Children and Families Bill

Paul Beresford Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Timpson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is why we are streamlining the assessment process for adopters so that it will take no longer than six months, whereas I have heard of cases in which it takes as long as three years for a couple or a single person to be approved as a prospective adopter. It is also why we have launched the national gateway to provide a single point of advice and information for anyone who is interested in adopting so that they are not immediately cocooned within their own local authority area as regards any potential assessment and thereafter matching. We are doing what we can right across the adoption system to make it more adopter-led and more streamlined to break down some of the barriers that have existed for far too long.

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

In response to the question by the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), does my hon. Friend agree not only that more money is going into the system but that savings will come from its being streamlined so that the process of adopting children will move faster?

[Mr Timpson]

One of the reasons we want to encourage local authorities, through this additional funding, to move into a more consortia-type arrangement is that that reduces overheads. At the moment, more than 180 adoption agencies are recruiting, on average, 17 adopters each year. That is not a good economy of scale. There is huge scope within the system to make savings and to get the money to where we want it to help to get children adopted.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

I congratulate Ministers and ex-Ministers on this Bill—the way it has proceeded and been put together—and on their willingness to discuss it. Ministers will be aware from the discussion this evening that much of this Second Reading debate has turned into a Committee stage. I do not intend to continue that and will say merely that this broad Bill is about looking after children—something I have been interested in since the early ’80s when I was on a social services committee in an inner-London borough.

The point I want to pick up briefly and congratulate Ministers on concerns adoption. The social services committee was looking after a broad spectrum of issues—everything one could possibly expect in inner London, with all its problems—but one point that struck some of us was that an awfully large number of looked-after children were in homes. Although those homes were good and tried hard, there was a turnover and no parental influence, and the opportunities for children to progress were not good. Some of those children were not suitable for adoption, but the whole council attitude changed and we pushed towards fostering and adoption with huge success.

As I have said, that took place in the early ’80s in the days before political correctness came in. We saw some extraordinary and beneficial changes and I will relate a small story as an example. As councillors, we met all the adoption and fostering people regularly, including one young couple who had adopted two boys—they were pre-school age, just. The father was English and the mother Australian, and one of the two boys was white and one black although both were exactly the same age. The success of the family was striking, and by that I mean even the extended family. The grandmother in Sydney knitted pullovers for both boys, each with his name across the front. On the first visit to grandma, they flew into Sydney. The boys decided that they were going to fool grandma so they swapped their pullovers which, if you think about it, is actually about a big smile. What I am really getting at is that the change and opportunity for those kids once they were adopted were striking.

Through my constituency actions and going back to that local authority, I was staggered at the way the system had gummed up and how children and those who wished to adopt were not getting the opportunity to do so. Progress had stopped. As speaker after speaker has pointed out, that space of time is short for us but long for those children. Therefore, succinctly, I congratulate Ministers on going ahead and taking on those problems, and on having the courage to tackle the political correctness while recognising an element of truth in what people say.