Adoption

Edward Timpson Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Jessica Lee]

I agree that when special guardianship orders came in, they brought about something that was much needed in the system. It is often, although of course not always, relatives of the child who step forward, and the orders provide another avenue of permanence and security for the child.

[Mr Edward Timpson (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate, about which many of us feel passionate. She has carried out a duty on behalf of us all in championing the matter in Parliament.

Although since 2005 special guardianship orders have been an important addition to the routes to permanence for children, is it not the case that the number of children being adopted had already flatlined in the two or three years before those orders were introduced? We need to be careful not to make a direct comparison between special guardianship orders and adoption orders and assume that one is replacing the other.

[Jessica Lee]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson), who has shown leadership in the House in taking forward the issue of outcomes for looked-after children. I agree with his point. Special guardianship orders have their place and have been very useful in the child protection arena, but I do not accept that there is a direct correlation between the introduction of those orders and the reduction in adoption figures. It simply is not that straightforward. It should be borne in mind that often other residence orders or long-term foster care arrangements have supported special guardianship orders.

To return to what I was saying about the Secretary of State, he has taken the view that his life chances were transformed by the childhood that he experienced. He hopes to support looked-after children who are waiting to be placed for adoption. I was very encouraged by the interest shown by the Prime Minister in the issue in his party conference speech and subsequent remarks. I was delighted to hear him comment on the importance of improving adoption rates. I was also delighted with his response to my question at Prime Minister’s questions, which included this comment:

“It is also important that the Government pledge that we will make the process of adoption and fostering simpler. It has become too bureaucratic and difficult, and the result is that it is putting people off. I am absolutely determined that we crack this.”—[Official Report, 2 November 2011; Vol. 534, c. 923.]

I am sure that we would all agree with the Prime Minister about that.

Pulling all the indicators together, the message is clear. There is a momentum in the House and the country to tackle the challenges affecting the adoption process. We must seize the opportunity. The starting point must be the assessment process for prospective adopters. Last week’s national adoption week was an excellent opportunity to showcase, across the country, the need for adoptive parents, and the need to raise awareness. It is hoped that families and individuals will reflect on the possibility of adoption and make that important phone call to local authorities to start the process. Sadly, there are many anecdotal examples of that first step in the process—contacting children’s services—being a hurdle to overcome. I worked with and for social workers for many years, and I assure hon. Members that I am not going to turn my speech into criticism of those who work in the field. The difficulties I mention are merely an example of the problems that occur all the way along the process of adoption.

Anecdotally, some applicants report being discouraged from the outset, and more needs to be done to ensure that all possible applicants are appreciated and encouraged to apply. Until we get people up to the starting line for the assessment process it is difficult to improve the number of applicants. With the current numbers of successful adoptions, we cannot afford to discourage people at an early stage. The entire assessment process needs to be streamlined and improved.

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[Jessica Lee]

The point is well made by my hon. Friend, and I thank him for the intervention. It is exactly that balance that perhaps we should all refer to this morning. There is a clear dividing line between assessing and safeguarding children and deciding whether they would be in any risk in a household, and commenting on people’s lifestyle choices and intimate details, which is simply not relevant to whether people are fit and capable parents.

Another aspect to speeding up the adoption process is the time limit for courts in completing care and placement proceedings. The family justice review, headed by David Norgrove, has just produced its final report. Sections of the report are relevant to the debate on adoption rates in the UK.

It is broadly accepted that children make their main attachments in the earliest months and years of their lives. It goes perhaps without saying that the more secure are their relationships with their main carers, the more likely it is that they will form secure attachments and relationships in childhood and beyond.

It is important to remember that the paramount priority of the family court has been and always will remain the welfare of a child. Again, I make no criticisms of all the professionals and others involved in the court process; I know at first hand how hard-working and committed the court staff, lawyers, social workers and children’s guardians are. However, there are long delays in the completion of cases. Care and supervision cases now take an average of 56 weeks. One can say that a young child is subject to proceedings for a high percentage of their life—often 50% or more. There is no magic wand for that problem. It requires consideration of case management, court availability and judicial leadership.

We already have in place the public law outline, which sets out the parameters for how cases should progress. Judicial continuity and strict case management are just one important aspect of how we could speed along proceedings.

[Mr Timpson]

Regarding the court process, judicial continuity and case management, is it not also important that the initial allocation of a care case is done with the utmost expediency and by a judge with the right level of experience, to ensure that there is not even more delay built into the court process, so that the time limits that we are trying to adhere to are more likely to be kept?

[Jessica Lee]

I agree with my hon. Friend’s point. At the moment, all public law cases automatically go to the family proceedings court. They may then be transferred to higher courts, such as the county court or even the High Court. However, when we are dealing with strict time limits and concerns to create outcomes for children, every extra court date is time not best used. It is a waste of the child’s time, and we must improve the situation. I would support any proposals that allocate cases more efficiently and directly to the correct level, so that they can be properly managed by appropriate judges.

The Norgrove review proposes a limit of six months in which to complete proceedings. That is certainly a good aspiration, but if that is to be achieved, it will require the coming together of many aspects of how the courts function. I realise that the report has only just been published, but I ask the Minister for any preliminary response to it, and what the time scale is for a detailed Government response to that important document. Six months is a reasonable period in which to make an assessment. A court’s primary and first consideration and hope is that a child may be returned to their birth family and stays with it. Following that is an assessment and consideration of the parents and any other family members. We need to speed up the availability of court time.

Judicial continuity is important. If a judge is charged with the responsibility of a case from the outset, they will have a much better understanding of the dynamics, personalities and initial concerns of a social worker. They will have a grip on the background and chronology of the case; they will have seen it through. It is much more difficult for a judge to step in halfway through a case and make important and life-changing decisions for a child. I am sure that many judges would wish to have judicial continuity throughout cases—they aspire to that as well—so I hope that can be achieved over time.

