Adoption: Adoption Legislation Committee Reports

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, this debate has been interesting, stimulating and challenging, as was membership of the committee. I am sure that the debate will continue to be as stimulating. Being on such a committee, so ably led by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, was a great honour and pleasure. One felt that one was doing something really worth while. I very much thank her, the members of staff who supported us and all those who gave an enormous amount of time to present us with evidence. It was the evidence to which we listened and responded and which has been produced in our report. If we are interested in evidence-based policy, we should listen carefully to what those people said, which we have reflected in our report.

I have been involved with adoption since I was three years old, because at that point I suddenly acquired a little brother. This was not because my mummy had had a big bump in her tummy. At that age, I did not realise that that was a bit odd. I acquired a little brother through family adoption. A close member of the family died immediately after she gave birth and the baby became my little brother. Subsequently, his older siblings became regular visitors to our house and became sort of second-stage members of our family.

It is because of the great success of that adoption that I very much understand the need and importance of an adopted person to understand their identity, and where they belong in a family and more generally. I very much support what my noble friend Lady Hamwee said as regards the importance of information about the person’s background in aiding their ability to understand their own identity.

I am still involved in adoption because I now have an adopted granddaughter. This is a transracial adoption which so far is highly successful and I am delighted. It has shown me how adoption is a two-way street. The adoptive parents go through all the hassle of being approved and all the decision-making because they want to add to their family. They want to give a child a loving home. However, the child brings something terribly important to that family and we must never forget that when adoptive parents give the wonderful gift of a home to a baby, the child also brings something very important to that family.

It is because of that experience that I shall focus on racial matching. Current legislation on racial matching came in under Section 1(5) of the Adoption and Children Act 2002. It states that consideration has to be given to,

“religious persuasion, racial origin and cultural and linguistic background”,

when placing a child for adoption. Of course, with a baby there is not any language, but there is for most children who are adopted.

That was put in legislation because racial issues are an important consideration in the identity of the child. When the Select Committee was taking evidence, we heard pretty unanimous evidence that people felt that there was not a lot wrong with the Government’s intention when that recommendation was put into what was then the Bill. However, there were a few cases—this should not be overemphasised—where there was excessive delay in the system because the practice was not quite right. Some social workers took that part of the legislation as a message to say that racial matching was an overriding consideration when matching a child with a family. Most people told us that that was not widespread but it was accepted that it occasionally happened.

Clearly, the Government are very keen to reduce delay from whatever cause. Therefore, they have looked at this issue and said, “We are going to cut it out completely from the legislation”. The Children and Families Bill before us, which, I imagine will go through in 2013, has removed that consideration. Our Select Committee recommended something slightly different. Accepting that racial matching is an important factor and that the adoptive family must be aware of the needs of the child because of the racial part of his or her nature, we need to put it in somewhere. It has to be taken account of by practitioners. It should not be an overriding consideration but it is important. We suggested that it should go in the previous subsection, subsection (4) of the Adoption and Children Act, as part of the checklist. But I do not see anything like that in the legislation before us to implement that recommendation.

We have to remember that where you have an interracial adoption which involves a visible difference between a child and the rest of his or her family, they might as well have a sign on their forehead saying, “I am adopted”. To me, that is a great thing to have because it means that your family has chosen you. You have not just happened. Your family wants you and there is no doubt about that, which is a wonderful thing. Most of these adoptions are highly successful, but really only when the agencies work with the parents to ensure that the parents understand that this is an element they have to take into consideration when bringing up that child.

That is why our committee, which was remarkably unanimous on most issues, felt that this issue should not be taken out completely but should be in the checklist. I am a little confused because I understand that when this was being discussed in a committee in another place the Minister, Mr Edward Timpson, for whom I have a great regard, assured the committee that it was going to be in the checklist. However, it is not being put into the legislation, so I wonder whether my noble friend the Minister can clarify that matter because I think the committee all felt very strongly that while it should not be an overriding consideration, it is a very important one and must be taken into account when finding the right family for the child.

Of course, we have a problem because black and ethnic minority and mixed-race children are overrepresented in the cohort of children waiting for adoption and we do not have enough parents of that kind of ethnicity coming forward and asking to be adoptive parents. One way of solving that problem is to try to get more of those parents to come forward and foster and maybe move on to adoption, or just to go straight to adoption. I am sure that the Government are taking initiatives in that direction, which is very welcome, but we need to do more.

Personally, I think it is quite dangerous because of the message it sends out to practitioners, which has been mentioned. Those practitioners who took the wrong message from the previous legislation might swing in completely the opposite direction and say, “The Government do not want us to take any notice at all of ethnicity when matching children and families”. We know that is not the Government’s intention. The previous Government’s intention was not that it should become an overriding factor but because of what happened, we need to think very carefully about the message if we take it out completely.

Perhaps I could move on to a couple of other issues in relation to overseas adoption. First, I am very disappointed that the Government have rejected our recommendation to extend priority access to schools for children adopted from care overseas. Why not? This is very mean-minded, as we are not talking about a large number of children. These children, as much as any who have been adopted from care in this country, have gone through difficult situations and if the parents have chosen the school they think is most suitable for them, they should be given their wish.

Secondly, there is the visa applications delay. It is complete agony for parents who have gone through all the processes of being approved to be parents of a child adopted from overseas to then have to wait for a visa application. It comes as no surprise when a visa application is put in for a child to be adopted from overseas; the parents have been going through this process for years. Is there no way in which some kind of conditional visa could be issued, subject to the proper approvals and the adoption going through with the authorities both in this country and the country of origin of the child, so that could then be ratified quickly once the adoption has gone through? It is not a good start to the adoption of a child from overseas to have to be separated from the new parents.

Finally, perhaps I might say a quick word about family group conferencing. Again, best practice is something that we as a Government should be doing everything to disseminate. I noticed that where we recommended that family group conferencing should always happen, the Government’s response to our report said that it is not appropriate in some cases and that the family has to agree to it. You could always make it conditional on the family agreeing to it. At the very least, should we not be saying in guidance that family group conferencing should always be considered as long as the family accepts it? It can reduce delays, which is what we all want. We can avoid situations where family members come forward at the last minute, when all the other processes have gone through, so that we have to do all the assessments and there will be further weeks of delay for that child. We have heard that every week’s delay is bad and contributes to the damage that that child suffers. I hope that the Government will consider those few suggestions.