Yes we know about being a mum. You’re on call 24/7, you wipe up dribble, vomit and poo constantly and you don’t get paid for it. It’s so unglamorous.

But you never hear this stuff from people lower down the socio-economic scale. These views tend to emanate from Western Middle-Class mothers, many of whom were in a position to give up careers to have children (a luxury in itself). And now, they seem to feel cheated.

And that is although often the moaning mummies tend to be able to pay for those things they don’t like doing – like cleaning – and afford babysitting or a nanny if they wish. Which makes these posts insulting to a large number of women who cannot afford the leisure and would never have the time to pen a blog about how tough it is.

I find this whole new trend is offensive to those who have lost their kids. Those whose kids are missing. Those who have had to abandon their kids because above the number allowed by their State or religion, or conceived out of wedlock. Those who have tried and failed to have kids naturally. Or have tried and failed to adopt.

It’s offensive to the kids themselves. Would we have wanted to feel that we were a ‘job’ to our mothers? And them reminding us and telling the world about how unrewarding and tiring it was especially it wasn’t even paid for?

And of course these statements are offensive to those who actually do have the hardest jobs in the world. You want to try and tell a miner in China or a sweat factory worker in Bangladesh that you have the hardest job in the world because you have to soothe your child back to sleep at night? Or do you want to ask my cleaner who hasn’t seen her kids for three years whether she’d rather clean the vomit off her own kids. Or mine?

This is offensive because kids are not a job. A job (and I have done a few) is something you do for other people, a place where you navigate the whims of others in order to earn money. With no passion often, certainly no love. Caring for your children, that you chose to have presumably (after all as a modern woman you could have chosen not to) is a privilege, a joy, a time to learn and relearn through their eyes.

This might be a cultural issue. I am Italian after all. A country where ‘I bambini’ are a pleasure to have around, are part of society, they sit with you at dinner table, you take them to restaurants with you (not just to special ones where they are allowed in) and the customer service improves rather than getting worse when the little people arrive. It might be because I am an adoptive mother and I went looking for that job high and low with every bit of me. Yes I did. It might be because I think even your daily ‘job’ needs to feel pleasurable. Or maybe all of the above. But I think being a mum is the highest form of honor I have been offered in life. Being with my children is the most enriching, fun, educational, creative part of my day and night. And it is rewarding, each minute of it is (OK maybe not the cleaning the poo bit). I feel grateful for their presence and the gift of our bond and companionship every single moment I can.

Ultimately the way we live anything from parenting to working to spending time with others or alone is all about attitude. I know I have chosen mine. And instead of spending time concocting a narrative about how hard done by I am, I am forever grateful I even got to choose.

As ever the topic of interracial adoption is a complex one, one that makes the headlines in the New York Times on the same day – link here.

I think the title of the NY Time summarises the whole thing correctly. Yes race (and indeed religion) do matter. They are part of a child’s identity, and it will stay way into adulthood. In an ideal world therefore we would want to match a child with the same ethnicity and why not religion parents. But guess what? We don’t live in that ideal world. We live in one where that choice isn’t always possible and the alternative to that ‘perfect match’ is a life in care shunted around the foster care system with multiple placements (in the majority of cases with temporary carers of a different ethnicity and religion anyway).

After that? The prospects are bleak. Crime, prostitution and homelessness are too often the only future for young adults leaving care as pointed out in our report from last year. 

To say that I found Nick Ferrari obnoxious in the interview would be an underestimation of my actual feelings towards him. Apparently he is amazed that I trust social services to be the ones to be making the right decision in the interest of the child. Who else would be? The birth family who had a total of three children removed from their custody and given for adoption?

In his biased view it should have been taken into account that four sets relatives of the biological mother came forward to adopt, and on top of that they were Muslim. How perfect blood related and same religion.

Should that have been a decisive factor? Being of a specific religion or even ‘blood related’ does not make anyone suitable to adopt.

Worse so Nick and a lot of the press around this specific case were clearly making a point that ‘on top of that’ the white women were lesbians too. So let’s throw everything in the pot why not?

