That’s what Researching Reform thinks about councils and agencies posting photos and information about children online, with a view to securing fostering and adoption placements. To expose the practice, this site has started a petition asking the government to acknowledge that the practice is illegal, and to end it.
Our petition explains how the current practice of children being advertised online and publicly, is a breach of their human right to privacy. The practice also ignores other legislation, which says that parents of children in care must be consulted on all important decisions affecting their children. Councils and agencies are routinely failing to get parental consent before marketing children online. The practice is also placing children’s lives at risk, as more and more children are being sourced through the internet to be sexually exploited.
We asked Twitter users what they thought of the practice, in a survey. The majority of those polled (82%) did not think councils should be able to advertise children publicly online for the purpose of finding adoptive families or foster carers, with 43% saying that placements were not about looks, and the remaining 39% believing that the practice put children in danger. A further 16% offered up other reasons as to why they felt the practice was not acceptable, or that it was reasonable, depending on their view. One tweeter thought that it was a pragmatic way to find children carers in an imperfect world, while another suggested that financial incentives for carers was a fair way to compensate foster families. Other survey takers were not comfortable with the fees offered to carers. A small minority of those surveyed (2%) thought that the practice was acceptable, taking the view that it was a buyer’s market.
When a child goes through child protection proceedings in the UK, names and other details that could identify these children are not allowed to be publicised in the first instance. The measure has been designed to protect a child’s right to privacy and ensure that they are not compromised through their identification, in any way. Most family court hearings are protected, which means that unless a judge gives permission for a case to be reported, and lists what information can be released, every detail that could identify a child remains private.
That right to privacy is taken away from children once a care order (placing a child in a children’s home or with foster parents), or an adoption order is made.
The removal of that right to privacy, which is protected by both the Human Rights Act and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, amounts to a breach of the law. In addition to these protections, both the UN Convention and the Children Act 1989 make it compulsory for all government bodies to ensure that any decisions made about children are always in their best interests.
If the government wanted to argue that the practice of publicly advertising children online and elsewhere to find them foster homes and adoptive families – and removing a child’s right to privacy to do this – was in their best interests, it would be an impossible position to hold today.
Research has made it clear that the government’s processes for finding children foster homes and adoptive parents are not working. A recent report by the Children’s Commissioner confirms that a large proportion of children in care experience more than one placement during their childhoods, with almost 2,500 children in care experiencing five or more changes over a period of three years.
That process includes advertising children online and in physical newspapers and magazines. The advertisements are intended to give prospective adopters and carers a chance to virtually meet these children and see if they like ‘the look of them’, but given the number of adoptions and fostering placements that break down, it’s become apparent that the practice is doing nothing for these children, and very obviously doesn’t have their best interests at heart.
It also puts children at risk of sexual exploitation, and death. The UK is facing the worst child sex trafficking epidemic it has ever seen within its borders. Last year, 10,000 children in care in the UK went missing, sparking fears that they were being sexually abused and exploited. The NSPCC called the internet “a playground for paedophiles”, and in a report published in 2011, The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre confirmed that a disproportionate number of sexually exploited children were looked after by a local authority, before or during exploitation.
Councils and agencies have no formal right to publish children’s photos and details online, especially in circumstances where children are old enough to understand the practice, or where family members still have parental responsibility for a child.
If a school wants to upload a photo of a child who is not in care onto its website, permission always has to be given by the child’s parents before the school can post the image. That is because parents have parental responsibility for their children, and a request by a school to upload an image of a child onto the internet is significant enough for it to require parental permission. Parental Responsibility is more than just a general description of a parent’s duties towards a child. It is a legal term which vests a duty in parents to look after their children and to be involved in material decisions which affect them. That responsibility still belongs to parents whose children are in care and have not been made the subject of an adoption order. This means that most of the time, decisions like posting photos of their child online, still rests with the parents, and not the local authority. If we follow the logic through, councils then, must always ask parents whose children are in care for permission to use their photos in adverts.
The government might also argue that being able to post these photos is no different to a child posting a photo of themselves on social media, but that’s not right. Being placed on a website where people know you’ve been in care, and that you’ve had difficult experiences, carries a stigma and can be extremely traumatic for children. Unlike a child posting a photo of themselves on social media, that breach of their privacy, not only places them at risk of identification from peers in their community, but also signals to sexual predators that they are vulnerable and by virtue of the agency’s details being on the site, much, much easier to locate, and target.
