The Children and Families Bill must be only the first step in boosting adoption

I would hope and expect that the Children and Families Bill will come into law and help to reduce the number of children in care by increasing the number adopted.

However it is a very modest, polite piece of legislation. It doesn't banish political correctness. But it means that social workers who apply a practical, common sense approach won't actually be prohibited. The current law says that "due consideration" should be given to race when placing children for adoption, while the interests of the child is supposed to be paramount. Astonishingly the current law is routinely interpreted as not allowing, or very seldom allowing, transracial adoption. The reality has meant black children remaining stuck in the care system rather than being placed with a white couple.

This remained the reality despite new guidance being brought in by Tim Loughton in 2011 that ethnicity should not trump other concerns.

Pleas to social workers that children would be better off in loving families than institutional care do not seem to have an impact. Although the new law will help good social workers to apply common sense and and get children adopted, I fear it will do little in constraining the ideological social workers who seek to thwart this.

Adoption and Fostering Panels should be scrapped

Reducing the number of children in care and securing a higher adoption rate partly involves preventing social workers from imposing ideological barriers. This is the controversial area, the battle against political correctness.

But there are also plenty of cases where social workers are trying to get on with the task of placing children for adoption. The social workers find that they are being blocked or delayed by the system. I have spoken to plenty of them. They are as frustrated and angry as anyone else at the damage caused by the current arrangements.

One reform that would be positive would be the abolition of Adoption Panels. Also the Fostering Panels which have an equivalent role in wasting time and money.

I used to sit on an Adoption Panel. I do not regret doing so as I found it a fascinating, albeit emotionally draining, experience. Yet I have come to the conclusion that their role is flawed. The only scope these panels can have is negative. It's there to rubber stamp three types of decision - proposals from social workers for a child to be adopted, for a couple to be approved as suitable to adopt or for a particular child to be matched with a particular couple.

The cost of adoption is too high

Some of the obstacles to adoption are controversial. Others are dull. The Government has made a usfeul start in attacking both kinds. They need to go much further. There is still acceptance of the lazy, defeatist assertion of the social work establishment that adoption must only be the destination for a minority of children in care. However the reforms being brought in are much to be welcomed - they are individually modest but cumulatively significant.

The latest matter to be addressed is mismatch with some councils having a shortage or prospective adopters and some with a surplus. Some councils might have couples approved as ready to adopt kept waiting with no children available. Others might have children approved as suitable for adoption waiting for couples to be placed with.

In their consultation the Government says:

One major barrier to effective collaboration between local authorities in relation to adopter recruitment is the inter-authority fee. It is currently set at £13,000, while Julie Selwyn’s independent research suggests the actual cost to a local authority of recruiting and assessing an adopter is over £30,000. This places a strong financial incentive on local authorities to avoid recruiting more adopters than are needed for its children, and allowing other local authorities to place children with them. 

By all means let the inter-authority fee reflect the real cost and thus free up the market in prospective adopters. However the underlying assumptions should also be challenged.

Couple seeking to adopt asked: "How many times a week do you have sex?"

Birmingham City Council have published a survey of adoption applicants. There are some sensible recommendations on some of the criticisms raised. So it is an interesting document and it is to the credit of the council that the research was undertaken and that it was published. Let's hope that action indicates a desire to change. Many of the concerns raised will not be unique to Birmingham.

But I'm afraid it does show the most widespread and horrendous prejudice in the council against adoption - at least hitherto. Those wishing to adopt a child seek to provide that child with a permanent loving home rather than being shunted around the care system. Those offering to adopt should be given every possible welcome and encouragement. Their applications should be pursued as a matter of urgency. I fear, to put it mildly, this has not been the experience in Birmingham.

As the Daily Mail has highlighted the report says:

There were several reports of adopters being told they would need to give up work. One participant left the process because of this.

Dudley Council spends £233,000 a month on taxis taking children to school

Dudley Council is holding a consultation with its residents on a range of Council Tax increases. Those who oppose a Council Tax increase are only allowed to have their views registered if they say they support cutting "key services." They are given a strong message that such an option would inflict terrible harm on residents.

Rather than waste time on such a rigged exercise I suggest the people of Dudley look at another section of their Council's website. Let's look through their procurement spending for October. Then let's look at just one category of spending from one department. Children's and Education Services spent £233,342 on taxis - (totting up the items I could spot.) That went on taking children to and from school. Some was for disabled children but substantial amounts (marked "mainstream") was for able bodied children. Usually these will be children in care known as "Looked After Children."

If you talk to children in care you find they don't regard having a taxi to pick them up from school as a treat. It marks them out as different. It creates a stigma. Their school mates ask why a taxi picks them up from school.