This is going to get really boringly cliché now. What children need is the permanent love of doting parents. When that is provided by biological same ethnicity and religion parents that is great. When that is not possible then the next best available match has to be found to ensure the best interest of the child in paramount. In that case, dare I say like mine with two Mexican children, cultural needs of children can be met by different-race parents who are committed to the best interests of their child.

So that children are not made to pay for having been born in a family which for whatever reason couldn’t provide for them (in this case mental illness) and then for being of the wrong skin colour and or religion.

Being left behind languishing in a care system waiting endlessly not just for ‘a’ muslim family but ‘the right’ muslim family will never be the right alternative to a permanent loving family. Now.

One of the cosy themes this week has been that many people are under the misapprehension that they are not suitable to adopt. A YouGov survey showed one in four adults think being over the age of 40 would mean inelligiblility for adoption – whilst low incomes and being single were commonly cited as barriers too.

What’s less comfortable is the fact that local authorities have the power to interpret the current ‘guidelines’ however they like, and frequently reject potential adopters for a whole variety of reasons – there are documented examples of people being too wealthy, being the wrong ethnicity, the wrong sexuality or even having too many cats. Boroughs in London less than 5 miles apart have radically different policies leading to huge inconsistencies – there’s an excess of demand for adoption of ethnic children in Brixton, whilst there’s an excess supply of suitable potential adopters in Kensington. The real shock is that under the current system, never the twain shall meet.

Our current minister for Children and Families – Edward Timpson – should be the perfect man for the job, growing up with two natural and two adopted siblings in a household which saw his parents fostering over 90 children. He’s pledged to break down the local barriers and link children across the country more quickly with potential adopters through the Adoption Gateway, which has now gone live. Yet for all the warm words, he has after a year in office still failed to meet and hear the opinions of some forward thinking organisations in the sector, such as Adopt A Better Way.
What’s really needed now is a wholesale structural change to the system and the rules. Responsibility should be transferred to a new central authority, which can apply consistent adoption criteria. Resourcing needs to be hugely improved to stop the senseless delays which damage young children so much. And we need to totally rethink the conflicting legal and social care systems, whose competing agendas force children into a cycle of being returned time and again to unsuitable parents before their situation becomes so dire that they are placed into care, with their young lives already blighted.
Things have at last started to show signs of moving in the right direction, but like the system itself, progress is painfully and damagingly slow. Now is the time for government to commit to Britain’s future by investing properly in our vulnerable children. The argument for the investment in terms of improved life chances, lower crime, better health, improved education and reduction in the numbers needing care – has already been accepted. Let’s act now, otherwise Britain will be picking up the social and economic tab for decades to come.

So the police turn up and they have detained someone they think is his ‘look out’. Usual story. Nobody saw him do anything but he ‘looked dodgy’ said someone. Yes he was black and wore a hoody. Police say they can tell a dodgy guy miles away, the majority of the time they are right. The majority of the time they are black, the majority of the time they are care leavers.

Myth: Policemen are bad. I always thought so. I never really liked them. As an activist I associated them with beating me up during peaceful demonstrations, a tool of the Italian right wing. This policeman is a normal, nice bloke. He’s got two kids. And he gets it. You can see he’s torn between being a policeman for me and understanding the sad reality of what is unfolding with these kids. The detective is a good bloke too. Like his colleague he really gets it: he is genuinely interested in making things better. He knows the sensational media stuff about crime and kids doesn’t tally with the reality. He knows it’s part of a long chain of neglect that authorities, lawmakers and other adults are responsible for.
He has no tools to make it better. So he’s frustrated at the system, the length of time courts take to make decisions, the amount of money wasted on bureaucracy that don’t help either young offenders or society. It’s a joke he says commenting on the routine of detaining these kids for a night, getting a lawyer to tell them to say ‘no comment’ (and maybe a translator for many do not speak English) and then they go back to their normal life as neglected foster kids.

I’m aware that the policeman in front of me and his colleagues risk their lives every day for little more than the minimum wage. That’s not right either. The guy they’ve detained is an illegal immigrant. That’s a mess right there. What are his options? The detective tells me about the vicious circle of neglect, poverty and violence. Nobody cares about these kids. They steal. They go to jail for three months. When they come out they have no alternative. They do have a few more tricks learned in jail from the serious criminals so the cycle continues. The policeman says the courts are too slow and have no idea how to deal with these kids. He despairs and thinks the sentences should be longer so at least they are off the street, even if they are in jail. He is trying to make the best of a mess. The fact that he contradicts himself by saying they have probably already spent too much time with social services and the system, is understandable. All these kids get told is what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ but as we all know, you can’t do it without love. And that is one thing they will never have.

