A Facebook poll has revealed that 93% of those surveyed are in favour of scrapping the UK’s full, forced adoption policy and replacing the model with simple adoptions.

Simple adoptions allow children and their birth families to remain legally connected, and encourage meaningful, child-focused contact with biological parents while in the care of adoptive parents, wherever possible. Adopted children are able to keep their original surnames and can inherit from both families.

Under the UK’s current adoption policies, which feature a full adoption process, all ties between birth families and their children are severed when an adoption order is made.

While post adoption contact is possible under existing legislation, the policy behind the law is weighted heavily in favour of the adoptive parents’ wishes and wants, making physical contact almost unheard of in adoption cases.

France uses a two-tier system which features both full and simple adoptions, but since the 1990s, the number of simple adoptions have far exceeded the country’s full adoptions, making simple adoptions the most common form of adoption in France today.

Luxembourg, which also uses simple adoptions, only allows a simple adoption to take place where there are strong grounds, and if it offers advantages for the adoptee. Interestingly, the law in Luxembourg also requires that the adoptive parent must be at least 15 years older than the child, unless there are compelling reasons to permit otherwise.

The survey, which this site ran on Facebook, gathered 445 votes and found that 93% of those polled wanted to see the UK’s current adoption policies removed and replaced with a simple adoption process, while just 7% did not want to see the current full adoption policy scrapped and replaced with a simple adoption framework.

One poster commenting on the poll said, “I Don’t think adoption should exist. I think working with families so much better for the kids overall health wellbeing.”

Another poster said, “Adoption should only happen with the consent of everyone involved.”

And another commentator responding to the survey wrote, “In cases where the parents are either dead or doing life in jail and NO ONE else could have the child, I don’t see it as a bad thing. However, we all know it is being abused…. It’s horrific how something that I am sure was devised with good intentions, is being used to target the ‘lower classes’.”

Adoption, by law, should always be the last consideration in any child protection case but in rare instances where it is an appropriate course of action for a child, adoptions should be fully transparent.

In practice, that means each adoption plan must be highly tailored to each child to ensure birth family ties remain, and should be reviewed regularly and updated to reflect a child’s developmental needs.

The acting Children’s Minister, Michelle Donelan, who is filling in for Kemi Badenoch while she is on maternity leave, has told children’s services directors that adoptions must be a priority in child welfare cases.

The request was communicated in a letter, which also urged the child protection sector not to turn away prospective adopters based on factors like income, while confirming additional funds for agencies to “recruit” more adopters.

Startlingly, the Minister appears to have asked councils to ignore court judgments which have prioritised other forms of care.

In the letter, Donelan says, “We understand that some local authority decisions may be influenced by local court responses to previous applications, and this could mean some children missing out on the benefits of adoption.”

A recent shift in understanding around adoptions has seen the child welfare sector start to prioritise birth family support and temporary care arrangements with a view to reuniting children with their biological families, wherever possible.

The letter has been heavily criticised by sector bosses, who feel the Minister’s demands are short-sighted and overly simplistic.

Not unsurprisingly, adoption agencies in the UK welcomed the move, while fostering agencies threw temper tantrums over the declaration.

Shortly after the letter was shared, the hashtag #ambitiousforadoption was used by the Chief Executive for Coram, Carol Homden. Ambitious For Adoption is an initiative Coram has launched to try to secure more adoptions through collaborations with local authorities in London. (At the time of publication, this was the only tweet we could find using the hashtag).

Coram has been criticised in the past for being both a children’s charity and running what it calls “one of the largest and most successful independent adoption agencies in the UK.” Social workers, charities and campaigners believe Coram’s portfolio creates a conflict of interest.

The more significant issue here though, is not the battle for market share between adoption and fostering agencies, but the fact that this decision is plainly wrong in law.

We wouldn’t expect a politician to imagine this might be important, so we’ll explain it for Michelle, here.

In what is now considered to be one of the most prominent judgments in family law, made in 2013 and which also set a precedent, Lord Neuberger confirmed that care orders must be “a last resort, because the interests of a child would self-evidently require her relationship with her natural parents to be maintained unless no other course was possible in her interests.”

This comment was made to explain the intent behind clauses in the Children Act 1989 and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. These are both pieces of legislation ratified by the UK, which bind all of us here in England and Wales, including politicians.

Baroness Hale, the former head of the Supreme Court, who was also involved in this case, offered additional guidance, saying that a care order should take place, “only in exceptional circumstances and when motivated by overriding requirements pertaining to the child’s welfare, in short, when nothing else will do. In many cases and particularly where the feared harm has not yet materialised and may never do so, it will be necessary to explore and attempt alternative solutions.”

Fast forward to 2015, and the then President of the Family Division, Sir James Munby warned councils in another case that adoptions with strangers must only ever be made after engaging with every available relative of the child, to see if they might be able to look after him or her.

This warning was rooted in existing legislation (the Children Act 1989), which makes it very clear that adoption should never be the first port of call, and if it is eventually considered, every effort must be made to try to place a child with appropriate members of their birth family.

The judgment led to a sharp decline in adoptions, as councils began to understand the implications of the law and the emphasis on doing what was genuinely in every child’s best interest.

