UK -- Record numbers of young children are being taken from theirparents and adopted - sometimes unjustly - to meet government targets

Record numbers of young children are being taken from their parents and
adopted - sometimes unjustly - to meet government targets, it is claimed
by Face the Facts

http://www.careandhealth.com/Pages/S...e-24f5457cef7a

Each year some 1,300 babies under a month old are placed in care before
adoption, compared with 500 when the Government came to power, BBC Radio
4’s Face the Facts claims today.

The programme is told that there are now more than 100 cases of possible
miscarriages of justice in which children have been forcibly or unjustly
adopted.

It says that the number of parents in England who have lost their
children, despite insufficient evidence that they were causing them
harm, has reached record levels.

One reason, according to social workers, is that they are under pressure
to meet government adoption targets – in line with ministers’ policy for
more children in care to be adopted.

At the same time, it is claimed, parents are not always given a proper
chance to challenge adoptions because of the short time limit for
appeals and the secrecy of the family courts.

Lawyers say that hearings in private fuel parents’ sense of injustice
and can in some cases breed bad practice, preventing them from properly
defending themselves.

Sarah Harman, a family law solicitor, said:

“Secrecy breeds bad practice, it breeds suspicion. It feeds parents’
sense of injustice when they have their children removed that they’re
not able to talk about it. They’re not able to air their grievances.

Children have been removed from their families unjustly. There’s no two
ways about that.�

A social work manager with 25 years’ experience in child protection
added that parents had little chance of getting a hearing and
overturning a decision made by the authorities.

The manager told the BBC:

“People will find that their children have been removed and freed for
adoption without them having had a proper chance to defend themselves
and their families and their children.�

MPs have also spoken out against the unfair adoption system and are
campaigning for a public inquiry.

John Hemming, the Liberal Democrat member for Birmingham Yardley, who is
also chairman of the Justice for Families group, said:

“We are seeing perhaps three to four new cases being referred to us
every day.�

The programme hears from one mother who claims she was actually giving
birth when the authorities arrived to remove her baby, and from a father
who had his two sons unjustly adopted.

He later received a written apology from the local authority but,
because his children had already been adopted, he will never get them back.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families denied that there was
a target for taking children from their birth parents to meet overall
adoption targets.

A spokesman said that government policy had always been that children
should live with their parents wherever possible and, if necessary,
families should be given extra support to stay together.

He said that there had been a national target to increase the number of
“looked-after children� being adopted and to place children for adoption
more quickly.

But he added that this was only if they had already been assessed as
suitable for adoption and after it had been decided that adoption was in
the child’s best interests.

Local authorities might set themselves targets to place children for
adoption more quickly after that course had been decided on, he said.

He added: “It is for a court to decide whether or not to make a
placement or an adoption order on the basis of the welfare of the child.