Ultimate loss

Adoption by strangers severs biological ties, removing a child's genetic identity, bonds and familiarity. It is a living death for a parent, and as the ultimate interference in a family's life, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled it must be exceptional.

Despite this '“ and our flawed, secret, clogged up care courts '“ David Norgrove's main recommendation is to limit adoption proceedings to six months, furthering the previous government's ever more expeditious adoption programme.

Norgrove's proposal was preceded by a unanimous, all powerful establishment outrage at the scandal of only 3,100 annual adoptions out of an English care population of 65,520. The obvious question of why record numbers of children are being looked after by the state was not asked.

Despite the increase in court fees and the public law outline, the effect of the Baby Peter effect, it seems, has been to make it even easier to lose a child to the state. And as Lord Justice Thorpe remarked: 'once you have lost a child it is very difficult to get a child back'.

A care order can be obtained if a child is suffering, or likely to suffer 'significant harm'; parents' article 8 right do not appear to be fully considered.

Significant harm

The past decade has seen the definition of 'harm' widened to include emotional abuse, and now parental neglect, putting pressure on local authorities to intervene. Last year, 70 per cent of care actions were based on neglect.

The result is that rather than receiving their statutory right to support, vulnerable families are subjected to a raft of expensive and questionable assessments by psychologists and social workers. Last month a whistleblowing social worker was reported as being encouraged to provide 'more dirt' on parents and criticising psychologists for creating 'such a high standard of parenting that most of us would fail'.

With 375,000 children officially in need, and child protection budgets slashed by 40 per cent, adoption would appear a useful panacea.

Adoption regulations already provide that a local authority must provide a child with a permanent placement after four months of being in their care, by applying for a placement order. If the child is young this will often be an adoption by strangers in preference to a kinship adoption, or guardianship or care supervision orders. Sixty per cent of children under four were placed for closed adoption by strangers in 2009, an increase of 21 per cent in last ten years.

To expedite adoptions, statute provides that parents need court permission before they can oppose a placement order and prevent adoption. Permission will only be granted if they show that a change in their circumstances allows them a real prospect of successfully opposing the order.

This is practically very difficult if not impossible, as placement hearings follow quickly after care orders. In 'concurrent planning' adoptions they can be simultaneous. Worse still, even when a sufficient change in circumstances is shown, and it is now safe for a child to return home, permission may be refused, if the further delay of rehabilitation assessments is thought, as it often is, not to be in a child's welfare. Avoiding delay is already preventing parents from reclaiming their children and asserting their human rights.

Modernising pace

The modernisation and professionalism of adoption began 40 years ago, in a very different world, when adoptions were of unwanted children by married couples from private adoption charities. Public adoptions were rare, abortion just legalised, and single parents stigmatised.

A birth parent's common law right was removed in 1976, the Adoption Act allowing adoption without consent if unreasonably withheld. The United Kingdom, America and Portugal are still the only countries to allow such enforced adoption.

The Children Act 1989 then replaced parental rights with responsibilities, and made a child's welfare paramount. Later, the Adoption and Children Act 2002 allowed adoption if for a child's welfare, based on an extensive checklist, which did not include consideration of a parent's or child's rights to their natural family, nor the affect of adoption per se.

But is adoption in a child's best interests? Excepting for the obvious financial and social advantages, there appears no English research into the psychological affect of adoption on a child, nor of 20 per cent disruption rate, last monitored over ten years ago.

In America, studies have found that between 30 and 40 per cent of delinquents, youth custody inmates and mental detainees were adopted despite being only two to three per cent of the population.

Studies in America and Sweden, but only anecdotally in England, show adoptee teenagers are twice as likely to attempt suicide.

Psychologists describe adoption as a 'primal wound' '“ a permanent psychological scar, which results in mistrust, anxiety, depression, genealogical bewilderment and difficulty forming relationships.

Behind the still effectively closed doors of the care courts, the only miscarriages revealed are those that result in criminal proceedings, and no matter how great the injustice, or breach of human rights, a procedurally valid adoption order cannot be revoked, as this would infringe public policy.

Adoption is a serious business and it should not be rushed.

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