, and her husband, Rick, adopted their children, Gaia, 2, and Luca, 3 months, from Mexico after being turned down by their local authority for being “too white”.

“My husband and I have always had an unconventional relationship, but travelling to Mexico as ‘backpacker adopters’ was by far the craziest thing we’ve ever done.

“We could have had children of our own, but thought, ‘There are so many kids in the UK who need a permanent home. Why bother with the whole biological thing?’ But in 2007 we were rejected for domestic adoption on the grounds that we were ‘too white’. Our local authority had placed a cap on the number of white couples who could adopt black, mixed-race or Asian children – so we weren’t even able to apply. It was disgraceful, but there was nothing we could do.

“That’s how we came to be the first British couple to adopt from Mexico. After months of gruelling interviews, we finally completed our adoption home study in September 2007 and were matched with a baby girl.

“We took leave from work, rented out our apartment and said our goodbyes. But just before we were about to get on the plane, we received an e-mail from the Department of Education saying they had made ‘a mistake’. It turned out we couldn’t use the private US agency they’d originally approved. They said, ‘You’ll have to give up that match.’

“To have a baby suddenly ripped away from us like that was devastating. We’d decorated her nursery, chosen a name – how could we go back to work and explain what had happened? So we thought, ‘Why not fly over there and do it ourselves?’

“When we stepped off the plane in Cancún, all we had were our backpacks and a couple of addresses. We started off in the south, travelling to remote orphanages in broken-down buses with chickens on our laps. But it was one disappointment after another. Some orphanages couldn’t facilitate international adoptions; others said we hadn’t been married long enough. We felt like the more we travelled, the further away we got from having a family.

“In utter desperation, we agreed to meet a Mexican lawyer who assured us he could get us a baby, ‘No problem.’ He said, ‘The women I work with are very reliable; they never change their minds.’ The alarm bells started ringing when he added, ‘In a few years, you can come back and I’ll make sure they sleep with the same man, so your children look alike.’ This wasn’t adoption; it was glorified child trafficking. We politely declined a ‘baby to order’, and went on our way.

“Another lawyer introduced us to a woman who, he claimed, was suicidal and wanted to give us her baby. She turned up at our hotel demanding a new car and a flat by the sea in exchange for her daughter. It was like being sucked into a real-life soap opera. At the very last minute we found out she was planning to take our money and do a runner with the child. At this point, we didn’t know who to believe any more.

“But as luck would have it, the day before I’d had a call from a Roman Catholic institute for unmarried mothers, offering us a newborn baby girl. We’d said no at first, because we felt we were under a moral obligation to the other woman, but as soon as I found out we’d been hoaxed, I rang back and said, ‘Is she still available?’ The institute director said, ‘Yes, but hurry. Meet me at my house, 10pm tomorrow.’

“We turned up on her doorstep the next day with backpacks and a wilted bunch of flowers. We were so broke and disillusioned, we didn’t even believe there was going to be a baby. Minutes later this woman opens the door holding a baby girl and says, ‘So what do you think?’ It was Gaia. I watched my husband – a typical Mancunian tough guy – fall in love with her at first sight.

“It was the quickest prep for having a baby you could imagine. The next morning we rented an apartment, turned up at Wal-Mart with two trolleys, and went through the aisles, picking up armfuls of nappies and clothes, Supermarket Sweep-style. At 1pm we were asked to attend a ceremony for her at the local Catholic church, and within a couple of hours, she was ours.

“Becoming instant parents was a steep learning curve. The next morning I woke up, still a bit delirious, and said, ‘Rick, what’s that noise?’ He replied, ‘It’s the baby.’ I was still confused. ‘What baby?’ I’d wiped everything out. ‘It’s your bloody baby,’ he said. Poor Rick had been up all night feeding her every three hours.

“We spent the next couple of months in Mexico getting the adoption finalised. After much discussion, the British Embassy advised us to bring Gaia into the UK on a Mexican passport and get her British visa once we arrived. We had the relevant paperwork and notified the British authorities; what could go wrong?

“Tired and jet-lagged, we arrived at the immigration desk at Heathrow to be greeted by a stony-faced official asking, ‘Where’s her visa? You’re bringing this child into the country illegally and we’re going to have to detain her.’ We were left alone in a room for three hours, with a two-month-old baby and no water, like child traffickers. Gaia was classed as an illegal immigrant and our passports were confiscated. It was unbelievable.

“After we were finally allowed home, we lived with the constant threat that Gaia could be sent back to Mexico at any moment. We had to hire an immigration lawyer, appeared in court twice, and spent thousands in legal fees. In the end, I contacted David Miliband and, thanks to him, Gaia got her passport back, exactly a year after she entered the country.

“Despite everything – and having spent almost £50,000 – it didn’t put us off from filling in an application for a second child. We went through the same Catholic institute and soon received a phone call saying, ‘A baby boy has been relinquished. How quickly can you get here?’ Within five days we were on a plane to meet Luca.

“Gaia and Luca have transformed our lives. Every day I look at them and wonder where they might have ended up – on the streets begging, abusing drugs, starving to death? Adoption is even more amazing than giving birth because it’s like discovering your soul mate; it feels as though it was always meant to be. We didn’t find them; they found us.”

Black and mixed race children wait three times longer than white children to be adopted. For too long social workers in the UK have been implementing what are effectively ghettoisation policies where children must be placed with a family of the same ‘culture’ despite the availability of a loving, stable home in another ‘culture’. Meanwhile they languish in foster care scrapping for a life, while edging closer to their ‘use by’ date, the point at which nobody will want to adopt them because they have become too ‘difficult’ and unlovable.

While the government’s shift on this is a step in the right direction, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Only one-fifth of children waiting for adoption are from minority ethnic families. Meanwhile we have an adoption system that itself is a victim of neglect. It is hard to see how any change can be implemented by social workers without the necessary training. Yes, at times their decisions border on the ridiculous but what is even more absurd in when the DfE points the finger of blame at these messengers and refuses to be accountable for its part in this inhumane and at times, immoral, circus.

If this wasn’t enough to deal with, the lack of any coherent government strategy means it’s about to get worse. Cash strapped councils have always known they can save money by keeping children in care rather than helping them towards adoption. The cuts they are now being forced to make will only exacerbate the situation. While money can be saved in the short-term, the long-term cost to a society that already cannot afford to care for its neglected children may well be greater than anything the government has budgeted for.