Once the court process has been exhausted and a placement order made, allowing local authorities to match a child with prospective adopters, there are further hurdles and challenges. A local authority has to consider the pool of adopters within its authority. Again, one has to think about the cost and other complications of looking further afield from the outset. However, is that a sensible, child-centred approach? Surely, we need a more straightforward structure in which adoption teams across the country can consider as wide a pool of prospective adopters as possible from the earliest opportunity. That could save months when matching children with prospective carers.

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[Esther McVey]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point. I was not aware that there were differences, but if so, of course they need to be addressed. Particularly for children adopted later in life, it is painfully apparent that they might need the same support as children in care. I will conclude on that point, but I would like replies from the Minister on my points about choice, equality and awareness of the need to help children in school.

[Mr Timpson]

rose—

[Jim Shannon]

rose—

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[Mr Edward Timpson (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)]

It is an unmitigated delight to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Jessica Lee) on her deeply knowledgeable and constructive speech, which set out all the issues with which we need to grapple in order to improve our adoption system. It is worth setting down a marker from the outset that adoption is only one route to permanency for children who need to find another home, and that many foster carers and family members take on a caring role. Although adoption is a route to permanency that many more children could be the beneficiaries of, we have to recognise that it is not always the right option for every child.

I declare an interest. Like my hon. Friend, I am a family law barrister, although I do not practise at present. I also have two adoptive brothers—Oliver, who is now 35, and Henry, who has just turned 24, I think. They are an integral part of our family and one thing about which I can be absolutely confident is that they have enriched our family’s lives. I hope that we have provided them with the stable and loving environment that they so desperately needed.

It is worth acknowledging that successive Governments, including the previous one, did their best to try to help vulnerable children who were in need of a stable home. That included trying to work in ways that would help adoption become a more successful route. We could talk about whether targets are a good or a bad idea, but I think that the motivation behind them was absolutely right. It was to try to give the opportunity to more families to offer a home to children through the adoption route. Ultimately, this is about finding the right home for a child, rather than the right child for a home. I believe that the current Government’s work to achieve that end is moving the system in the right direction, but be under no illusions—there is no quick fix and it will take a whole cultural shift over a long period.

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a valid point. Although we recognise that there will be no quick fix to the problem, one of my concerns is that, in the meantime, we as Members of Parliament must do our level best to make sure that those looked-after children and those going through the process are given the best possible voice and opportunity. Foster carers in my constituency have told me that they want looked-after children to have a voice and to be heard by us in this place, so that we can understand the issues that they face.

[Mr Timpson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, which gives me the opportunity to remind her of the groups that I chair—the all-party group on adoption and fostering and the all-party group on looked after children and care leavers. Every time we meet, we manage to bring to Parliament about 150 people who are in care or have left care, so that their voice can be heard here. We are trying to begin a scheme whereby MPs will be matched with a care leaver in their constituencies. I encourage all Members present to engage with that and to ask their local authority if they can sit on an adoption panel, so that they can learn exactly how the decision-making process works.

In this debate, we have elaborated on the myth-busting that needs to take place in relation to the issue of who can adopt. The hon. Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson) has mentioned his experiences in Paraguay, which leave a lot to be desired. I remember visiting some Romanian orphanages in 1990 with my parents, who were so distressed by what they saw that they inquired about adopting a Romanian child. My hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry), who has left the Chamber for now, has told us that she was turned down for being 47. My parents were turned down in Romania for being over 35, which shows that some other countries have even more stringent conditions for adoption.

We need to bust myths. If someone has a body mass index that they are not proud of, it does not mean that they cannot adopt. If you like a flutter on the horses, Mr Davies, it does not mean that you cannot adopt. A lot of myths need to be shaken out of the adopted system. The Government’s important measures in relation to new adoption guidelines, particularly those centring on black and minority ethnic children, are an important step in that direction.

It has been suggested that the way to try to improve the number of people who put themselves forward to adopt and to ensure that more children are adopted is to go back to the targets system. I have already touched on that and do not believe that it is the right way. We need to do something similar to what has been done in Cheshire East council, in my constituency, which has a local but direct campaign called “Fostering and Adoption in Cheshire East”. FACE brings together people from all sorts of different backgrounds—married, single, gay, pensioners—who adopted successfully, to try to ensure that people realise that they do not necessarily need to count themselves out and that they are very much welcome. We also need to make sure that those local authorities that get more inquiries, as has been the case in Cheshire East, have the capacity to deal with those cases and provide those people with the services that they need. We do not want to end up in a situation in which people make the emotional decision to present themselves as potential adopters, only to be told, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

I would have liked to have covered many other issues, many of which have been addressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash, but what I will say is that it is outcomes for children that matter. If all children are going to be placed in an adoptive placement, it is important that the outcomes are successful. We need to look carefully at organisations such as Coram, which has a 100% success rate in finding adoptive parents for children with adoption plans. It has almost negligible breakdown rates, and post-adoption support plays a vital role in that. Adoption UK and After Adoption are just two of the voluntary adoption agencies that offer specific courses for adopters. I have spoken to adopters who have benefited from those courses, which are valuable in ensuring that adopters understand the issues they face, and that the children they look after get the support they need post-adoption. Just because a child is adopted does not mean that the problems disappear. My brother Oliver is 35. He still has difficulties that all relate to his early life trauma. I am pleased to say that he has just completed his first year in employment without changing jobs. That has been a huge breakthrough for him. For our family, it is a measure of the success from where he started.