Getting the government to ban this practice won’t be easy. Despite an economic downturn and massive budget cuts to the family justice system, the fostering sector is booming. Valued at £1.7 billion, fostering agencies have become so lucrative that the sector has seen a sharp rise in foster care companies backed by large private equity funds. The adoption sector, too, is driven by financial incentive, as can be seen by these interagency fees from the Consortium of Voluntary Adoption Agencies. The government has also introduced adoption targets, which invite councils to hit a certain number of adoptions in order to qualify for a cash prize.
Adoption and fostering agencies count on these advertising techniques to secure placements, often with the addition of deeply misleading narratives about the children they’re marketing. And if agencies are able to make money from multiple placements per child, there is little incentive to stem the high number of placements that break down.
While our petition demands that the government acknowledges that the posting of children’s photos and details online and in public documents for adoption and fostering placements, is illegal, there is more that needs to be done. The following issues are also connected to the marketing process used by councils and agencies:
- The need to ensure that councils always ask parents’ permission to post these details where parents still have parental responsibility
- A review is needed to see which aspects of the fostering and adoption process are not in a child’s best interests and which policies and cultural norms inside the adoption and fostering sectors are breaking the law
- A consultation into better ways forward for finding high quality placements for children who need carers, without breaching children’s right to privacy
- The current failure by adoption and fostering agencies to be open about these children’s pasts and make sure that their disclosure during the placement process is full and frank, and meets the highest standards of disclosure.
If you would like to sign our petition, you can do so here.
A very big thank you to Jane Doe, and several other parents who very kindly spoke with us, and shared evidence and personal stories for this post.
If a mother whose baby is taken at birth dares to protest on line or other media she is jailed for breaching the baby’s privacy (though few babies do actually object!)
Local authorities however advertise children for fostering and adoption with photos and character descriptions etc .
One law for parents and another for the ghastly “SS” !
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The Councils showcasing kids for adoption (all of them?) are overselling (pardon the pun) these children, who are being used as pawns for their own financial gain; because they are making money from it all. ‘In the best interests of the child’ ought to be scrapped, because it’s in the best interests of money and lining their pockets. It is also the most hypocritical term anybody could use when children are being failed, to the point it puts their lives at risk which has been written in the papers.
Snowhite, the fairy tale with the witch who tempted Snowhite to eat a bite out of a poisonous apple, is the real life horror show of what they are. Trauma is caused to the parents or natural blood parents, the potential then alleged adopters (no disrespect intended, just speaking the truth here) but most of all- the children. Imagine growing up to learning one or both of your blood parents are no longer here, because they could no longer take the excrutiating pain of being treated so badly, double punished for the things which went beyond their control. Any one of us could be hit by a bus tomorrow. This is what i mean by the trauma it causes children. Any of the blood parent(s) could go on to develop a terminal illness, likewise so could any of the children affected by the Councils responsible for not allowing contact. Contact is a basic need of the child!
The chunk of time that is missing from these childrens lives and the blood parents, is inexcusable. Children growing up with lack of confidence because their real mum and dad hasn’t been allowed to be there for them, when it’s not by their own choice but by Childrens Services who even when it’s contempt of Court stopping it, they don’t care. Usually Judges don’t care enough to do anything about it neither. We can only be thankful to the few who do.
Who helps these children affected, when they are growing up with emotional problems and they’ve not even been allowed to see their mum and/or dad and their blood family members all these years. They must be scared to tell their alleged adoptive parent(s), hearing all the stories of children having their mobile phones and computers confiscated if they do. It’s perfectly natural for the children to want to know who they are. Life story work is not always enough, because what gets shared is down to the discretion of the alleged adoptive parent(s) (once it’s first been sieved through, by Letterbox first) It’s degrading and if it’s difficult for a blood parent to take it all in upon reunification once the first initial face to face meeting takes place, then one can only imagine how much more difficult it is for the child. So, i strongly do believe that if forced alleged adoption does have to exist (which it shouldn’t be happening at all like this, it was meant to be for orphans) then for the childrens sakes, give them videos of their blood parents progress at least (if not other blood family members too) periodically so they can at least still feel that connection and give this to the blood parents too.
Then there are the celebration parties (and children being used in regards to the highest bidder, concerning Foster Care clearly- because to them and their businesses money is more important) Parents often signed no contract or was bullied and bribed and like pretty much everything else ‘misled’ into it having their contact threatened to be stopped when the section 20 is ‘meant to be’ voluntarily.So then that’s being abused. Parents are being taken advantage of when they are at their weakest, because after all they came to Children’s Services for help and are not often getting the help and support they deserve. Yet we are told they are there for the children, how are they when they are destroying the parents there for their children, making it more difficult for the parents, engineering it all to happen with bonds being broken and destroyed.
