David Cameron’s vow to tear down adoption barriers is at risk
David Cameron’s vow to tear down adoption barriers is at risk
There are concerns that a judge’s remarks have caused a near 50% fall in the number of children being put forward for adoption
Patrick Butler, social policy editor
The Guardian, Tuesday 11 November 2014 10.41 GMT
Judge Sir James Munby said the government’s drive to increase the number of adoptions should not be allowed to break up families unnecessarily.
The revelation that there has been a dramatic fall in the number of children being put up for adoption threatens to throw the coalition’s flagship social services policy into crisis.
David Cameron declared two years ago that there was “no more pressing” issue for government than adoption and vowed to “tear down the barriers” to children in care being found loving adoptive parents.
Until now, it seemed the prime minister’s policy of investing in and speeding up the adoption process was working. Official figures published in September showed that the number of children completing the adoption process had reached record levels of 5,000 in a year, a rise of 25%.
Taken with the previous year’s rise, it suggested a 60% increase in the number of children being adopted since the coalition’s campaign began, an achievement described recently by the education secretary, Nicky Morgan, as a sustained rise.
But this progress looks likely to slow significantly after it was revealed that the number of children put forward for adoption had fallen by 47% in the last few months, a drop described by the National Adoption Leadership Board described as alarming. Decisions to adopt, recorded by councils in England, fell from 1,830 in the three months to September 2013, to 960 by the end of June 2014.
The NALB chair, Sir Martin Narey, suggested on Tuesday that the decline was caused by councils misinterpreting remarks made by a family court Judge, Sir James Munby, in a ruling in September last year.
Munby, the president of the high court family division, said judges were increasingly alarmed at the frequency with which children were being put forward for adoption without proper consideration of alternatives which would not result in the irrevocable break-up of families, such as the child being cared for by relatives. The law states that a child should only be separated from its parents in extreme circumstances.
He said there had been too many “sloppy” applications, and warned that the government’s drive to increase the number of adoptions should not be allowed to override due process and break up families unnecessarily.
Narey, the government’s principal adviser on adoption, has issued guidance to authorities insisting the law has not changed.
However, council children’s services leaders rejected the suggestion they had become over-cautious since the judge’s remarks, and said they had sought clarification from the government.
The episode highlights simmering tensions between Narey and some in the social-work establishment who are concerned that the policy focus on adoption at the expense of other forms of care is misguided.
The number of children in all forms of care stands at 68,000, and at the end of March 2013 there were about 6,000 children with a placement order waiting to move in with a family.
The children’s minister, Edward Timpson, echoed Narey’s suggestion that councils had misinterpreted the law, and said the new guidance would “ensure the right decisions are being made”. He will be hoping that the crisis in the adoption system is only temporary.
.