Policy Exchange calls for 1,000 more children in care to go to boarding schools

An interesting paper from Policy Exchange calls for a big increase in the number of children in care attending boarding school. At present only 1% of "Looked After Children" attend boarding school. Most of those are with a disability in a specialist school (560 out of the 970 children.) There are 14 local authorities that don't place any children in boarding schools and a further 58 that place less than five. The report recommends that the "aim" should be an increase of 1,000 by 2015/16. Pretty modest.

The report says:

There are a range of potential advantages to using residential schooling as part of a care package. Not least is the fact that it can provide children with two types of stability – that of home and that of school. Importantly, by providing respite and the opportunity of support for foster carers or birth parents, these approaches provide the opportunity of more families staying together, potentially reducing the need for the care system and the likelihood of placement breakdown for those moving into care.

The approach may also be notably cheaper than foster care. Whereas the cost of fostering a child is approximately £400 a week or £20,800 a year, the annual cost of sending a young person in foster care to boarding school would be about £14,800 in a state boarding school. Even in an independent boarding school, the cost might not exceed £25,000. 

Birmingham to close five of its 20 children's homes

There has rightly been increasing focus on the dramatically better outcomes for children being adopted rather than kept in care. It has also become increasingly untenable for people to claim that it is "impossible" for most children in care to be adopted. Increasingly, the extent of the scandal is there for all to see. Children who could be adopted are being kept in care for ideological reasons. The number of children in care is not an inevitable force of nature like the weather. It is a policy decision for which responsibility must be taken.

Another aspect is that for some children in care, the prospects are much worse than for others. Those in long term fostering are better off than those shunted back and forth between a biological parent and an array of different foster carers. Those with the worst prospect are the ones in institutional children homes rather than a family home environment.

Of the children in care, so-called "Looked After Children", 10% are in children's homes nationally. But the ratio varies a lot. In my borough it is 5%. In Birmingham it is 13%. (See Table LAA3.) We can see how the proportion of children taken into care might vary from one district to another - a deprived area would have more than an affluent areas. It is less obvious why there should be such variation in the proportion of children in care who are in children's homes. It is apparent that some councils are failing to keep the numbers to a minimum.

The College of Social Work - another taxpayer funded group lobbying against the Government

First the good news. Most social workers are not members of Unison. Or the British Association of Social Workers. Or the College of Social Workers. Such groups engage in unseemly squabbling for money and power. Meanwhile most social workers find more sensible ways to spend their money than on subs to such outfits.

This is an encouraging sign of independence of thought among the 84,000 social workers in England. It is an indication of resistance to "group think". Let's remember that not all are social workers are deferential to the more discredited orthodoxies of their profession.

Of course a membership group for social workers could have a practical benefit. For instance social workers I have spoken to are frustrated by the volume of paperwork they face. Yet the organisations that supposedly represent them have proved ineffective in addressing this problem. So the reluctance of social workers to sign up strikes me as rational.

Parris on Rotherham's tick-box Timothy

Powerful piece (£) in The Spectator this week by Matthew Parris on the Rotherham foster care scandal.

Mr Parris was angry (as was I) by the Labour Council leader's response:

‘We are looking to make sure all the correct procedures were carried out before the decision was made.’

Mr Parris says:

Oh what a bleak, bloodless, chillingly robotic remark is that! I heard myself, on reading it for the first time, shouting out loud, ‘No, you tick-box Timothy! No! Your job’s to make sure the right decision was made, not that the right procedures were carried out before it was made!’

The terrible thing is that I can imagine come Conservative councillors putting their names to the same statement.

Weak LGA response to the Rotherham scandal as Labour council leader dithers

The Local Government Association have responded to the Rotherham foster care scandal with this statement in the name of Cllr David Simmonds, Chairman of the Local Government Association's
Children and Young People Board, said:

"Councils are committed to placing children in loving homes where they are safe and secure. We welcome with open arms people who are keen to foster or adopt. Clearly, there are processes that have to be followed when approving who is suitable to adopt, but political affiliation to mainstream parties should not be a barrier and isolated incidents where councils get this wrong are not representative of the views of the sector as a whole, where local politicians are totally committed to improving chances for children."

It could have been worse. After Baby P the LGA response was to defend Haringey Council. But what a weak weaselly statement it is. If you read it carefully it doesn't even say that the Rotherham social workers made a mistake - only that their might theoretically be such mistakes and if they did occur they were "isolated" and "unrepresentative." UKIP membership shouldn't be a "barrier" - but that could mean shouldn't in itself preclude someone fostering or adoption but legitimate to take into account. Something you lose points over.