A review of a central piece of child welfare legislation by a parliamentary committee says the government has missed a key opportunity to protect children and support families, but in reality has itself missed a key opportunity to separate conflicts of interest within the child protection sector, and truly focus on children.

The report, Children and Families Act 2014: A failure of implementation, produced by the Children and Families Act 2014 Committee, found that the law had not made the lives of children in Britain better.

The act was designed to protect vulnerable children, offer improved support for children whose parents were separating, create a system to help children with special educational needs and disabilities, and to help parents balance work and family life.

The review by the peer-led Committee found that little effort to implement the Act, poor information gathering and a lack of cohesive services had made the law useless. It also agreed with and supported the government’s view that adoptions should be increased.

Although the Act covers much more than adoption, adoption appears to be the central focus of the report and its recommendations, highlighting once again that the House of Lords is out of touch with the latest science and research behind adoption and what really works for children in need.

While Researching Reform finds members of the Lords generally well-meaning and wanting to provide the best for children in Britain, the House is still looking to all the wrong people to inform its reports.

That, in part, is down to a lack of awareness about the often complex nuances inside the child protection sector and a lack of sensitivity with regard to organisations, bodies and corporations inside the sector with a strong financial incentive to push certain services, and interventions – regardless of whether they are in the best interests of children in the UK.

What the peers in the House of Lords need to know, is that these interventions have never been tested, nor are they evidence-based.

We implore members of the House to think really carefully about what this means for children in practice, paying close attention to the volumes of Serious Case Reviews (SCR) and pioneering research – produced for the government – which are increasingly telling us that adoption only works for a tiny fraction of children, and that far better solutions, tested solutions, exist.

One positive recommendation from the report includes amplifying the voices of children inside the family justice system, including allowing children to meet with judges. We invite the Lords to take a look at this site’s investigation into children’s right to speak with family court judges during their cases, which we undertook in 2017. We discovered that the government had quietly shelved this policy, but not before rolling out vastly inadequate guidelines which did not amplify children’s voices or offer them a chance to really be heard. We spoke about this issue and our investigation on the BBC’s Radio 4 Programme.

The report is split into five chapters: an introduction; adoption; family justice; employment rights; building a better future for children and families.

The adoption-heavy focus in the report can be seen in the placement of adoption as an issue in the chapters – right at the start – and the list of adoption-centric recommendations.

The Act itself was created in part to push children out of foster placements and into adoptive placements as quickly as possible, to avoid children being bounced around the system. This idea, though well meaning, fails to take into account the many issues at play in this context, including the damage just one wrench or placement can do to a child.

Despite a growing awareness in recent years inside the social work sector that adoption is not a gold standard for children in need by any stretch of the imagination, the government has been steadily trying to row back this shift by enforcing its adoption-first policy, which is actually in breach of legislation in England and Wales governing child protection. This legislation tells us that adoption must be a last resort, and that adoption must only be considered when there is no other alternative.

This is where the Lords are getting confused, or hoodwinked, depending on what they know or who they are talking to.

That is because local authorities – who are also under a legal duty to provide support services and keep families together whenever possible – are failing to do either of these things. And by the time an adoption order is made in court, peers automatically assume that is the right outcome for the child.

But we know that too many children are entering the care system wrongly, once again because some of our most senior government figures have admitted as much. Chief Social Worker, Isobel Trowler is one such example.

A tell-tale sign in the report that its focus on adoption is not child-centered, but sector-centered, is this quote from social worker Al Coates who ‘warned’ the Committee that “[post adoption] contact is the issue that will define whether adoption is still with us in 20 or 30 years.”

It is a terribly disappointing comment which highlights the sector’s deep concern about its own survival, rather than the healthy development of children in Britain.

The section on post-adoption contact is a distressing read. There is a focus on ‘digital’ post adoption contact for natural families, rather than meaningful contact. There is also a failure to acknowledge the rise in children looking for their natural families as a sign that those children want meaningful relationships with their natural parents.

Natural parents who were interviewed for the report said they wanted to move away from letterbox contact, and to be able to send voice messages and photographs.