Jail, says the detective, is like a training course, paid by the taxpayer. He also tells us about what he thinks is the best example of the failure of the system. A young guy he knows well. Care leaver, abused and neglected at home, a string of foster carers (sounds familiar?), now in a council hostel. He started with with basic street robbery at shopping malls around Christmas last year. Of course he was caught- he’s no professional. It took the courts 7 months to convict him. Meanwhile he’s moved up the crime ladder and is now into ‘knife crime’. Again he’s been caught a few times. But the detective thinks it’s now too late for him, he is in the system and there is no way out now.

He observes that when you watch the CCTV images of this kid stabbing other kids or doing nasty things (always to kids the same age, which surely must tell psychologists something) he looks like the most evil person in the wold. And then you sit down and interview him. He is a pleasant, even amusing young kid who will one day get stabbed, probably fatally, because he never got a chance. That, he said, is likely to be the fate of my intruder. A scared, unintentional criminal who has no alternative.

But as he says. People don’t want to see that. The government doesn’t and the media finds it easier to say we have a crime epidemic. No, what we have is a neglect epidemic. A society that punishes kids for being unwanted and unloved. What do you really expect them to do? Because although it was my house that was broken into, I know exactly why the kid did it. ‘The’ kid. He doesn’t have a name. But then he doesn’t have a home. Or parents. He’s nobody’s kid. But actually he is. He’s our responsibility. But the couple of hours the policeman, the detective, my husband and I have just spent talking about him is about as close to real care that’s he’s going to get.

So jail doesn’t work, neither does the care system, or leaving these kids to themselves. Where is it all go so wrong? I am sure everyone meant well when setting up the care system, the justice one, the Police one. But we have failed miserably to have any effect other than the multiplier one. We have failed and continue to fail ten of thousands of children who turn into young offenders by which time it’s too late. And in doing so we fail society as a whole.

So according to Cameron and the invisible and highly reticent Edward Timpson (Minister for Children apparently though you would not think so) the reason why many potential parents don’t adopt is because adoption gets bad press. Not for a moment have they considered that the bad press is warranted. It is not a case of people being fed lies; mostly it is that those who might know anything about adoption, know that there is no support for families once you have adopted. The subset of the population who might consider adopting are generally a well-informed lot: they know that once you take on the responsibility of a child who has been in the care system you get a sack load of trauma and neglect but not tools to help you deal with it. Kids in care suffer twice (at least), first from biological parents who can’t look after them or don’t want them. They’re already messed up but the care system then shunts them around and makes sure they’re well and truly feeling the pain of neglect.
Love is not enough for these kids. For someone adopted as a baby it may be ok but the reality is that most kids will be toddlers at least, before they are adopted. They will have felt abuse, emotional and physical pain and much more besides. They will need specialist care to either prevent them developing a form of mental illness or to treat it . But they won’t get it. Almost to the day that parents and children come together to form a family, they will be left alone. Local authorities and councils, happy to pass the parcel, will cross them off their list.

This example  is typical of how well-meaning people end up exhausted after fighting for years to get post-adoption support for their kids. Most never secure funding for the therapy that’s needed and it is not uncommon for them to return the child to care because they are unable to cope.

“Our son, who we’ve had since he was two, at age nine became incredibly aggressive and clearly has behavioural problems. “Now he’s a nearly 16-year-old who’s over 20 stone, and I’ve been pinned against the wall and my head smashed in. I regularly would get hit,and his mouth is like a sewer. I love him to bits, but I wouldn’t say I’m very proud of him. We’ve been close many times to picking up the phone and saying ‘we can’t do this’.”

While social workers may reassure parents during the adoption process that they have the right to an assessment of a child’s needs, they may not explicitly communicate that there is no duty on a local authority to provide the services to meet any needs that are identified. And because no statutory agency has any obligation to stump up, all too often, they don’t.

