I am grateful to the noble Baroness for enabling me to clarify this point. I am not saying that it is the sole cause at all. It is one of a number of factors and we believe that our approach will be one element in helping to address this imbalance, which is leaving ethnic minority children short-changed.
Social workers will of course continue to pay considerable regard to ethnicity as they and the courts will be required to have regard to,
“the child’s age, sex, background and any of the child’s characteristics which the court or agency considers relevant”,
as part of the welfare checklist. These will obviously include ethnicity. We do not accept that our approach means that this will no longer be considered at all, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister, Lady Hamwee and Lady Benjamin, suggest. Indeed, in her speech the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, referred specifically to background. “Background” and “characteristics” must include ethnicity. That is a matter of plain English.
There is unequivocal evidence about the negative impact on their development of delay in placing children for adoption. Children need to form attachments with one or two main carers to develop emotionally and physically. There is also clear evidence about delay caused by practitioners seeking a “perfect” ethnic match. Professor Elaine Farmer, in An Investigation of Family Finding and Matching in Adoption, found that of the BME children in the sample who experienced delay, attempts to find a family of similar ethnicity was a factor in delay for 70% of them. A study by Julie Selwyn—