The Lords also seem overly-fixated on keeping our unnecessarily large and overbearing adoption sector alive, though they never give a convincing explanation as to why they are so invested in this policy. In the report they say:

“Contact, where safe, appropriate and properly managed, can be valuable for an adoptive child, their new family and their birth family, including siblings and other relatives. However, contact orders and support can vary, and the current system of letterbox contact is outdated. The failure to modernise contact threatens to undermine the adoption system. We urge the Government to support adoption agencies in developing and rolling-out a safe and appropriate national digital system for contact as a priority. This system should allow for faster and more intuitive contact, while ensuring contact remains moderated and safe for all.”

The report offers a link to the peers’ financial interests, some of which make for interesting reading. There are peers with financial interests and paid employment roles including within governance-focused companies, digital services, legal and public body consultancies, and one peer, Baroness Wyld, who is a board member of Ofsted.

Researching Reform remains deeply concerned by the several comments in the report, which are not evidence-based, including the suggestion that “Early permanence placements, including fostering to adopt placements, can bring many benefits for the children involved.” We have a whole body of research which tells us that outcomes for children in care are far worse than for those children left with their natural parents. The research also tells us that this is not because the children are irreparably damaged when they enter the system making their outcomes a foregone conclusion.

There are some rays of light in the report’s dark and predictable narrative.

On the issue of the 26-week time limit for children going through care proceedings, a spokesperson for the NSPCC told the Committee: “An unintended consequence of the 26 week rule was that it became the success measure through which everything was judged, and we ought to go back to thinking about the best interests of the child. Yes, focus on timeliness, but also on the impact and outcomes for children, which is ultimately the most important thing. In certain cases, over-adherence to the 26 week target can prevent the use of innovative interventions, which are more likely to meet the long-term needs of the child.”

This comment is correct, but gets dismissed in the report as a “holistic” view, a term which is often used to “demote” a view as being airy and without substance.

From adoption to family justice, the report is effectively nothing more than an echo chamber for poor government policy mantras, which have done nothing to protect, nurture and empower children in this country.

You can acess the report here.

A report published by adoption charity Adoption UK has said that support for children wanting to maintain relationships with their natural families is not fit for purpose.

The report, entitled “The Adoption Barometer” looks at the state of adoption in England and Wales. As part of its report, Adoption UK chose to dedicate a segment to adopted children’s feelings and thoughts about the barriers to contact with their natural parents and relatives.

Key findings about contact with natural family members included:

• 80% of adopted adults and 88% of adoptive parents who were involved in direct contact during childhood were glad they had participated
• 69% of adopted adults who did not have childhood direct contact regretted not having the opportunity
• 17% of adopted adults recalled receiving professional support prior to childhood direct
• contact beginning
• 52% of those who received counselling said it felt like a tick box exercise
• 37% of adopted adults were offered counselling as part of the process of tracing birth relatives in adulthood
• 57% of adopted adults who had childhood direct contact described it as sometimes being emotionally challenging
• At least 28% of 13-18-year-olds had direct contact with a birth family member, outside of any formal agreement, during 2021

The report found that 70% of prospective adopters believed direct contact should be standard for adopted children whenever possible.

The report also offers background information from adoptees which offers insight into how social workers view contact with natural families. One comment reads: “When Frankie* was 14 she discovered her birth mother’s name and made contact by herself. When she confided in her family’s social worker, she was told it was a ‘stupid decision’. “

Recommendations made inside the report included:

• The creation of a national contact service in each nation of the UK
• Training about contact in preparation courses
• Every adoptive family to have a named social work professional with responsibility for overseeing support for contact
• Agencies to conduct research about barriers to direct sibling contact
• Specialist support for contact
• Ensure every adopted adult has access to robust support when tracing birth relatives

Adoption UK also provides a case file, but it features only one adult who was adopted as a child. The comment from the adoptee just focuses on the support she received from a social worker when tracing her family, which is a positive experience.

Several barriers currently exist for adopted children wanting to have contact with their natural families.

The adoption process has been set up to ensure that adoption itself is as attractive as possible to prospective adopters. This includes severing all legal and practical ties with a child’s natural parents and wider family.

And while legislation exists to apply for post-adoption contact, the legal thresholds for obtaining that contact are so high that almost no contact orders in this context are ever awarded.

