Children and Families Bill

Baroness Young of Hornsey Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, our Amendment 12 is on the same issue and a similar wording to that moved so eloquently by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. We very much support the argument that she put forward and the care with which the adoption Select Committee considered this matter and other issues.

As the noble and learned Baroness pointed out, under the Children Act 2002, the court and adoption agencies must under current legislation give due regard to a child’s religious persuasion, racial origin, culture and linguistic background when making decisions. The Bill removes that wording, but we continue to consider that these are important factors.

No one wants children to be disadvantaged by delays caused by the search for a perfect match, but the evidence of the adoption committee was that while there had been pockets of poor practice in the past, this is not a widespread problem. Indeed, it heard evidence from organisations such as Barnardo’s, which believed that the current legislation was adequate, and Coram, which also argued that, while there might have been a problem in the past, the situation was improving rapidly. The committee also identified that there were several other factors affecting the placement of black and minority ethnic children, including having fewer prospective adopters, the age of the children being put up for adoption and a failure of social workers to promote their availability. We are concerned that too much of the legislation being put forward on this issue is being based on anecdote and there is in fact a paucity of evidence that the wording in the legislation is the cause of black and minority ethnic children waiting longer for placements.

The general view was that the current legislative wording was not a problem per se. We therefore think that the Government have swung too far in the opposite direction by seeking to remove any reference to ethnicity, religion and culture. That is why we believe that putting these factors in the welfare checklist, along with other considerations, strikes the right and proportionate balance in addressing the issue. It would require agencies to have regard to these factors, but they would not be paramount.

In addition, any change in this area would be in direct contradiction to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and, in particular, Article 20 which states:

“Children who cannot be looked after by their own family have a right to special care and must be looked after properly, by people who respect their ethnic group, religion, culture and language”.

We agree with this principle. It is important that parents understand the identity of their child and that they are able to help them feel at ease with that identity. We cannot be blind or neutral to these considerations. I very much take the point that was made in the earlier debates. We sometimes think that we are talking about babies, but we are not. We could be talking about young people—anything up to adolescents—who have a view about these things. That point was made very eloquently by the noble and learned Baroness in her introduction. They have an identity and they want that to be considered and expressed. There may have been overzealous social workers in the past, but there may also have been adoptions that failed because the complexities of a child’s identity were not properly addressed. It is important to get a balance.

The Government have argued that these issues are taken into account in the general welfare provisions in Clause 2, but in fact Clause 2 does not achieve that. It removes the express duty to give consideration to these factors, but we are concerned, in the same way as the noble and learned Baroness expressed, that withdrawing them completely will send a clear message to those involved in adoption that these factors are no longer to be considered.

In his response to the Select Committee on adoption report, the Children’s Minister argued that specifying ethnicity, language and so on would continue to place excessive emphasis on these factors and would therefore distort the way that they were applied. To be fair to the Minister, when we met him the other day he made a similar point. He said that in order to counterbalance the excessive emphasis, we had to go to the opposite extreme to ram the message home to local authorities and adoption agencies.

We do not consider that that is the right way forward. These are important and sensitive issues. Having the factors on the welfare checklist, balanced with other issues, would allow the flexibility needed to make an assessment of all the child’s needs in the proper context, which would achieve the Government’s stated aim. I look forward to other comments and the Minister’s response but we very much support the point made by the noble and learned Baroness in opening this debate and the eloquent arguments that were put in the adoption report in the first place.

[Baroness Young of Hornsey (CB)]

My Lords, like many others, I see many good intentions in the Bill and, along with others, I welcome the aim of speeding up the rate at which adoptions take place and are completed. But I also very strongly support my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss in this amendment.

When we talk about a person’s identity—this will come up a number of times in other amendments that we are due to consider, and some noble Lords have raised this issue already—it is a multifaceted affair. It has many constituent parts. It seems like an anomaly to try to say that “characteristics” or “background” could encapsulate all the things that we might mean by identity and which might influence the way in which we feel we are being brought up or looked after by people who are standing in for our biological parents.

I do not understand the argument that there is somehow an excessive emphasis if you mention it. That does not make sense to me, given that we live in a society where there is still racism and discrimination based on religion, cultural background and language. How can it be excessive when we are having to deal with all those different forms of discrimination? We do not have a society where we have the luxury of saying that we do not need to talk about this because it does not matter and it is not something that people consider or talk about.

Last year, I hosted a round-table discussion that had been organised by the NSPCC. It took place while the Select Committee on adoption was still gathering evidence so we were not influenced by what the committee was saying. Present at that meeting were adoptive parents, adults who had been adopted as children, academics, researchers and representatives from major charities and local authorities—everyone working in the field of adoption. We focused on racial origins, transracial adoptions and ethnicity. We referred to case studies and experiences in the UK and overseas, and some DfE officials were also present. By and large, that group of about 20 people also came to the view that it was both important and necessary to consider ethnicity, racial origins and culture when seeking to place for adoption. That is not to say that anyone present thought that transracial adoption should never be undertaken. However, it was considered that in our society cultural identities are key factors that ought properly to be taken into account when a child is to be adopted.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Nash]

Six per cent of white children in care are adopted while 2% of black children in care are adopted. That is a fact that should make all of us angry. The average length of time that it takes for a child to be adopted from entering the care system is two years and seven months, but for black children it is three years and eight months. That statistic of course conceals the fact that many children are never adopted at all.

It is worse than that, though, because all the evidence is that, generally, the younger a child enters the care system, the more likely they are to be adopted. Black children in fact enter the care system four months earlier than white children, on average as babies, contrary to what the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said about the age of children entering the care system. We believe that with the best intentions in the world, social workers are trying too often to make perfect matches and taking the aspect of ethnicity too much into account. As a result of this, the system is leaving—

[Baroness Young of Hornsey]

I am sorry to interrupt. I just want to get this clear, because the Minister seems to be saying that the provisions around ethnicity in the 2002 Act are virtually the sole or main reason why black and mixed-heritage children are being left behind in the adoption queue. I would still argue, as have other noble Lords, that there is little if any evidence to suggest that that is the case—that there is an exact, identifiable causal relationship between the provisions of the 2002 Act and the lack of progress for black children.

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for enabling me to clarify this point. I am not saying that it is the sole cause at all. It is one of a number of factors and we believe that our approach will be one element in helping to address this imbalance, which is leaving ethnic minority children short-changed.

Social workers will of course continue to pay considerable regard to ethnicity as they and the courts will be required to have regard to,

“the child’s age, sex, background and any of the child’s characteristics which the court or agency considers relevant”,

as part of the welfare checklist. These will obviously include ethnicity. We do not accept that our approach means that this will no longer be considered at all, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister, Lady Hamwee and Lady Benjamin, suggest. Indeed, in her speech the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, referred specifically to background. “Background” and “characteristics” must include ethnicity. That is a matter of plain English.

There is unequivocal evidence about the negative impact on their development of delay in placing children for adoption. Children need to form attachments with one or two main carers to develop emotionally and physically. There is also clear evidence about delay caused by practitioners seeking a “perfect” ethnic match. Professor Elaine Farmer, in An Investigation of Family Finding and Matching in Adoption, found that of the BME children in the sample who experienced delay, attempts to find a family of similar ethnicity was a factor in delay for 70% of them. A study by Julie Selwyn—