Adoption

Catherine McKinnell Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I sincerely pay tribute to the hon. Member for Erewash (Jessica Lee) for securing this important and well-attended debate. Her work in this area, both in Parliament and as a family law barrister before her election, is highly regarded, and she gave an excellent speech that acknowledged the complexity of the issue. The debate has been extremely interesting, with excellent contributions from all hon. Members.

The debate is timely. As mentioned, last week was national adoption week. It has been running since 1997 and provides us all with a reminder of the need to raise awareness of adoption, the importance of encouraging adoptive parents to come forward, and the need to highlight the importance of adoption for those children who, for whatever reason, cannot remain with their birth parents. Ministers used last week to make a number of important announcements on this issue. I add my support, in particular, to the announcement that adopted children will be given the same priority in school admissions as looked-after children, which builds on the work of the previous Labour Government.

I welcome the new adopters’ charter, which sets out clear principles on how adopters should be treated, and I welcome the fact that the Prime Minister is giving his backing to the Give a Child a Home campaign, which was launched by the British Association of Adoption and Fostering and the Fostering Network. As the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson) set out so well, it is as important to focus on fostering and the people who give up their time to foster children as it is to focus on those who adopt.

The most high-profile announcement last week was on performance tables, which the Department for Education will use to assess local authorities. The aim is to act

“as a challenge to local authorities to do better for the children in their care.”

I agree that all local authorities, and society at large, could and should do better in terms of support for looked-after children. We all know that outcomes for looked-after children are unacceptably poor. We all accept that the fall in the number of adoptions is a concern, and we certainly all acknowledge that an average waiting time of two years and seven months for a child to be adopted is simply far too long. However, I am concerned that naming and shaming local authorities seriously risks painting too simplistic a picture of an incredibly complex issue. Have Ministers considered what impact the threat of tough action against those local authorities will have on the morale, recruitment and retention of already overstretched social workers?

The Government’s performance tables risk failing to present a true picture of a local authority’s performance. Hackney borough council came bottom of the new league table, placing only 43% of children with adoptive parents within 12 months of a decision to do so. However, as Hackney borough council stated:

“Placing a child quickly should not be the only consideration upon which authorities are judged. A placement breaking down is one of the most traumatic things that can happen to an adopted child. In Hackney, we have one of the best records of stability of placements; such is the quality of our placements, hardly any, if any, ever break down.”

There is also the risk of creating perverse incentives for local authorities to push for rushed adoptions—in place of special guardianship arrangements, or concurrent planning that might be more appropriate in the circumstances—to meet what risk being arbitrary targets. As the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich mentioned, we need to listen to Coram, one of the country’s leading voluntary adoption agencies. It stated that the Department for Education’s performance indicators

“don’t tell the full story of the experience of children in care…For example, they do not reveal how delays owing to court processes may affect the speed of adoption or how a child who appears to have been ‘waiting for adoption’ may have in fact been consistently fostered by the same parents who go on to adopt them.”

As well as looking at how we increase the number of adoptions for siblings, black and minority ethnic children, children with disabilities and older children, surely the most important thing we must aim for is to increase the number of successful adoption placements, or talk in terms of permanent arrangements, rather than a simple increase in the number of adoptions. That point was also made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey). Perhaps the most crucial part of the jigsaw in increasing the number of successful adoptions is improving the level of post-adoption support available to adoptive families and their children. Despite the legal requirements in the Adoption and Children Act 2002 to provide long-term support to families after adoption, we are all aware, from anecdotal evidence and constituents’ experiences, that such support is currently not at the level it should be.

Indeed, Adoption UK reports that despite the fact that

“Great strides have been taken in acknowledging the need for adoption support services for families, and delivering some practical support…far too many families still come to Adoption UK, desperate for support.”

I recently received a heartbreaking letter from an adoptive mother of 20 years, who put the issue very succinctly:

“Given the number of adoptions that break down as well as the number of relationships which collapse under the pressure of attempting to deal alone with challenging behaviours, not enough consideration is being given to the consequences of not supporting adoptive families properly.”

She went on:

“I now know that providing a loving family for children who have had multiple carers and suffered abuse will never be enough. The children and indeed their adoptive families will need access to proper psychological/therapeutic support as well as respite and proper pathway planning during turbulent teenage years”.

The hon. Member for Erewash acknowledged this issue and that it deserves consideration and reflection. However, it is a crucial part of the jigsaw if we are to bring about an increase in the number of successful adoptions, which we all want to see.

The hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich referred to the issue of care leavers. Last week was not only national adoption week, but national care leavers’ week. I had the privilege of attending the recent special meeting held by the all-party parliamentary group for looked after children and care leavers. I heard from several young people about the incredibly positive role that being in care had played in their lives, and their disappointment in the way that residential care, and being in care, is so often dismissed. I therefore wanted to put on record my serious concerns about some of the language used by Ministers in the media last week, who referred to children “languishing” in care. That language is not helpful for these young people, or in encouraging foster carers and adoptive parents to come forward.

Implicit in the Government’s decision to publish performance data is the view that adoption represents the gold standard for all councils to aim for. However, as was eloquently put by the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich, it should not be viewed as a one-size-fits-all solution. Adoption is not the right option for every child. Indeed, that approach has been criticised by the Fostering Network, which believes that focusing overwhelmingly on adoption risks skewing decision making, oversimplifying enormously complex and difficult decisions and ignoring the needs of the vast majority of children who come into care, who neither need nor want to be adopted.

In conclusion, the Government are absolutely right to focus on looked-after children and adoption. I look forward to hearing more about how the work of Martin Narey, the ministerial adviser, will be taken forward in the next two years. However, the Government must also recognise that adoption is not a panacea for looked-after children, or society at large. While being the most incredibly rewarding and enjoyable experience, raising a family can also be one of the most challenging and difficult experiences for people in the best of circumstances. Adoptive parents are not super-human. They, and their adopted children, need ongoing support if we are to increase the number of successful placements.

There is no doubt that the adoption process can and should be sped up, but that must not be done at the expense of ensuring the right path for the child. After all, to completely cut a child’s legal ties with their birth parents and family—choosing a family that can adopt them, making decisions about whether they will be able to live with any brothers and sisters and then moving them to live with a whole new family—is an enormous decision, which must be taken with great care.

I am sure that Ministers recognise that adoption is not the right answer for every child. I want to pay tribute in particular to the comments of the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich. I am sure that he shares many of my concerns—that we do not focus solely on adoption but on a child-centred approach that ensures results and the best long-term outcomes for all children, whatever their circumstances of care.