Current government thinking around adoption as the gold standard for children in care also aggravates this problem, with current policy actively encouraging the courts to place most of the decision-making in the hands of the adopters during applications for post-adoption contact.

The end result is that even the smallest pushback from adoptive parents will ultimately result in contact being blocked.

Once very popular, adoptions in the UK have decreased drastically following successful movements by child rights campaigners to highlight the damage the policy causes to children, and the sophisticated parenting skills required to love and look after these unique children. The adoption sector is now facing a stark reality in which many adoption agencies are struggling to survive.

The popular narrative that adoption offers a fairytale ending for a child and is itself an exclusive process without the need for natural families and with little to no complication has skewed the expectations of prospective adopters. It is also a terrible lie.

You can read the report in full here.

Additional links:

• Top Social Work Professor: Adoption Works For A Minority Of Children
• Disrupted Adoptions – What Councils Don’t Want You To Know
• Effects of Adoption on Mothers’ and Fathers’ Mental Health

The Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) contacted Researching Reform about a roundtable it is holding on 27 April for its inquiry into the forced adoption of children of unmarried women between 1949 and 1976.

The communication follows a post we wrote about the event, which the committee saw.

A spokesperson for the committee said:

“Thank you for your interest in the JCHR’s inquiry into the adoption of children of unmarried mothers between 1959-76, and for publicising the roundtable event that the Committee is holding on 27 April 2022 in Westminster on the Researching Reform website.

We welcome expressions of interest to attend that event from anyone involved in the adoption process during those decades, and in particular the birth parents and adopted people.

The scope of the inquiry is, however, limited to the adoption of the children of unmarried mothers during that period, and it is the lived experiences of those touched by those adoptions specifically on which the roundtable will be focusing, rather than more recent adoptions.“

Researching Reform wrote back to the committee and invited them to explain why the inquiry had been restricted to women who had experienced forced adoption during that period.

This was the committee’s answer:

“The reason for the timeframe of the current inquiry relates to the regulatory and legislative changes made to adoption practices by two pieces of legislation – the Adoption of Children Act 1949, introduced after World War II and which changed the adoption landscape and the Adoption Act 1976, which introduced much tighter regulation and introduced many of the recommendations that had been made in 1972 by the Houghton Committee on Adoption.

That said, the Committee has tried to be as flexible as possible in accepting written evidence from unmarried women who had babies a little before or after that time, and whose babies were then adopted, the grown children themselves, or anyone else touched by those particular adoption processes.“

We did not ask the committee whether they had been flooded with requests to attend the event by families affected by recent forced adoptions, though we are aware that events publicised on the site relating to forced adoption often garner attention.

Researching Reform understands that many families in Britain will be disappointed by this response, but we will be unveiling a project shortly which we hope will help.

Welcome to another week.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights  (JCHR) has said it wants to listen to the experiences of mothers whose children were taken from them during the 1950s, 60s and early 70s – but has said it will also welcome anyone with “relevant lived experience,” leaving the door open for families who have experienced current forced adoption practices in Britain to attend.

Additionally, the committee said it would like to hear from people who were adopted, adoptive parents and social workers.

An estimated 250,000 women were forced to give up their babies during a period in the 20th century which spanned more than forty years in Britain because of a government policy which held that unmarried mothers were unfit to parent. The policy led to the forced removal and adoption of at least 500,000 babies in England and Wales between 1945 and 1975, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Current child protection policy in Britain still enables forced adoption (rather than consensual adoption), which allows the state to remove children from their families without parental consent, and is the predominant form of adoption in England and Wales. While parents no longer have their children removed from their care for being unmarried, some social work experts believe the vast majority of children today are removed from their parents for living under the poverty line and not because parents are wilfully neglecting or harming their children.

The impact of forced adoptions, whether recent or non-recent is the same, and is extremely damaging to both children and their parents, making the voices of children and families impacted by current forced adoption practices essential in any discussion about the issue.

