Surrey County Council and Adoption

Debate between Paul Beresford and Hugh Bayley

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Westminster Hall

[Hugh Bayley (in the Chair)]

We have been absent for seven minutes, so the sitting will continue until 5.7 pm.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

I will scurry, Mr Bayley.

In March 2012, the adoptive couple discovered that their potential adoptees—the two little girls—were still on the list for adoption. They had been offered to other potential adopters but not accepted, for some reason. On that understanding, the couple approached the manager. They were told by the manager, once again, to forget the match and move on, even though Surrey county council had no alternative options for the children. Thanks to delays, at this stage the eldest girl was now nearly seven. At no time during the process were my constituents ever informed why they may or may not have been an unsuitable match.

In April 2012, my constituents ran out of patience with Surrey county council. They discovered, through Adoption UK, that there was an adoption exchange day in London, where a large number of adoptive agencies were present with the profiles of children for adoption. They discovered that it would be helpful to bring along a short biography to give out. This they prepared themselves, only to discover on arrival at the event that it should have been prepared with the assistance of Surrey county council. They still attended. Different Surrey county council staff were present, to whom they explained this long difficulty. They were assured that the staff were somewhat appalled.

Fortunately, on a Friday evening in April, the same manager—the one who had been there all along and who originally took them through the adoption panel—rang to say that she had had further discussions with colleagues. She said that Surrey county council now supported placing the two youngsters with them. The next matching panel took place in June 2012, which was a further delay of two months. Introductions were to commence in early July, but there was another two-week delay. To save the Minister the arithmetic, that was some 16 months after the first possible approach, after having first seen the details of the little girls. The two sisters latterly moved in with the adoptive parents, because of success, in August 2012. By this stage, the two girls had been in care for more than three years and had lived with two sets of foster carers.

Bad though that is, there is more. First, there was a shambolic lack of clarity over the contact arrangements with the birth parents. In broad summary, there were two differing opinions from two social workers. One social worker wanted up to six contacts a year for the birth parents with the girls, the other wanted no contact. Decisions were made, undone and remade. Confusion and upset reigned for the wee girls, for the adopting parents and for the birth mother. The final decision was no contact, which was backed by the court but opposed by the birth mother.

Surrey social workers decided at this stage that they needed to support the new combined family once the children had moved in with their adoptive parents-to-be. In September, the two girls were about to start at their new school. The elder of the sisters was going through a difficult settling-in stage. In its wisdom, children’s services decided that the mother would need more help, which was accepted. A social worker was allocated to the new family on a weekly basis, after school. She was, I understand, young and clearly inexperienced. Whatever advice was sought, or when changes were suggested in the strategy for caring for the children, she had to rush back to the manager, again, and return with the advice the following week. This support was so pathetic and inadequate that, by mutual consent, these support arrangements were shelved.

In addition to this inadequate support, the adoptive mother received visits every three weeks from the children’s social worker and from the parents’ own social worker—not together, but separately. The two social workers did not agree with each other’s approach. This, of course, made life challenging and every visit from the children’s social worker resulted in a period of unsettled behaviour from the children, who blamed the adoptive mother for the move. Fortunately, Surrey did something right. It bought in SafeBase, an external specialist organisation, which supported and helped the parents.

In January 2013, when the children were quite settled—they had got through their first Christmas with their new parents and the adoption process was about to begin—for some unknown reason, the children’s social worker decided that she needed to start visiting once a week to work on the children’s life story books. Why she needed to do this in conjunction, and in close proximity, with the children, I cannot fathom, and the timing was bad. Of course, predictably, that weekly visit, including pulling information together for the life story, had the immediate effect of unsettling the children yet again, as the social worker raked up their past on a weekly basis. That persisted for more than a month, until the social worker was signed off sick with a broken wrist—so they could not inflict other visits. The frequency of visits reduced and a semblance of normality started to return, and there was progress through to what one would consider proper normality.

To add to the problems, the children’s social worker delayed the commencement of the court process for the adoption by almost four weeks, by failing to provide the parents with the address of the birth parents. This was only resolved by going back to the manager again. To further aggravate the situation, the first court hearing was adjourned because the judge was not satisfied that adequate efforts had been made by Surrey county council to contact the birth parents, and he delayed the adoption by another six weeks.

In the middle of all that, the children were told about the contradiction of the contact with their birth parents. That was done by the children’s social worker in March 2013. I understand that it went through well.

The children are now adopted and in the home. I have met them, although the children do not realise it. It is understandable that Surrey county council children’s services department was concerned about how the parents would cope with the demands, but it seemed to make it worse at every stage. The adoption is now complete, and I should like the procedures that Surrey county council went through to be looked at, preferably independently, by somebody outside, if the Minister—if he acts—can persuade Surrey county council of that.

I have had dealings with Surrey county council’s social services in the past, and it was like banging my head on a brick wall. It shelters behind data protection, and progress is zero. A group of potential parents came together in November 2010, and I hope they can have their cases briefly looked at as a paper exercise and that the individual parents can then be interviewed, because if social services continue as they have been in Surrey, we are doomed when it comes to helping those children.

The children are now in what I know is a happy home. I wish them all the very best, but I must warn the parents, as a parent with adult children: just wait till those wee girls are teenagers. Then the fun starts.