Revealed: The Conservative councils opposing the Government's adoption reforms

Last month I wrote about the disgraceful opposition from three charities to the Government's proposals to help more children in care be placed for adoption.

Decisions by the social workers and the courts are supposed to be made with the interests of the individual child paramount. Sadly, too frequently this is not the reality due to conflicting legal and ideological concerns

That is why the government hs been consulting on changes in two areas.

First is the presumption that siblings should be kept together. Often, if such a placement is not viable, they instead end up remaining in care. Then, when they are in care, they are placed with different foster carers anyway.  And being placed together is not actually always in the best interests of each child. The interest of one sibling may be relegated to those of another. Or the interests of none of the children is best served - merely ideological prejudices.

Institutional racism is keeping black children in care

The Macpherson Report, which investigated the Metropolitan Police over their response to the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993, defined "institutional racism" as:

"The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. 

It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people."

I think "unintentional racism" might have been a better description. The term "institutional racism" implies that racism is an act of policy, determined by the procedures of an organisation.

The police should be colour blind. They should recognise equality before the law and apply the law without fear or favour. Clearly in the past there were a lot of individual police officers who failed to maintain this standard. Does this mean there was "institutional racism"? True, not many police officers lost their jobs for racist behaviour - although I don't think they were likely to be sacked for other failings either.

Increase in number of children in care

The news is not quite as bad as it sounds. The number of "Looked After Children", in other words children in care, has increased. As of the end of March the total was 67,050. That is 2% more than a year earlier.

Each of these cases is a complicated personal tragedy. However, some of the details suggest   modest progress. There were 3,450 children adopted from 2011-12. That is an increase of 12% on the previous year.

So the reason the total went up is that more children were coming into care.  If children need to be taken into care then it is better for delay to be avoided. There has to be tough acceptance of reality - awareness of this was heightened by the Baby Peter scandal in Haringey. 

As we know, the mistake now tends to be, not that seen in Cleveland a generation ago of social workers being too quick to take a child into care, but of them being too slow. A typical example might be leaving a child with its birth mother who is a heroin addict, on the offchance that she might come off heroin. She probably won't. So the best interests of the child are not being served.  In terms of the figures, the child would likely end up going into care eventually anyway.

Councils are failing to scrap red tape for foster carers

The Government is consulting on proposals to reduce red tape for foster carers. Often Conservatives think of cutting burdensome bureaucracy as something relevant to business or private individuals. Yet those working for the public sector are all to well aware of it as well. This includes the 37,000 foster carers in this country.

Foster carers doing their best to give children a normal upbringing, have to get approval from social workers, or (even more problematic) birth parents for such matters as:

• haircuts
• routine health procedures
• use of social networking sites
• sleep-overs with friends
• school trips, and holidays with the foster carer

Rather naively, the Government wrote to social workers in 2010 asking for "common sense" to be applied, and "delegated authority" to be applied to foster carers in these matters. Then in 2011 they offered a vacuous "Foster Charter." Nothing changed. The social workers continued to micro manage the foster carers.

NSPCC pushing to keep children in care

There was a disgraceful letter (£) to The Times published on Wednesday. Written by Andrew Flanagan (CEO, NSPCC) Natasha Finlayson (CEO, The Who Cares? Trust) Robert Tapsfield (CEO, The Fostering Network) it included:

It is critical the Government does not put a desire to increase the number of adoptive parents ahead of thinking how best to find long-term stable homes for all children in care.  Adoption will only be the option for a minority of children in care and the needs of the majority must not be neglected.

There is the assumption that reducing the number of children in care and securing better treatment for the remaining number are in some way mutually exclusive. Yet the Government is seeking to secure both. The letter also contains the entirely false implication that the Government's motive in placing more children for adoption is not primarily to advance the interests of the children concerned.

Then we have the casually defeatist assertion, made without evidence, that "adoption will only be the option for a minority of children in care." In Hammersmith and Fulham in 2004 we had 435 children in care. As of March this year it was 223 - with  determination to achieve a further substantial fall.

