Children’s Minister Tim Loughton has started talking about “allowing” transracial adoption (he means white parents and non-white kids). The underlying message is “right on” social workers are keeping non-white kids “locked up” in the care system.
One recent report said that the government wants to change the law that ensures children can only be placed with parents of the same ethnic background. But there never was a law. There was only ever government guidance which stated that social workers should take in consideration a child’s race, ethnicity, cultural background. Well, shock horror!
All statistics show that the most important factor in a child’s adoption process is their age. Once a child gets past a certain age their chances of being adopted diminish. That happens disproportionately to children who are from a black, Asian or dual heritage backgrounds.
But this is not the only aspect of the problem worth talking about.
Our social services system is literally cracking under the strain. At the same time as the government scraps “all children matter” as policy (and to be clear, only some children matter) they are cutting funding, staff, children’s services, training for foster carers etc.
There used to be voluntary schemes which supported white parents adopting non-white children with information, training and wider adoptive family networks so children would have black family and role models in their lives. All this went long before the current round of cuts we’re facing.
But none of the above is the problem apparently. It’s all about social workers being too politically correct.
