Adoption process is being rushed by councils, say judges

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Created on Saturday, 24 November 2012 00:00

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Adoption process is being rushed by councils, say judges

17 November 2012

Children face split from other family members as fears expressed about Michael Gove's 'unrealistic' plans

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Amelia Hill

Children in care are being threatened with separation from siblings and other family members because local authorities are attempting to rush through inappropriate and premature adoptions, high court judges have told the Guardian.

Experts claim children are being hurried into adoptions against the expert evidence of their official guardians, family court advisers and independent social workers.

The Guardian has seen evidence of local authorities being criticised by judges for pushing forward adoption plans even though children were flourishing in long-term foster care and wished to remain there, as well as the confidential transcript of a high court case, heard earlier this year, in which a local authority was condemned by a judge for attempting to force through three adoptions with such haste that the children or the adoptive parents would not have had time to be sufficiently prepared by social services.

The judge, who has asked to remain anonymous to protect the identity of the children involved, confirmed this case – which has never been reported on before – was representative of a number of other cases he has ruled on. He said the speed with which the local authority was attempting to rush through the adoptions put all the placements at risk of failure.

A second high court judge, who specialises in family law but also asked to remain anonymous, confirmed having first-hand experience of local authorities attempting to rush through similarly inappropriate adoptions.

In another case, a full-time nanny in London with children of her own had to fight for two years before her local authority agreed she could be assessed as the long-term carer of her young niece. The aunt eventually won her case despite the local authority repeatedly telling her the girl was "too adoptable" to keep in the care system.

Several of the experts the Guardian has spoken to say the pressure on local authorities to draw up "unrealistic" adoption plans became more pronounced in March, when the government published plans to overhaul the adoption system, vowing to get more children adopted from care.

Michael Gove, the education secretary, promised to institute a new approval process to halve the time taken to place a child with an adoptive family to six months and introduce a system of scorecards to hold local authorities to account over delays.

Judge David Pearl, a former president of the care standards tribunal and a deputy high court judge, has spent 15 years dealing with care cases. Before he retired as a judge in February, Pearl said he saw a number of cases at the principal registry of the family division and at the high court in which local authorities paid insufficient attention to the needs of individual children whom they wished to get adopted.

"What I think has happened is that local authorities have taken government policy as saying adoption is the only solution," said Pearl, who is now chair of the new Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service. "That can't be right because it ignores the welfare of the individual children involved.

"There are some cases where [adoption] is not in the best interests of the children: where it would be far better for the children to remain in long-term fostering care, with continuing contact with members of their birth family. One of the concerns is that the local authorities are anxious to move towards adoption because it is the cheapest option," he said.

Martha Cover, co-chair of the Association of Lawyers for Children, said she was especially concerned about adoptions taking place at the expense of keeping siblings together, because recent research showed that being placed away from siblings was one of the most common reasons for an adoption to break down, with a risk factor of 29%.

"Adoption is the first thing local authorities reach for, even when it means children will have to be separated from their siblings and even when social workers have said that would be enormously damaging to the children," she said.

"This is happening partly because local authorities are under pressure from central government [to increase their number of adoptions] but also because it's the end of the story for them: once adopted, they can close the book on that child."

David Jockelson, a member of the Law Society's children's panel, who gave evidence on behalf of care lawyers at hearings of the Commons justice select committee's inquiry into legal aid reforms, also criticised the government.

"The logic of the government seems to be simplistically that children should be adopted as soon as possible," he said. "Superficially attractive, closer study discloses unintended consequences [including the encouragement of] quick adoption at the price of separating sibling groups.

"In addition there is a growing danger of inadequately prepared adopters," he said. "Result? A very unhappy home; possibly a breakdown in the adoption: the very worst, most destructive outcome for the child."

But Jeffrey Coleman, southern England director of the British Association for Adoption and Fostering, disagreed. "Children are being threatened with separation from their siblings because of a lack of adopters", he said. "In my experience, local authorities are very skilled and considerate when trying find the best solution for children."

The Department for Education said: "It is unacceptable that the average time between a child entering care and joining their adoptive family is one year and 10 months. Delay can cause irrevocable harm. We are speeding up the adoption process and undertaking urgent reforms to make it as easy as possible for people to foster and adopt, so that more children in care find loving and stable homes. We know adoption is not suitable for all children. The child's welfare is of paramount consideration for local authorities, and decisions are made depending on the interests of each individual child."

The number of children adopted in Britain has increased by 6% since last March, according to the Office for National Statistics . Nearly two-thirds of those adopted were aged between one and four, up from 58% the year before.

The proportions of adoptions of children aged between five and nine, however, has decreased from more than a third since 1998. The percentage of children aged between 10 and 14 adopted has more than halved over the same period.

Source: The Guardian UK, Sunday 18 November 2012