Adoption and Looked After Children

I SAY NO TO THE REMOVAL OF 'DUE CONSIDERATION' OF RACE, ETHNICITY, RELIGION AND LANGUAGE IN CHILD ADOPTION.

Clause 2: its crucial for children to be able to relate to & have an understanding of their culture & heritage, food, socialisation, history, etc to feel they fully identify and fit in later on. It's also preferable for children to KNOW where they come from and maintaining contact with their actual Family, if they are alive, is a priceless connecting thread that cannot be measured by any MP. Create more harmony and less pain. Maybe make Adoption & Fostering more accessible first.

It is important for a child to be placed in a household that understands their cultural lifestyle and allows them to focus on stabilising their life instead of spending it explaining themselves to carers who may not have the same understanding as culturally/ religiously matched carers.

I am of the view that race matters in adoption and every effort should be made to understand the children cultural background.

The clause stating due consideration of race, ethnicity etc should remain when considering adoption of transracial children. My vote is NO to it exclusion

I think culture, religion and race are key factor that can not be dismissed under any circumstances. Children have the right to look at the of face of their adoptive parents and see themselves, hear themselves, worship themselves in that image and likeness.

Part 3
I am a Black Ghanaian British adoptive mother of twin boy and girl of Black Kittitian heritage. I recognise how matching a child’s heritage, ethnicity and religion, gives them the sense of belonging and identity that makes them ‘comfortable and happy in their skin’ enabling them to navigate life ‘freely’, to reach their full potential.
NO one knows my children are adopted until they are told or my children chose to say so. When issues of racism come up in Schools, social life and the in wider society, I recognize it as racism and tell them exactly what it is. I use it as an opportunity to teach them not only to recognize racism, but to give them from my personal experience, the tools to help them deal with it constructively. I do not pretend that it is anything another than what it is, just because I am too embarrassed to admit racism.
And of course growing up within a loving family with a huge and international extended family, they get a wide enough exposure to many other experiences, to enable them to be versatile enough to adapt to any situation they find themselves in. They have therefore grown-up to be well-rounded confident 23 year old adults, who can hold their own in any situation, any group of people or any country they are thrown into because they know themselves and are under no illusions about what they are. Assured of their sense of belonging, (growing up within a community who accept them unreservedly without any discrimination whatsoever) they know what they stand for and therefore have a clear sense of purpose and direction. They learnt it from our culture and day to day life experiences which could never have been replicated by anyone other than a person of a similar experience as Black people and heritage.
If this Bill is passed, we will see Muslim children being raised by Jewish families, Jewish children raised by families of other religions, Asian Hindu children placed with black Christian families and Black children placed with National Front families in adoption, as was recently reported in the papers. People will not know who they are. Has the Govt stopped to think what kind of a chaotic society they will we be creating by going ahead with these changes?
All the Govt needs to do is to focus on getting BME communities, who already come from societies where looking after other people’s children is common practice, to come with their own innovative methods and solutions to help reduce the number BME children in care. There are methods that can be easily implemented to get more BME people to come forward to adopt the BME Looked after children. Even if Govt has to pay them adoption allowance (which at approx. £125 to £250 per child) is the cheapest form of permanent care for looked after children, it will still be the best way to make all the savings that the Govt is so desperately trying to achieve. It will cut out the more expensive cost of the homes looked-after children are currently residing in, such as foster care, (£270 upwards not to mention the additional cost of supervising professionals, social workers etc) residential care and therapeutic care which costs in excess of $3,000 per week per child. Work out the maths.

As an adoptive parent who has been supporting many adopters, I developed innovative ways to engage the BME community and are very willing, given the resources, to implement them to break the barriers, encourage and train BME families to adopt and offer permanent care to the BME looked after children, in their numbers. I want nothing more than to see that every child in care who needs to be adopted, ends up with a choice of appropriate families, to give them loving, secure and permanent homes that comprehensively meet their needs.