Research has shown that forced adoption can have long-term psychological effects on children. These include complex and pathological grief, loss of identity and attachment issues, anxiety and attachment disorders, personality disorders, and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

A significant number of parents treat the removal much in the same way as they would the death of their child, mourning the loss over a lifetime. Research has shown that mothers are at heightened risk of suicide, and many parents report feeling numb and unable to live a normal life after experiencing forced adoption. Parents in Britain today also report feeling shame and a sense of judgment after a forced adoption, just as women from the 1950s, 60s and 70s reported to the committee.

The event, which will take place on 27 April, follows the publication of evidence by the committee which it says includes “a large number of personal testimonies from mothers who were separated from their children, and people who were separated from their mothers as babies.”

The report is part of the commission’s inquiry into the forced adoption of children of unmarried women between 1949 and 1976, which is looking specifically at whether the policy breached the right to family life, a human right enshrined in legislation by the UK.

The press release for the publication offers heartbreaking extracts of testimonies submitted to the committee. The testimonies in the release have been divided up into four headings:

• How unmarried mothers were treated
• Making decisions around adoption
• Attempting to establish contact
• Long-term impact

The roundtable will be held in Portcullis House in Westminster and hosted by JCHR chair Harriet Harman MP.

The committee is asking anyone who would like to attend to fill out this form which contains the following seven questions:

• How would you describe your involvement in the adoption process?
• Have you submitted evidence to this inquiry before (The right to family life: adoption of children of unmarried women 1949-1976)?
• Which UK region/nation do you currently live in?
• In which year did you go through the process of adoption?
• Which UK region/nation did you live in when you went through the process of adoption?
• Full name
• Special requirements when attending the event

You can email selcomengagement@parliament.uk  to register to attend the event or to ask any questions about the roundtable.

Anyone interested in attending is asked to register their interest by 31 March 2022.

• Report: Ongoing legacy of historic adoption practices revealed in published evidence
• Register now for adoption roundtable event
• Why The British Government Won’t Apologise For Forced Adoption
• Mothers forced into adoption were given diethylstilbestrol to dry up their milk

An online conference which has been put together by the Consortium of Voluntary Adoption Agencies (CVAA), wants to improve post adoption contact for children and their natural parents.

The seminar, “Modernising Contact: Practice Fit for the 21st Century”, wants to develop the way contact for adoption children works in the UK. the page for the event says:

“In recent years post-adoption contact has come under increasing scrutiny and found wanting. All too often not meeting the needs of adopted children, their adoptive families or their birth families.”

“The use of the term `contact’ has itself been critiqued as problematic as merely having `contact’ is not an end so it is thought that the terminology needs to address the point of contact, i.e. relationship development/continuation, family communication and identity building.”

“Letter box arrangements are still the default option for post-adoption contact and yet even these indirect contact arrangements are often poorly supported and managed, and also beg the question; who writes letters any more as a main form of communication in this digital age of messaging and the internet?”

The statement goes on to say, “Keynote speakers will help us set the scene and then you will be contributing your experience and ideas to identify the issues with current practice/policy, suggest possible solutions and help write an agenda for what needs to happen next to influence practice/policy and create real change.”

The event aims to better understand the following:

•   What are the current issues/problems in regard to direct and indirect contact?              
•   What are the possible solutions?
•   What needs to happen next to support change?

Speakers for the event include:

Dr Krish Kandiah, Chair of the Adoption and Special Guardianship Leadership Board at Department for Education

Professor Debbie L. Watson, Professor of Child and Family Welfare and Head of the Centre for Children and families Research, University of Bristol

Ms Beverley Barnett Jones MBE, Associate Director Practice and System Impact, Nuffield Family Justice Observatory and;

Dr John Simmonds OBE, Director of Policy, Research and Development, CoramBAAF

While the seminar appears to be aimed at adoption “practitioners” and independent professionals, the conference will make absolutely no difference to the lives of adopted children if adoption-experienced children and families don’t attend this event and share their invaluable experience. Yours are the only voices that matter.

So we’ve asked the CVAA if you can attend the event. As there is currently a charge of £49, we will also ask them if they are willing to waive the fee, as you will be offering important knowledge the conference will need.

We urge you to sign up for this event, and if you have any problems with registration do come back to us and we will help.

You can register for the seminar at the bottom of the event’s online page.

