The noble and learned Baroness will get that information in a second.
A study by Julie Selwyn, Pathways to Permanence for Black, Asian and Mixed Ethnicity Children found that “same race” placements often dominated the child permanence report over and above other needs and that some social workers were so pessimistic about finding ethnically matched adopters that there was little family finding. She said:
“We found that local authorities were much quicker at changing the decision away from adoption for minority ethnic children than they were for white children. There were a great number of minority ethnic children for whom no families were found and the decision was changed away from adoption”.
Whatever the child may want, would they rather not be adopted at all or adopted late in life so that they cannot form those early attachments that we all know are so important?
The answer to the noble and learned Baroness’s question is 2010.
Amending Section 1(5) of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 does not mean that ethnicity should not be considered. A child’s adoptive family needs to be able to meet the child’s needs throughout his childhood, having regard to all the factors provided for in Section 1(2) and 1(4), rather than simply matching his or her ethnic background or not matching at all. We have published draft regulations on this for your Lordships’ consideration.
We recognise that practice is very important. That is why we are developing a range of training materials and other tools to support the continuous professional development needs of children’s social workers, supervising social workers, team managers and independent reviewing officers working in fostering and adoption. This is part of the Government’s drive to ensure that social workers working in the care and adoption systems
have the knowledge and skills they need to get decisions right and weigh the impact of delay appropriately in the decisions that they make about placements for children in care.
Of course, we need more adopters from all ethnicities. That is why we have allocated over £150 million this year to help adoption agencies respond to the pressing needs of children awaiting adoption and a further £16 million over the next two years to expand the sector.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child does not require children to be placed with someone who shares exactly the same ethnicity but someone who respects it. Section 1 of the Act, as amended, will not prevent this. Many children in our society live with natural parents who do not entirely share their ethnicity. I urge the noble and learned Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
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