And so we come back again to one of the central platforms for Adopt a Better Way: the lack of a central regulating body. Without it we have no exact data as to how many children are returned to care as a result of lack of support. how many children develop mental illness during their first years in care and what is needed to minimise this awful chain of events. initiatives such as the ill-thought out adoption passport do not attempt to address key issues including how to monitor the performance of councils or how to move towards a structure that supports children and parents so they can come together and stay together. But with such a reductive government in power, one who talks a great deal about families but whose policies are almost resolutely anti-family, it is hard to see how this will happen.

How is this possible? When we’d just adopted our first child, Gaia, the question was “Do you know anything about her ‘real mum’?” Now we have Luca as well, the question has shifted: ‘Are they ‘real siblings’? What makes ‘real’ siblings? Blood? Is it blood and genetics that are at fault when siblings don’t talk to each other, hardly bond and live like strangers? And should we thank DNA when the opposite happens?

Last year Luca suddenly went cross-eyed overnight. Immediately we knew it wasn’t just an eyesight issue. At the time his co-ordination completely deserted him, he went floppy to the extent that he forgot how to even walk. A horrible month in hospital ensued while we waited to hear what this thing was. A virus? Brain damage? Meningitis? Nothing conclusive. Now we know what it isn’t but not what it is.

In the medical profession everyone is ‘confused’ but actually we are not because we knew we had adopted a child who had been physically and emotionally damaged before even being born. In recent months, it’s become obvious that he has multiple problems but we don’t quite know how deep it goes. His brain is affected. For a child approaching three he cannot really understand or communicate concepts. There are a few words he says but I don’t think he always knows why he’s saying them. He can’t tell me if he had a happy day at nursery or even answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ because he doesn’t really know what I’m talking about when I ask him. He just looks at me with impossibly big, lost eyes and just repeats what I say. Currently he is seeing a speech therapist, physiotherapist, developmental pediatrician, feeding specialist and undergoing genetic testing. He wears glasses and a patch and is a fairly regular visitor to our GP for recurrent infections and other issues.

Watching him go through test after test, being prodded, poked and shipped from hospital to hospital, hurts, right to the core of my shattered soul. Just like a real mum. I feel all sorts of things. Mostly I am sad because I think it’s unfair that he should go through this. I know he is the product of a ‘real’ mother who abused alcohol and possibly drugs for the entire duration of her pregnancy. He was that unwanted. I was talking to someone whose (biological) child has disabilities and she summarised it beautifully, she said “It’s not painful because we wanted the perfect child, but because we want our child to have a perfect life, and we know he simply will not”.

I feel pride at the way he smiles at life, is always up for a cuddle and finds even the hospital a familiar cosy place. At the way he holds my hand when I sleep with him and get overwhelmed with fear and upset almost as if he is the one comforting me. I am inspired by him, his resilience and unconditional love. And then I feel gratitude. A lot of people tell me “You are so good for what you have done, you know he would be in an orphanage if it wasn’t for you, he might be dead now” but I am the one who is grateful, for what he means to me and everyone around him.

Which leads me to the ‘real siblings’.
Gaia has every reason to be jealous. She was 2.5 when we went to meet him, a difficult age to accept a new brother. A difficult age to understand that we were flying to Mexico, where we adopted her, to now ‘meet him’ and bring him back forever, with all the implications that the whole thing brought. She was and still can be insecure with new people and obsessive with her attachment to me. When people tried to shake my hands she would stand between us and say “This is MY MAMMA!” especially if it was kids doing it. It was impossible to have playdates at home without it turning into a mini drama where she would push anyone who came close to me away. Everyone swore it would be a disaster to add another child to the family at that time. I am not going to deny it took serious adjustment.

But right now this is what I know. Just as we read our kids, Gaia and Luca understand each other.
Luca’s first word was “Gaia’. She is the only one he really recognises and always has done, at both a rational and emotional level. Whenever he is at the doctors and won’t sit still we mention the magic word “Gaia’ and he stops and smiles. I cannot take him to the school gates for drop-off because he has a melt-down at the thought of leaving her (he does not and never has done that about me!).