Side note: The CVAA, contrary to the organisation’s misleading name, does not advocate for voluntary adoption and a ban on involuntary/ non consensual/ forced adoption. The word voluntary here just means organisations working in the voluntary sector, often referred to in the UK as the third sector, or charitable sector.

A judge has denied a birth father the right to be named on his daughter’s birth certificate following her adoption, in a case which included a direct challenge to the adoption order by the girl’s natural father.

The court held that such a move would be manifestly contrary to public policy, despite the High Court having the jurisdiction to grant a birth parent a declaration of parentage in respect of a child following the lawful adoption of that child, and the adoptive parents in the case supporting the application.

In an extraordinary move, the Attorney General — who under today’s Conservative government essentially engages in legal matters to protect the government’s interests — is an intervenor in this case.

The judgment itself appears to be doubling down on current adoption policy to shut down what the courts and the government may now fear is an upswing in legal challenges to adoption orders by natural parents.

But why protect public policy around adoption in England and Wales if it is outdated and harmful?

Britain is one of only a small number of countries implementing non consensual adoptions, which allow the state to remove children from parents without their consent. It also practices a narrow and closed form of adoption, despite legislation which appears to promote more open policies, creating an apartheid between natural families and adoptive carers. All of these practices embedded within our current public policy on adoption, have been shown to be harmful or non-evidence based in robust and high quality research.

Additionally, adopters’ wishes and feelings are given more weight and prioritised over the child’s and his or her natural family during the court process and beyond, dispensing altogether with basic child welfare principles and the mandate, set in law, to place children’s best interests at the heart of every decision.

Unlike several countries that enable open adoptions promoting contact between natural parents and their children after adoption, and acknowledging that such contact is important and beneficial to children, and in some cases even using carers to work as a bridge between children and their natural parents to assist with reunification, Britain’s public policy by comparison is closed, rigid, and to our mind, criminally and civilly negligent.

Lexis Nexis produced two summaries of this case, one which was published yesterday and another, which is more focused, published today. We are adding extracts from the second summary, by barrister Poonam Bhari, below:

Family analysis: In H v R and another (Attorney General for England and Wales intervening), the court declined to make a declaration of parentage in favour of a birth parent in relation to an adopted child, on the basis that to do so would be manifestly contrary to public policy for the purposes of section 58(1) of the Family Law Act 1986 (FLA 1986). The court also made it clear that even if a declaration of parentage had been made, it would not have conferred parental responsibility, or any legal rights, nor would it have meant that the applicant could resume a role in the child’s life. Poonam Bhari, barrister at 3PB Chambers, looks at the issues.

H v R and another (Attorney General for England and Wales intervening) [2021] EWHC 1943 (Fam), [2021] All ER (D) 67 (Jul)

What are the practical implications of this case?

On 29 September 2020, Mr Justice MacDonald, handed down his first judgment in this case (H v An Adoption Agency (Declaration of Parentage Following Adoption) [2020] EWFC 74, [2020] All ER (D) 105 (Nov)), having decided that the High Court has jurisdiction to grant a birth parent a declaration of parentage, where there has been a lawful adoption of that child (per Part 1 of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 (ACA 2002)), and identified that when Family Procedure Rules 2010 (FPR 2010), SI 2010/2955, Pt 8 was drafted, it may not have been appreciated that it is open to a birth parent to apply for a declaration of parentage under FLA 1986, s 55A(1).

FPR 2010, SI 2010/2955, r 8.22 states as follows:

(1) If the applicant or the person whose parentage or parenthood is in issue, is known by a name other than that which appears in that person’s birth certificate, that other name must also be stated in any order and declaration of parentage.

(2) A court officer must send a copy of a declaration of parentage and the application to the Registrar General within 21 days beginning with the date on which the declaration was made

MacDonald J identified a lacuna, it not being clear whether the court has the power to disapply FPR 2010, SI 2010/2955, r 8.22(1), and directed that a copy of his first judgment be disclosed to the Family Procedure Rule Committee.

The primary issue for the court in respect of the second judgment was one of consideration of the merits of the application and public policy arguments (FLA 1986, s 58(1)).

What was the background?