Part 2:
Then to have to navigate their way through the unchartered territory of dealing with the racism they are confronted with, once outside their loving home. Again another shock! They are on their own in the real world and not even the loving white family can help them deal with this problem. Never having faced the ravages of racism, the loving family they grew up with, are unable to empathize or understand the issue, so it is patently clear that they are in no position to help. THE trans-racial adoptee is ON THEIR OWN once again with no one within their network to help. Where do they turn? The agony drives them to Therapy.
Worse than that, the Black people who are the obvious people to help, are a group our trans-racial adoptee cannot relate to, may not like or even want to associate with because of all the negative images they’ve only ever seen of them throughout their lives in their loving trans-racial placement… More therapy. He/She tries to deny this new and lonely experience, but is reminded every time by people’s reactions to them when they step outside their door, that they are not what they’ve been brought up to believe of themselves.
Passengers hide their handbags when the trans-racially adopted adult sits next to them on the bus or tube, the interviewer’s face drops when they show up at a job interview because they did not sound Black. They sit back helplessly as white people who are less qualified than them, get the jobs best suited to them, and it goes on…. As doors slam in their faces, which would have opened for them, had they been seen as the white people that they perceive of themselves, they begin to take it personally.
There must be something wrong with them because they do not realize that this is ‘racism’ and it is an experience that is shared by all other BME people living in the UK. No one helped them to understand that ‘reality’ of racism, when they were growing up within their loving trans-racial family. Now, had they known, that what they are experiencing, is racism, which is shared by all other BME people living in the UK, their suffering would have been considerably lessened by the knowledge that it is shared by millions of other people BME in Britain and the Western world and so would not have to endure the mental agony of shouldering the cruel weight of racism on their own… More therapy.
When they finally get over themselves and venture into the Black world, ostensibly to find the help they recognize they would more likely get from that community, they often end up in some of the wrong places with wrong people and get a bitten a few times before they sass out the difference. This is because they never grew up in the Black community, so are unable to discern between the right and wrong crowd within it. Some get there eventually, but at what cost? Others just never make it and really fall by the wayside. Quite a few have taken their own lives because the unbearable pain they are enduring alone, is too excruciating to live with … .
The moral of this, is that whilst love is key, it would only ever be enough in bringing up children of different ethnicities, if society was completely free of racism. So it is not about, the fact that we are in the modern world, so things are different now and that the problems that arose in the 60s, no longer apply. That may be so in certain cases but not in this case. The one thing that has remained unchanged, is racism. Therefore LOVE in a society where racism exits, totally undermines the altruism with which well-meaning trans-racial placements may be attempted.
I therefore totally object to the proposal that Michael Gove is making and suggest that we leave the law just as it is. It is not broken, so why is the Govt. trying to fix it. The current law as it is, has the provision that enables the expert Social Workers to do their job competently without compromising their professionalism or integrity. So just leave it as it is.

Part 1.
I strongly object to the Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove’s proposal to remove the existing laws that protect children’s fundamental rights to the protection of their heritage and religion.
The existing 1989 Children’s Act and Adoption & Children’s Act 2002, are particularly important when placing children permanently into homes outside their original families, through adoption. This is crucial, as it enables Social workers to properly consider and incorporate all aspects of the child’s background into their consideration. With that they are able to make informed decisions about the most appropriate home to permanently place a looked-after chid. It is only when child is placed in a home that comprehensively meets the BME child’s needs that the he/she is properly prepared for the real world as adults in a society which has many racist practices.
The reason Govt is proposing this change, is that finding the best culturally appropriate match for a child, causes undue delays in placing children with permanent families for adoption. Osfted have found in their recent research, that this is not the case and that the court processes is actually the main cause of the delays.
The House of Lords has rejected these proposed changes to the Bill. The proposed changes also contravenes 16 (sixteen) Articles of United Nation Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). This will open the children up to systematic abuse, loss of identity and sense of belonging, comprehensive displacement and high risk of mental health problems in their adult years.
Therefore with no evidence to support the Govt’s claim, rejection from the House of Lords and such serious contravention of the UNCRC, why are they are still forging ahead with this BILL.
All governments have a duty to protect all children from abuse, protect their welfare and their heritage by paying due regard to children’s race, culture, language and religion as the basic needs that have to met for children, to expand their opportunities to reach their full potential.
Many trans-racially adopted children suffer from mental health problems in their adult years. Article 19 requires the right of children to be protected from physical and mental violence. Therefore if the Government is proposing to remove these protections, what is it going to put in it’s place to safeguard the children from the mental issues that many trans-racially placed adoptees face as adults. This often results from the myriad of problems they are forced to deal with as adults, when they leave home, which cost the country so much money in therapy, counseling and Psychiatric care.
The love that trans-racially adopted children grew up in, is not in doubt. Throughout the adopted child’s life, they would be having to validate their status as children of a family that everyone recognizes as looking different from them. So they cannot hide their adoptive status even as children. But that can be shielded by a loving family and it often does. It appears to work because there so much love within the family.
However, reality hits when the trans-racial adoptee finds that the loving home they grew up in was excellent for LOVE but not at all for preparing them for real life in a society that discriminates against BME people. This is because though the trans-racially adopted adult might perceive themselves as white because of the family they grew up in. However the world they leave home for, only sees them as Black. This always comes as a shock to the trans-racial adoptee. Dealing with that shock often demands therapy to start with.