Police estimate that 10,000 "Looked After Children" go missing from care each year

An inquiry led by the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Runaway and Missing Children and Adults and the APPG for Looked after Children and Care Leavers has delivered a devastating report on the failings of children's homes in particular and treatment of children in care in general.

How many instances are there of children in the care system going missing each year? The Department of Education estimate 930, the police estimate 10,000.

The report says:

During the course of the Inquiry, the panel was told of serious shortcomings in the data collected on children who run away from care. The children’s minister, Tim Loughton MP, admitted that it was impossible to know the true extent of the problem as the data collected by police, care services and Ofsted was “raw and erratic".

Indeed, the Department for Education recorded only 930 instances of children going missing from care last year, whilst police data showed an estimated 10,000 individual children going missing from care in a year. This is a startling discrepancy and severely hampers agencies’ and professionals’ ability to effectively intervene and protect vulnerable children.

Councils failing on adoption will lose control of running the service

If schools are failing they are being taken over. This morning we learnt that the same will happen to the adoption services of local councils. This is excellent news. In no other area has political correctness been more disastrous. That mentality is deeply ingrained in the social work profession, which is why relying on persuasion would be naive. There were complaints about the Queen's Speech being thin, but if the only thing achieved is a dramatic increase in the number of children taken out of the care system and placed in permanent loving homes, that will mean a thoroughly worthwhile Parliamentary year.

It is no use for poorly performing councils to make excuses.  And delays in the courts need to be tackled as well. That is acknowledged by the Government. But this does not explain why some councils perform much better than others.

In The Times this morning, Tim Loughton, the Children’s Minister, says (£):

“Hundreds of children are being let down by delays right across the country and throughout the adoption process. Every month a child waits to be placed there is less chance of finding a permanent and loving home. This cannot go on.

“I make no apology for shining a light on the system to hold local areas to account. I have been clear we won’t hesitate to intervene where the worst delays are not tackled effectively.”

Fewer children should be in children's homes

The Government is quite right to seek to reduce the number of children in care by increasing the number placed for adoption. But they should also improve the outcomes for those who remain in care. For instance, being shunted between foster carers should be kept to a minimum. The league tables increase the accountability for how local councils perform on this.

Today the nation's attention is focused on the minority of children in care ("Looked After Children") who are not with foster carers but in the institutional care of children's homes. This is due to the report (£) in The Times about "organised networks" of men causing hundreds of girls in children's homes to be sexually abused. Two girls - one from Rochdale and another from Manchester - have died. 

The indication that local councils showed a lack of rigour in tackling the problem due to politically correct "sensitivities" about the predominant ethnic background of the perpetrators exacerbates the scandal.

Councils lose data on over 3,000 children

The BBC reports on findings by Big Brother Watch that 132 local authorities lose sensitive information including details of children in care. The failings were uncovered using Freedom of Information requests and at least 1035 incidents of data being lost and stolen.

At least 244 laptops and portable computers were lost. A minimum of 98 memory sticks and more than 93 mobile devices went missing. Of the 1035 incidents, local authorities reported that just 55 were reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office while just 9 incidents resulted in termination of employment.

Nick Pickles, director of Big Brother Watch, said:

Housing rules should help those wishing to foster and adopt

One reason social workers are often resistance to adoption is that they dislike the prospect of children from council estates being pleased with middle class households. Yet they also say that children being adopted should have their own bedroom. While the housing department says council tenants can't move to a bigger property until they have the child. As the cliche goes "catch 22."

Thus it is hard for council tenants to adopt while - social workers, clinging to their ideological prejudices, are filled with horror at the "social engineering" of rich people adopting (they might even send the kid to a private school.) So the child languishes in care. A bit more "joined up Government" between the housing departments and the children's services departments is needed.

Housing Minister Grant Shapps has called on councils to help prospective adoptive parents and foster carers. New guidance will make clear that councils will be expected to consider how their actions could help people in their area who are looking to adopt or foster a child in need of a stable, loving family.