Off target

How the heart sinks at the prospect of another government 'initiative' in the field of care and adoption law. The Blair government's unsubtle financial incentives of 2002 fuelled many an allegation, among the hysterically anti-social worker, that 'You lot get more money if you have our kids adopted!' Now, in the wide-ranging Family Justice Review we see the proposal for a rather arbitrary time limit of six months on care proceedings, one of the aims of which appears to be to hasten to adoptive placements children who are never going back home. The current regime involving categorising cases as 30, 50 or 80 weeks matters (an utter fixation in some parts of the country, treated in a very relaxed manner elsewhere) gives a weird enough flavour to the welfare principle without the process tightening down further to a presumption of six months across the board. Not that delays don't bedevil this process.

One major problem lies with the operation of the adoption panel. Many of us who work at the placement order coalface wonder at the whole process of the adoption panel, a part-professional, part-lay committee that sits at the heart of the local authority decision-making process. Do we really need to await the bureaucratic gymnastics of this panel, consuming forests of paper, massive numbers of social work hours and months of time during the care to adoption process in order to decide, in secret, and without the parents or child being represented, that adoption is an appropriate outcome for a child, only for a judge (or bench) to later adjudicate exactly the same issue, but this time with the parties represented? The review proposes removing this whole process '“ not before time.

Such a head of steam is building up between the judiciary and the panels, as courts watch the weeks and months go by and the children grow older and harder to place. Panel chairpersons are being made to appear before frustrated judges, to whom they are not really answerable, to justify delays that are sometimes inherent in the process. The Court of Appeal in Re PB (Placement Order) [2007] 1 FLR 1106 confirmed what local authorities always thought, that they simply should not issue placement order proceedings before the panel gives its recommendation. Pity the poor local authority representative, trapped between the rock of the need to await the panel and the hard place of the angry judge. Removal of this whole process by a bit of brisk legislation now rather than wait for the wholesale changes proposed by the Norgrove report might be worthwhile.

Wider and more complex

The mechanism of the placement order, brought in by the ACA, has highlighted the way in which the concept of adoption has changed from decades ago, when it was mainly about babies, to today's far wider and more complex remit. Even before the ACA, there was a tendency developing to propose the adoption of older and older children, often with more and more complex problems, rather than for them to remain in long-term foster care. This did not fit well with the old 'freeing for adoption' order under the 1976 Adoption Act, a concept that was an uncomfortable bedfellow with the ethos and processes of the Children Act.

But the awkward mechanism of 'freeing' had some virtues. The need to establish 'likelihood of placement' was a mild deterrent to some of the barmier adoption propositions for children who were just never going to be placed. Add to that the fact that if, after 12 months, the child had not been placed the parent who wanted to revoke the order was shooting at an almost open goal. Now, trying to obtain leave to apply to revoke a placement order is like climbing a mountain. One almost becomes wistful for the old days.

Enter '“ following implementation of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 (ACA) '“ the placement order and exit the need to establish likelihood of placement. In strict legal theory the fact that, however ideal adoption would be, there is not a snowball's chance of finding adopters for a child is no bar to the making of an order, although no court worth its salt would make such an order. And now, under placement orders, there is no 12-month threshold once the order is made. It just goes on and on until the child reaches 18 and goes to university (except that the chances of that from foster care are statistically low).

Stir into that theoretical concoction a measure of starry-eyed optimism from certain reviewing officers, panel chairs and other care planners (or perhaps they are just realistically pessimistic about long-term foster care) and we have a dangerous mixture. This can propel children down the adoption route who are older and who have more baggage. We now have a new class of looked-after children, many of whom are aware that new 'forever parents' are being sought and who must wonder what on earth is wrong with them when none are found, or, even worse, when they are found but it all goes horribly wrong.

Vital service

But it is wrong simply to vilify adoption or placement orders generally. Adoption, when really appropriate, is the opposite of the 'primal wound' that Finola Moss refers to in her article 'Ultimate loss' (Solicitors Journal 156/1, 10 January 2012) and eminent child psychologists across the land, rather than criticising the idea of adoption, are daily reporting how vital this outcome for specific children is.

The baby who is abandoned at birth, or whose parent never actually looks after them and will never be able to (and this is not a small proportion of cases), will not suffer a 'primal wound' if it is swiftly placed with a suitable adoptive family who will look after and nurture them forever. Adoption is rarely, if ever, an alternative to returning to parents. The nearest you might get to that proposition is it being an alternative to hoping that, at some stage, in however many years to come, the birth parents might emerge from their damaging inadequacies and be able to become tolerable parents. The more likely reality is that it is an alternative to long-term foster care; not an attractive option. That is the concern that tempts the over-optimistic care planner.

In our midst are the products of thousands of happy successful adoptions. They are not just adoptions of healthy babies and toddlers. Long-term foster placements regularly transform into very happy older child adoptions. Occasionally adoptions take place of children with such extraordinary disabilities that the onlooker is simply humbled. To sweepingly attack the concept of adoption is demeaning all these people and a process that gives children and adults a chance for as near to a normal family life as fate allows them.

Wouldn't it be better to concentrate on the more difficult job of improving the system rather than on imposing another blunt instrument of a time target? The soundbites wouldn't be so slick but the children and adults caught in the system deserve that effort.

Unfortunately, no matter how much more quickly suitable children are made the subject of placement orders, thousands will not be placed simply because of the desperate shortage of prospective adopters. Some adoption services do not even have ready adopters for babies. Recently, I dealt with a case where foster carers have looked after a 16-month-old boy since birth. No parent has bothered with contact since June last year. The carers have been desperate to adopt him for months. We have just been told that the process of 'preparing and approving' them as adopters will take six months. They will hang on and go through the process but there must be a way of making the process of approval just as thorough but less long-winded and off-putting.