Gaia has demanded to sleep in the same room as him. She says ‘sharing is caring’ so I want to share everything with Luca, even my room’. In the morning she gets him out of the cot (she is barely five) and gets him ready. If I am unwell she even makes him breakfast. She sits on the floor with the patience of a saint, teaching him colours and numbers that she knows he will not remember. Despite us never ever mentioning the fact that he has issues (amongst other reasons because we don’t even know what the issue IS) a week ago she told us at dinner that when she grows up she ‘wants to be a teacher of children like Luca’. When I asked her if she meant a nursery teacher, she replied ‘no a teacher of children who take a long time to learn’. She encourages him to push forward even when I give up trying. She tells me not be ‘discouraging’ of him as ‘he will get there’. And I sit there and watch this miracle unfold in front of my eyes. Are they real siblings? I have never witnessed anything more real than the bond between my children.

And today if there is only one thing Luca knows is that he’s wanted. By me, his father and his sister Gaia. We are all real, like the bond that gets us out of bed in the morning and the love we have for each other. And we support each other, especially our dear little soul who often has no idea where he is or who to hug. The most important thing is that we are there to hug him. You can’t get more real than that.

“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.

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.

When we met, I also discussed with him my campaign, Adoption With Humanity, and these are my thoughts following our discussion about his 19 point plan, and our plans for a National Adoption Authority:

We welcome your report and believe it contains some very sound research and extremely positive ideas for reform. The findings are compelling, indeed you may agree that they are dramatic.

The core of your paper is, we believe, the development and implementation of a completely new ethos behind adoption: one in which the best interests of the child are genuinely given priority and where adoption is seen as a positive way of ensuring that a child is cared for in a family situation; and where those who put themselves forward for this role are accepted and welcomed as a constructive resource.

Many of the issues you have raised and which we acknowledge below, in addition to others which concern us greatly, seem to lead to one central conclusion: there is an authority vacuum.

Looking first at the issues:
A. Problem of delays
1.  The time it takes to bring children into the care system (when they are obviously being neglected)
2.    The length of time it takes a child to be adopted – due to system being too bureaucratic
3.    Social workers’ attitudes in seeking the perfect match (when “suitable” is sufficient)
4.    Appalling delays in courts and with Guardians

B.   Problem of social workers’ attitudes and lack of appropriate training
1.    Professional role – personal opinions vs policies local and national
2.    The key role of social work being seen as the preservation of the biological family
3.    Individual antipathy to adoption
4.    Desire (at almost all costs) to keep children with birth families
5.    Obstruction to “less than perfect” adoption
6.    Issue of misuse of Special Guardianship as quicker and cheaper option when in fact often its use is not compatible with the best interests of the child
7.    Putting off / turning away too many potential adopters

C.  The way the adoption system is set up
1.    Lack of rational control structure across all the elements of adoption
2.    Problem of Government not having control over local authorities hence problem of ensuring any change in policy/guidelines is adhered to (see recent changes in ethnic guidelines…)
3.    Budget structure within LAs plus anomalies like Courts being able to spend LA budgets on additional reports etc with no LA control
4.    Cross charge of real cost of home studies and no more has led to a disincentive to prepare more adopters than are strictly needed by an authority leading to a national shortage of prepared adopters (plus additional delays for a child if prepared adopters are not available when adoption becomes the plan for him/her.)
5.    No proper integration with the court system
6.    Local authorities working independently / lack of co-ordination – may turn down a potential adopter in one authority because no suitable match when the next door authority may have a suitable child available for adoption.
7.    Broad spectrum of standards & policies and achievements of local authorities – effects of leadership/management or lack thereof

From all of these points we are inevitably drawn to the conclusion that there is an authority vacuum, and thus an imperative need for the Government to create a rational control structure to move adoption practice forward in the UK and to be able to ensure that its policies can be realized (and measure that success).

Looking at your 19 points, we believe that the problem warrants action far stronger then just encouragement to address these. Your conclusions make it apparent that the problem with adoption in the UK is a very serious one, and as such we suggest that what is required is a major intervention to ensure the improvements the adoption system is crying out for.

We believe it is time for the government to take a step forward – a major one – and claim its authority over adoption practices by setting up a National Adoption Authority (NAA). This body will have the authority and power to devise new policies and practices that would be enforceable by the Authority over Local Authorities and Courts.

