1. This is an open letter to some of the people who
use Twitter to challenge my views about adoption.
Some of those people have written or e mailed me
and have received replies (albeit often necessarily
brief replies). Others have preferred to stay
anonymous and that’s fine. Some who tweet and
blog have been abusive. I don’t much like that but I
understand it because I believe it reflects an anger
and sometimes a helplessness about their
individual cases. I would, I am sure, feel the same
way were our positions reversed.
I have never denied the reality that sometimes
children are taken into care unnecessarily. It would
be silly to believe otherwise when we have a
workforce which is fallible. But I believe, and all I
have read and seen supports this, that we have a
far greater number of cases where we leave
children at home when they should be removed.
My interest is in children who are neglected (I know
that children are taken into care for other reasons). I
believe that, as a society, we tolerate neglect for too
long. We do not, as many people believe, have
record numbers of children in care. At the end of
the eighties the care population was half as big
again as it is now. And that was at a time when
there were at least three times as many adoptions.
So I believe the case for care, for intervening earlier
to stop neglect and then securing a new
permanence for a neglected child is overwhelming

2. and of course I shall continue to argue for that.
Incidentally, I do not – as many tweeters suggest -
profit in any way from adoptions. And Barnardo’s,
which I ran for six years never, in all that time,
made any profit or surplus from the very small
number of adoptions they dealt with. Nor do I have
any power to intervene in cases. So I cannot, even
if I wished, help to achieve the return of anyone’s
child.
My role is simply to offer a view to Ministers about
adoption. That view is based on my experience at
Barnardo’s and, since my resignation, many, many
days spent visiting local authorities, voluntary
adoption agencies and speaking to adopters and
the adopted as well as children in care and charities
which support families struggling to keep their
children. Some people call me the Adoption Czar,
evoking an image of a large salary and a retinue of
staff. Those things, like the Adoption Czar title, are
inventions of the press. I have no staff and last year
my total earnings from the Department for
Education were about £40,000.
So what advice can I offer those who feel their
children have been wrongly removed? It is this.
Fight your case of course. But do not seek to do so
by attacking adoption in general. Whatever the
circumstances of your case it is demonstrably true
that thousands and thousands of adoptions are
successful. The number which breakdown are
much lower than is commonly believed (new

3. research from the University of Bristol is likely to
confirm this) and there are thousands of adult
adoptees willing to speak positively about their
experience. I am very close personally to four such
adoptees and have met hundreds of others.
Nevertheless, I believe (and say frequently) that
adoption is only appropriate for a small minority of
the children taken into care in England, largely
those neglected by parents who are unlikely ever to
be able to be successful parents. It is indisputably
right that for those children adoption brings stability
and compensates for that neglect.
So, continue to pursue that which you believe in.
But don't undermine the specifics of your argument
by ignoring the reality of neglect and the need for us
as a society, when parents cannot be supported to
offer decent homes (often because of drink and
drug addictions) and if good quality kinship carers
cannot be found, to find an alternative stability
through adoption.Those who might advise that the
way to seek resolution of your own cases is by
seeking to undermine adoption are – at best -
misguided. Instead, and I offer this advice sincerely,
concentrate on demonstrating that the authorities
have made grave mistakes in your case
Kind Regards
Martin Narey