Family Campaigners have lost lovely friends to this devastion, so something is clearly very wrong and dare i say evil with what’s going on. I pray my friend who has anorexia (i can’t name) stopped seeing their child, where forced alleged adoption is the plan pulls through. One minute we can be talking to them, meeting them, the next they are gone because they could handle no more. What human being could unless they’re desensitized. How much more hateful could any organisation be really and where does this leave the children.
If Childrens Services, Council’s, medical expert witnesses, Guardians and/or Family Courts have either lied or misled families, do potential adopters really honestly believe the same won’t happen to them. If adopter’s try to get support just like many of the parents did, we do get to hear over the years where they don’t get that support and then they in turn risk having the child/ren taken from them. This is the harsh reality. The only thing missing from these adverts to mislead, is a stunning two tone organza bow and if complaints could be made to ‘Trading Standards’ where alleged adopter(s) went on to find out they were misled (given a lack of important information about the child/ren) then all complaints would be able to be upheld based primarily on that. That’s where the children survive, because of the lack of medical records for example.
Judgements can be/are even misleading coming from the Family and other (related) Courts. What about the evidence which could at any time, come to light, the new evidence and the witheld/lack of evidence. Blood parents/grandparents and siblings can and do apply for post adoption contact, where it does not mean they will not get it/or a better level of contact first. The adopter(s) haven’t always initially got told about it first and the roles reverse.
Remove the cotton wool and see through it, that where potential adopter(s) are being spoon fed the child/ren needs a loving, caring home it could just come back to bite them on the bum when they realise one day they already really had one and the child/ren who were unsettled prior to that (with all the other loving, caring HOMES? in their various foster care placements or childrens/residential/private care homes) do have blood parents and relatives fighting back so hard; trying to help create change. Does that sound like unloving, caring parent(s) to you.
Why are Councils breaking the law showcasing kids for adoption, when adoption placements can/have and do breakdown. They put a health warning on cigarettes so as not to mislead, well children are more important. Where are the health warnings for all the ones this vile practice is killing? including parents, blood parents, social workers, judges? alleged adoptive parents? all being used by the system to do it’s dirty work!
I am a parent who has suffered a gross ‘miscarriage of justice’ and sought the evidence for years, going through successful reunification and i speak out and frankly so for all the thousands of other parents and grandparents and their children affected. Because i am one of them who was falsely misled into believing one of my children were adopted and until i get a full investigation done- i have no reason to believe otherwise!
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Remember that since April 2014
the new section 51A of the Adoption and Children Act 2002, makes provision for applications for contact AFTER an adoption order has been made.
Sometimes the adoption was not finalised and even more often the adoption broke down and the child was handed back into fostercare ! It is up to you to FIND OUT !!
IF YOU APPLY FOR CONTACT THAT IS ALSO A GOOD WAY TO FIND OUT IF YOUR CHILD HAS BEEN ADOPTED OR NOT
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Hi Ian,
Not necessarily so.
Remember that since April 2014
the new section 51A of the Adoption and Children Act 2002, makes provision for applications for contact AFTER an adoption order has been made…
I did this, it was the most successful application to date to the best of my knowlege, but the surname of said child was in fact incorrect and i dug further and found this out for myself since. Said child’s surname again got changed then to the alleged AP(s) once they were 17 years old, without their prior consent/knowledge and i know this, because i asked them why they had been using a different (false) surname to the one on the AC (adoption certificate) All put down to admin errors. When i questioned Family Court with my concerns about this re fraud, i was told it would be said’s child’s problem if they had been using the wrong surname! (In the best interests of the child?)
What blood parents can do (all of them) is to apply for the newer amended/anotated ‘full’ BC where if the child is really adopted, it should state *adopted on it. I would recommend this is done by priority service.
I applied for both the newer BC and the AC and my child could not be traced on the entire England and Wales register. Then all of a sudden one was produced as if my magic. There were various years held on written record for said alleged adoption with the Council and different again with Cafcass. To apply for a copy of the AC, the alleged adoptive parent(s) details have to be known but requesting the newer BC should suffice for the purposes of finding out.