And in 2017, the current President of the Family Division, Andrew McFarlane, who was acting as a High Court judge, raised serious concerns around the use of adoption in a speech he gave at a Family Justice Council event. McFarlane said, “Magistrates and judges up and down the country on every day of the week are making these highly intrusive draconian orders removing children permanently from their natural families on the basis that to do so is better for the child and that ‘nothing else will do’. But, I ask rhetorically: ‘How do we know this is so?’”

What we do know is that adoption does not work for a vast number of children, and that placements break down far too often. This site has written about these issues a lot, and much of the research in this area is available on Researching Reform to read.

We very much hope that others will join us in pointing out the Minister’s misunderstanding of the law on adoptions.

You can access more RR articles on adoption and the impact it has on children, here. 

Many thanks to Dana for alerting us to the hashtag.

Michelle Donelan, acting Children’s Minister.

Ireland has just launched a public consultation on open and semi-open adoptions which could pave the way for biological families to participate more fully in the adoption process and stay in contact with their children after adoption.

The country’s department for Children and Youth Affairs is holding an open debate today which will include adoption experts, service providers and groups focused on children’s rights and their perspectives on welfare issues which affect them.

England and Wales currently practice a form of open adoption though contact between birth parents and their biological children usually ends after an adoption order is made.

The Children and Families Act 2014 in England and Wales allows post-adoption contact with birth parents, but it is heavily tilted in favour of the wishes and feelings of the adoptive parents, rather than the best interests of the adopted child.

A growing body of research produced by social workers and child welfare experts is also starting to challenge what are increasingly being seen as damaging and restrictive policies around child contact with birth parents within the adoption process in England and Wales.

While the terms set down for open and semi-open adoptions can vary, the consultation page offers these definitions and examples of open and semi-open adoptions:

“‘Open adoption’ is most commonly understood to refer to arrangements involving post-adoption contact between members of birth and adoptive families of adopted children under 18.

‘Semi-open adoption’ usually means arrangements for indirect contact such as the sharing of information and or items between members of birth and adoptive families, usually facilitated or mediated by social workers. In practice, open adoption and semi-open adoption may take on many different forms, including:

• Birth parents providing information to social workers about themselves and their lives, such as their medical histories or family background, so that these details can be shared with the adopted child;
• The adoptive parents writing to the birth parents by regular arrangement to let them know how the adopted child is getting on, in school, for instance;
• Face to face meetings or visits between the adopted child and his or her birth parent;
• Birth parents sending birthday cards to the adopted child; or
• Arrangements for the adopted child to meet up with his or her birth siblings or grandparents.”

The questionnaire contains sections which ask for your views on open and semi-open adoptions.

Ireland’s Children and Youth Affairs minister Katharine Zappone is concerned about the impact of current adoption policies on children’s health and wellbeing.

Zappone told the Law Society Gazette Ireland, “Understandings of what is meant by open or semi-open adoption vary but these terms usually refer to arrangements for information sharing between adoptive and birth families as well as an option for contact.

“This is a complex and sensitive issue.  As we are in the early stages of having this discussion in Ireland, it is vital that we gain the views of those affected by adoption as well as other key stakeholders in order to find out what works best for children and families.”

She added, “Adoption is a hugely significant event in the life of a child,” Zappone said.

“When considering any proposed change to adoption policy, we must be guided by what is in the child’s best interests.”

You can respond to the survey here. 

Further reading on the subject can be found in these Researching Reform posts.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Adoption and Permanence (APPGAP) has just launched an inquiry looking into post-adoption support for adoptive and Special Guardianship families. The inquiry includes a survey for children, families and child welfare practitioners.

It would be heartening to see similar funds operating for families who have lost their children to the care system.

The APPGAP, which was set up in February describes itself on Parliament’s Register of APPGs as a group to, “amplify the voices and experiences of children and families engaged in adoption and other forms of permanence to inform parliamentarians and promote the development and implementation of effective policy and practice. To provide an opportunity for the ambitious exploration of innovative solutions to enable adoptive children and families to thrive.”

The Group is sponsored by Adoption UK and Home For Good, who have so far given the APPG around £10,000.

Adoption UK has a page on its website which outlines the purpose of the inquiry in more detail. The page explains that the inquiry has been launched to look at The Adoption Support Fund (ASF) and try to secure a long-term commitment from government for the ASF to fund its therapeutic support for adoptive families.

The inquiry page says that the fund has delivered more than £100m worth of support for around 35,000 families.

As part of the inquiry’s work the APPG is inviting written submissions from adoptees -including children – adopters, social workers, agencies, local authorities and support providers about their engagement with the ASF. The inquiry is particularly keen to hear from children who have engaged with the fund.

The APPG would like insight into the following areas:

• Accessibility of the ASF, including timings and the application process
• Types of support accessed and gaps in support provision
• Long and short-term impacts of support accessed through the fund

The survey for children and young people can be accessed here. 

The survey for adults can be found here. 

Terms of reference for the inquiry can be read here.

If you have any questions or comments you can send them to: info@appgap.org.uk

The deadline for sending in submissions is 24 April, 2019 at noon.