UK system better at thwarting adoptions than achieving them, says govt adviser

The UK system is better at thwarting adoption than achieving it – “even when it is patently in the best interests of the child”, a government adviser has claimed.

Writing in The Times, Martin Narey said it was an “uncomfortable conclusion” to reach but the system had to be changed.

Narey’s comment piece comes two months after he published a report, also commissioned by the paper, on the state of the adoption system.

He said his research had hardened his opinion that adoption needed to be revived.

A former chief executive of Barnardo’s and director general of the Prison Service, Narey said he had seen “more and more evidence of young lives being damaged, often permanently, by a system that is unnecessarily slow and which denies adoption to so many”.

The ministerial adviser said he had been taken aback by the abuse he received, “from those who simply hate adoption”, as a result of writing his original report.

However, Narey said he had received “warm encouragement” from some social workers “who confirmed the reality of my assertion that we too often fail to act speedily in dealing with neglect”. He also received strong backing from adoptive parents.

Narey said he was no longer in any doubt that prospective adopters were being turned away because of their ethnicity.

He also claimed that this was still happening, despite guidance from Education Secretary Michael Gove setting out that black children should not have to wait unduly for adoption while a search is made for an ethnic match.

“Many practitioners remain resistant to what they call transracial placements,” Narey insisted.

He cited one case where one woman was rejected by 17 local authorities because she, a white woman, wanted to adopt a black child to be a sibling to her mixed-race son.

The ministerial adviser added: “Do I regret anything I wrote [in the original report]? Yes. Having spent the past few weeks talking to more social workers, I understand better the extent to which their caution in pursuing adoption — of which I remain critical — is influenced so much by their perceptions of what a court will demand in terms of evidence.”