Adoption and the December 2014 Munby judgement

1. Adoption muddle is costing
children their futures
Parents live in terror of a child being returned to its birth mother
Martin Narey
Published at12:01AM, December 17 2014
Since the Times began its adoption campaign in 2011, there has been a
remarkable recovery in adoption numbers, which until then had fallen every year
since 1968. The number of adoptions has risen from 3,000 to 5,000 in the past
two years alone. Thousands more children have had their life chances
transformed. They now live with parents courageous enough to take on the
challenge of adopting, even when a child might have suffered lasting harm
through drug or alcohol abuse or other neglect at the hands of his or her natural
parents.
But a tragedy has been unfolding. Those hard-won gains are being lost because of
overreaction to two court judgments. Many practitioners wrongly believed that
these judgments changed the law on adoption. The effect has been nothing less
than catastrophic: court decisions to pursue adoption for children have halved.
This means that thousands of children who last year would have been adopted
now face a new year remaining in care or living with relatives. That can
sometimes be a great thing when instead of being adopted, children return home
to their parents or begin a fresh life with a relative. But there are troubling stories
of courts favouring care with quite distant relatives or friends, which are destined
to collapse.
Yesterday, however, Sir James Munby, the most senior family judge in England,
issued a very clear judgment which should prevent misunderstanding of the law.
Local authorities must now respond with urgency and show courage in putting
children forward for adoption. In doing so, they could transform thousands of
lives.
For the time being parents who are in the adoption process are living in terror at
the prospect of their child being returned to live with the birth mother or other
relative. This could happen even after more than a year of living with the adoptive
family. As one adopter wrote to me last week: “Adopters are human beings who
have already experienced many losses on their journeys — it now appears we can
still lose our much-loved children after significant periods of time at the very final
moment.”
Adoption can change lives dramatically for disadvantaged children. It will be a
tragedy if the numbers do not recover.