Sometimes the adoption was not finalised and even more often the adoption broke down and the child was handed back into fostercare !…. It is up to you to FIND OUT !!
Absolutely correct re sometimes the adoption was not finalised. Also, it does not always necessarily mean the alleged adoption broke down. These things can/have happened while the child remains in the same Placement. One could hardly blame me, for believing that really my child was in long term Foster Care all along.
It is up to you to FIND OUT !!….
I set out to do just that, Family Court said they had no jurisdiction, that they had seen the last Care Order and as far as they were concerned, my child was adopted because that had been the intention. I was also given a Restriction Order on top!
IF YOU APPLY FOR CONTACT THAT IS ALSO A GOOD WAY TO FIND OUT IF YOUR CHILD HAS BEEN ADOPTED OR NOT….
Your comments are good and they make sense Ian, but the problem is, miscarriage of justice, then answers for the child they very much want and need and for the parent(s) all affected who have done everything they could do to get answers and more beyond- helping other parents; but almost 20 years later is just too much for any human being to reasonably be expected to cope with- especially when, they have the evidence but are not getting any satisfactory ‘resolution’. All the time it is leaving parents coming away with more questions to ask, so imagine how hard that is for the child. We’re the ones affected first hand!
I could make a C2 application in regard to a letter from said child who wants answers, because i have already had Family Court invite me to do just that, but why am i going to do that to then risk being gagged on top after not getting justice in the first place.
It was only last weekend, the alleged adoption order i had requested and been sent, was found to appear to be more of a Notice (A17) and i would challenge that, only these Courts have allowed me to believe an adoption order it was because i have already been through various Courts all connected to Children’s matters.
xx
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https://www.communitycare.co.uk/2018/08/15/social-worker-took-life-stress-caused-work-arrangements-coroner-rules/?fbclid=IwAR3Sl7Q0RuDiQslj_tEw0PhMeOm8eYW8mvOsu7XEbvrv3av27A6BMZKRrJY (Following on from/linked to my last comment)
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I copied info a while back where the head social worker was advertising children on the internet, it stated people interested must not live in Sutton or Croydon, so it was obvious where the children were from. Christian names used led me to believe some might have come from the travellers community. For a birth parent to see thier child advertised for sale on the internet must be life destroying. And the child what if they find out they will also have long-term psychological damage
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Reblogged this on tummum's Blog and commented:
I have commented xx
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Pingback: Councils Showcasing Kids For Adoption Are Breaking The Law | tummum's Blog
Well tummum you are certainly experienced in this field ! I recommend the new law re contact after adoption as a starting point for the real parents tring to trace their child (or children).You gave given a lot more useful info.
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Ian, this is a great idea xx
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Does this posting of images deny the parents and children the protection of their right to GDPR
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I think it infringes a child’s right under GDPR, not sure whether it extends to parents in this context.
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The comments generated by this article make the whole British system sound like a cattle market at best and a slave market at worst. Whichever way we choose to look at it, it is a damning indictment of our social and judicial services. It means that all the findings and reports of child agencies, so recently in the news, are so much dross and utterly meaningless.
The older I get, the more angry I become at the way the Establishment treats the ordinary people of the UK; with the contempt that the powerful reserve for those they consider as less than dust beneath their feet.
I have never been in favour of violence, and am appalled at the thought, but some manifestation of civil anger at this terrible injustice is surely warranted. How dare Social Services, or any other government department, advertise ‘children for sale’ on the internet – or anywhere else – in the knowledge that the adoption service is worth so very much money to those departments concerned.
In fact,if these reports are true, there is little to choose between the slave masters of the past and those who work in today’s social services, other than the niceties of language and social decorum. Either way, the outlook is damning. The son of Queen Elizabeth II may be celebrating his seventieth birthday as Prince of Wales, but Britain hasn’t cast off its less than noble heritage of subjugation and oppression.
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Pingback: Councils Showcasing Kids For Adoption Are Breaking The Law « Musings of a Penpusher
Reblogged this on Musings of a Penpusher and commented:
Something doesn’t add up here. See what you think.
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“The need to ensure that councils always ask parents’ permission to post these details where parents still have parental responsibility”
The simple answer to that is… They dont!
The problem we have with Social workers breaking rules and breaking the Law is that they are simply not scared of the LGO the police or anyone else.
they treat Judges like robotic idiots because they know they can Lie in case files and the judges will usually swallow it as true and accurate.
Rule breaking is the Norm within the SS. only prosecutions will truely shake things up and stamp it out for good.
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