Adoption Process To Be Sped Up

The prime minister is set to unveil proposals to speed up the adoption and tackle the "absurd barriers to mixed-race adoption".

"Young lives are being wasted while the process takes its toll", David Cameron said.

The announcements come ahead of the government’s launch of the “Adoption Action Plan” next week.

The government says that white British children are three times more likely to be adopted than children of an ethnic background. In a speech Cameron is expected to say, "Every child deserves the love of a stable family - and that's why I've made sorting out and speeding up adoption in this country a priority.

"Of course adoption isn't right in every case - and many looked-after children in care do eventually return to their biological parents.

"But it is shocking that black children take twice as long as white children to be adopted. We will tackle the absurd barriers to mixed-race adoption which trap many non-white children in care."

Three changes to speed up the system will be announced:

* Local authorities will be required to reduce delays and not delay adoptions "for the perfect match"

* Legal changes to make it easier for children to be fostered by people approved for adoption so that a child might be fostered by someone who goes on to adopt them

* If an adoptive match is not found locally in three months, local authorities will have to put the child on the national adoption register

Martin Narey, the government’s adviser on adoption, said that because of the search for an ethnic match black children wait "scandalous periods of time" before being adopted.

David Holmes, from the British Association for Adoption and Fostering, said that while the process did need to be made quicker, adoption had to be right for the children.

"These are decisions that will reverberate for the rest of the child's life. And we need to make sure that when we find families for children, they're families that are going to last. But no single issue - ethnicity, anything else - should stop a match which would otherwise meet the child's assessed needs."

(H/GK)