Although this might seem revolutionary, it’s actually purely evolutionary. We strongly believe this is the best way for the Government to take the initiative and create the mechanism to address the issues. Whether we like it or not, the responsibility of tackling huge issues in our society does fall to governments. It is also a way in which we can avoid the compartmentalisation based on old policies and the biases that are so ingrained in our current system, in which it appears that the Government has not been able to enforce its wishes for change.

We have given some thought to the structures and bases for such an authority. We would suggest that the NAA would be governed by a mixed representative body covering the whole spectrum of adoption, including social workers, but also experts such as psychologists, doctors, birth mothers, adoptive parents and adoptees who would offer a thorough view on adoption as seen from all aspects. Its operational team would enforce policies and guidelines set by the government and based on best practice or empirical evidence. It would have authority over all adoption agencies, and have a strong role with regard to adoption courts and the integration of procedures between them, including early and continuous co-ordinated planning.

A key feature which we believe should attend the creation of the authority is the idea of the budget being allocated to the child (similar to a statement of educational needs) and the creation of a separate National budget for the assessment and preparation of potential adopters with the Authority being responsible for the analysis of the correctness of its value and the efficacy of its use.

Another core function would be to take over the “inspection” role which has to date been undertaken by OFSTED. Crucially it would be in a position to gather, analyse and publish statistics and genuinely audit data on the whole of the adoption system.

We believe the Authority should also have a significant role in defining the training curriculum and oversee its implementation. Finally, we believe it should continue the really vital work of the Adoption Research Initiative in providing the evidence on which to base policies in the future.
Financially, we would see the budget coming from the reallocation of the budget for the current policy team at the Department of Education and the relevant budgets granted to Local Authorities. The significant improvements to the system that would result from enforcing standards and policies, shortening time in care, and reducing waste by proper co-ordination between agencies and the courts should be sufficient to create significant improvements without the need for additional budgets.

On the other hand, we are aware the government does not want to create major centralized bodies but is a keen supporter of local solutions. The creation of a National Adoption Authority follows a tried and tested route, particularly familiar to the Dept of Education who currently have responsibility for Adoption in the UK, of having a central policy setting authority and delegated local implementation.

The creation of such an authority would avoid some of the dangers present in other options. For example we are concerned that were one to follow the route of creating a National Adoption Agency, there would be a significant danger of replicating the same attitudes and behaviours – because almost inevitably it would in large part be formed by the same individuals. It is also a more radical solution which would create greater disruption, cost more and take more time – a National Adoption Authority would be a more evolutionary, more easily achievable step and one which we believe should be given serious consideration as the optimum structure to reform adoption in the UK.

Chapter 2, Does Your Cat Speak Spanish?
“Do I look OK?” Rick said as he came into the bedroom, wearing his cream suit and his best tie.
“Uh oh. Cream?”
“I don’t want to wear a dark one. It doesn’t seem friendly enough; too businesslike. They might think I don’t have time for children if I wear that.”
I’d never seen Rick this anxious. He was normally so calm and composed about absolutely everything.
“I think I want to marry you all over again. It means a lot that you’re going along with me on this.”
“Fra, I believe in adoption too. I am not going along with you just because you are stubborn, which you are! I can totally see the point, but I want to know more and see if it is for us. I’m our left brain, remember?”
I collapsed in giggles on the bed. Rick bounced over and gave me a huge hug.
“Careful, you’ll crease the suit.”
“Shut up, you.”
We kissed, then lay there just holding each other close for a while. I had opted for a more casual look than Rick. Smart jeans, a long blue cardigan, and a pair of boots instead of recycled shoes. It was freezing again. In the car, I asked him: “Where do you think you are in your heart, Rick?”
“I find it frustrating that they have to decide for us that we cannot adopt locally. It’s not like there are no children who need a family here in London.”
“I mean what about adoption? How do you feel about it now?”
“I think if we decide it’s worth a shot, we should start the adoption and try to have natural children at the same time.”
“And then let the Universe decide which one is right first.”
“I knew you’d say that! You and your Universe!”