This case should be read together with the first judgment of MacDonald J (H v An Adoption Agency (Declaration of Parentage Following Adoption) [2020] EWFC 74, [2020] All ER (D) 105 (Nov)). A DNA test dated 16 November 2015 confirmed that the applicant was the birth father of an adopted child. The child became the subject of care proceedings under Part IV of the Children Act 1989 in 2015. The applicant was made a party to those proceedings. On 6 April 2016 the child was made subject to a final care order and a placement order.

No orders were made during the care proceedings or subsequently directing the local authority to cause the child’s birth certificate to be amended to record the applicant as the child’s father, whether by a declaration of parentage under FLA 1986, s 55A(1) or otherwise.

The applicant sought permission to appeal the placement order, which was refused on 26 July 2016. The child was placed for adoption and an application for an adoption order was made by the child’s then prospective adopters.

The applicant applied for permission to oppose the making of the adoption order. That application was refused on 28 February 2017. The child was made subject to an adoption order under ACA 2002, s 46 on 12 April 2017. On 27 June 2019, out of time, the applicant applied for permission to appeal the making of the adoption order, which was refused on 17 July 2019.

On 2 March 2020, the applicant issued an application for a declaration of parentage, however the C63 application form omitted to mention that the child had been made the subject of an adoption order. The applicant saw his application as a route to resuming his relationship with the child, starting with indirect contact on a monthly basis, leading to fortnightly indirect contact. The application was opposed by the adoption agency. The child’s adoptive parents did not wish to actively participate in the proceedings.

On 29 September 2020, MacDonald J decided that the High Court has jurisdiction under FLA 1986, s 55A(1) to grant a birth parent in the position of the applicant a declaration of parentage following the lawful adoption of that child under ACA 2002, Pt 1, but having dealt with the preliminary issue of jurisdiction, the court identified a number of issues (para [10(i)–(viii)]), directed the adoption agency to file further evidence (para [11(i)–(v)]) and invited the Attorney General to intervene in the proceedings.

What did the court decide?

The court considered the written and oral submissions on behalf of the applicant, the second respondent and the intervenor, ie:.

1. •on behalf of the Attorney General it was submitted that in the event FPR 2010, SI 2010/2955, r 8.22(1) cannot be disapplied, the court can look at invoking the public policy exception at FLA 1986, s 58(1), highlighting the ‘cardinal importance’ that adoptive placements are protected from situations where the confidentiality of such placements can be compromised (paras [19], [21]–[23]) and that the decisions in Re F (Paternity Registration) [2011] EWCA Civ 1765, [2013] 2 FLR 1036 and AS v CS [2021] EWFC 34, [2021] All ER (D) 48 (Apr) enable the court to disapply the rule (para [20])
2. •it is for Parliament and not the courts to formulate public policy (para [24]) and the relevant public policy considerations in this case concerned the practice of adoption in this jurisdiction, which the court analysed (paras [25]–[30])
3. •the public policy developments of adoption law relate to the creation of a permanent family unit, the confidentiality of such a placement and the importance of a child being able to choose to obtain information as to their origins, with the requirement for advice, sign posting and counselling for an adopted adult before being able to access adoption records/original birth certificate (ACA 2002, s 78(3))
4. •FPR 2010, SI 2010/2955, r 8.22(1) must be interpreted in light of the overriding objective (FPR 2010, SI 2010/2955, r 1.1), in particular where the welfare interests of a child and justice are not served by applying a particular rule it must be open to the court not to apply it (para [63]), and
5. •that the court had declined to make a declaration of parentage this would not prevent the child from being able to understand who the birth father is, as recognised by Mr Justice Cobb in Re M and N (Twins: Relinquished Babies: Parentage) [2017] EWFC 31, [2018] 1 FLR 293 (para [72])

In this case the court did not need to exercise its discretion to disapply FPR 2010, SI 2010/2955, r 8.22(1), having declined to make a declaration of parentage on the grounds that to do so would be manifestly contrary to public policy for the purposes of FLA 1986, s 58(1) (para [73]).

The court confirmed the firmly established elements of public policy recognised by the law as it relates to the practice of adoption (para [58 (i)–(v)]).

You can read the judgment in full on BAILII.