There were times when Rick’s pragmatism and my spiritual outlook clashed, but on the whole our combination worked. We filed into a room with the other couples who were doing the training. There was tea, coffee and biscuits on offer. Everyone seemed very shy. This wasn’t surprising, since for most couples choosing adoption is a public admission that they can’t have children.
We were invited into a room and directed to a circle of chairs. I chose to sit next to a woman who appeared to be alone. Rick sat on the other side of me, munching a biscuit.
“This is what it must be like attending a twelve-step programme,” he whispered.
“Sshh! Someone might hear you!”
The two trainers arrived and introduced themselves. They were both women, and they exuded warm energy. One had an endless mane of hair and wore a long hippie skirt. With her big eyes and enormous glasses, she reminded me of a cartoon character from A Bug’s Life. The other woman wore a suit and smart flat shoes, and sported an elegant short bob.
“Hello everyone, and well done for arriving on time in such bad weather. It shows this means a lot to you. We are trainers for this course, and also we are both international adopters. I have two Bolivian children, and Susan has a Chinese girl as well as a natural one.”
“Oh, good,” I whispered to Rick. “They’ve actually done it.”
“At the end of today you will have understood more about the process, and we will file a report for your council to say whether or not we feel you are ready to start the Home Study.”
No pressure then. We were asked to introduce ourselves and say a little about why we were there. I realised suddenly that we would be putting ourselves on show in public for the first time. Amongst the couples talking about their fertility problems, multiple miscarriages, and failed attempts at in vitro fertilization, we would stick out. God, what were we doing here? Did we have a right to be in that room? I felt slightly ashamed when it was my turn to speak.
“For all intents and purposes we can conceive, but we feel strongly that adoption should play a big part for various reasons.”

It turned out the single woman next to me, who was a Spanish journalist, had also decided on adoption, even though she could have children. At the end of the introduction, one of the trainers gestured towards us and said:
“The three of you are called preferential adopters. This means that you have chosen to build your family via adoption and not because of fertility issues. The rest of you are traditional adopters.”
“What if we wanted to adopt and try and have natural children too?” asked the Spanish lady.
Thank God she asked that one.I was dying to know but didn’t want to appear too radical or anything.
The woman from A Bug’s Life answered.
“You can’t do that. If you happen to fall pregnant during the Home Study you will have to stop the adoption, have your baby, and wait until he or she is at least three years of age before you can start the process all over again. If you have a miscarriage, you will have to wait for two years to grieve and overcome the trauma.”
Two years to overcome a miscarriage! How did they work that out?
“How do you even know if we are trying, anyway?” I joked.
“Your life will never be the same, my dear, once you say yes to the adoption process. Believe me, it’ll feel like a crowd of people are watching you having sex.”
Laughter from around the room. “Seriously, guys, your entire life will be scrutinised every step of the way. Nothing will pass unnoticed.”

Later, when we were let out for lunch, we sat with the Spanish woman and three other couples in a nearby deli, conducting a post-mortem on the morning’s proceedings.
“So which country do you think you would like to adopt from?” asked the Spanish lady.
“We would like to adopt from Russia because my husband has blond hair and mine is dark, so we figured that whether the baby is from the eastern or western part of the country, it will look like one of us,” said one woman.
“We’re going for China, as we want a baby girl at any cost, and all babies for adoptions are girls,” said another woman.
“Anyway, as if I’m going to stop trying in the meantime!” said
Michelle. She and her husband Simon had already attempted I.V.F. a few times.
“What was that all about? What gives them the right to be all Stasi-like about sex?” I said.
“No disrespect to you guys,” said the single Spanish lady, looking around the table, “but it seems almost as if adoption is an industry for infertile people. Unlike those of us who choose, often in your cases it’s a second best, right?”
She may as well have thrown a hand grenade. It was clear that at least one couple were taking her comment personally. The table went quiet.
“Oh, look at the time,” said Rick. “We’d better get back.”
The rest of the day was spent in various exercises, scenarios, and conversations about the pitfalls and challenges of the adoption process. At the end of the day, one of the trainers looked around at us all and said: “It won’t be the same for all of you, and some will handle it better than others. But it’s neither an easy ride nor a short one. You have anything from two to four years ahead of you from this moment. But I am sure you will all be fine. Good luck.”
I felt like I do when my Chinese doctor sticks a million needles in my face, tummy, ears and neck, then calmly says, “You can sleep now till I am back.”
Really?