Adoption reforms

[melons]

Cameron's 'Give a child a home' has plans to shake up the adoption process in the UK, increasing the numbers of children in care to be put forward for adoption.

 

I can't help but see the right leading us back to a victorian ethos to families, not only that, but the pressure on social services to move forward the children to adoption criteria forgetting the principle of keeping children with their parents will lead to rash decisions.

 

Councils face adoptions ultimatum | Society | The Guardian

 

Councils deemed to have let down children in their care face having their responsibilities handed over to another local authority or sub-contracted out to the private sector or charities under new plans to be announced on Monday by David Cameron.

 

The government will separately publish data on how local authorities perform on adoption as part of a move to allow people to challenge councils they believe are failing through inefficiency or poor performance.

 

The prime minister told the Times a green paper would set out new minimum standards for the proportion of children who should be adopted from care each year and impose time limits on the process.

 

"I see [the new policy] as a range of 'floor standards' including the educational attainment of children in care, placement stability, proportion of children adopted from care and the timeliness of adoption," he said.

 

Responding to figures showing a sharp decline in the number of babies who find permanent new families, Cameron will say today that it is unacceptable that some councils have been allowed to let down children for so long as he launches a national campaign on adoption and fostering.

 

"It is shocking that, of the 3,600 children under the age of one in care, only 60 were adopted last year – this is clearly not good enough," the prime minister will say at the launch of the Give a Child a Home campaign, which calls on more members of the public to come forward as adopters and foster parents. "We will publish data on how every local authority is performing to ensure they are working quickly enough to provide the safe and secure family environment every child deserves."

 

New data on the Department of Education's website will enable people to see how their local authority is doing on issues such as adoption rates and the educational attainment of children in care in comparison with others.

 

Where councils are deemed to be failing, adoption services could either be privatised and handed to independent agencies or taken over by higher performing local authorities.

 

The launch of Give a Child a Home, which is led by the British Association for Adoption and Fostering and the Fostering Network with government backing, precedes the release of a review of the family justice system this week.

 

Its author, David Norgrove, has already called for court cases, which can cause delays to adoption, to be restricted to six months, rather than the current average of 13 months.

 

Councils have blamed lengthy courtroom battles, a decline in potential adoptive parents and complex family problems for holdups. The average wait for adoption is now two years and seven months.

 

Cameron, who is meeting parents, carers and adoption services representatives, will launch the website Give a Child a Home, which aims to open debate on reform and provide information on adopting and fostering.

 

He will say: "We need more people to think about fostering and adoption so, this National Adoption Week, I would encourage anyone who is considering adoption to find out more about whether they could provide a home for a child."

 

This one is more along they way i see it....

Is the British adoption system failing vulnerable children and potential adopters? | The Periscope Post

 

David Cameron’s new approach to tackling the country’s low adoption rates includes publishing a “league table” of councils’ adoption data according to The Daily Telegraph. The councils will be ranked on their capacity to place a child up for adoption with a host family within 12 months and could lose their capabilities if they are found to be poorly performing. The plans follow proposals made by Martin Narey, the former Chief Executive of adoption charity Barnardo’s and head of the prison service in the pages of The Times (£) aimed at transforming “the lives of some of the UK’s most disadvantaged and neglected children”.

 

“We will publish data on how every local authority is performing to ensure they are working quickly enough to provide the safe and secure family environment every child deserves,” the Prime Minister told The Daily Telegraph. “A successful adoption can give children a great start in life, a great life — we need a real culture change in this country to become more pro-adoption.”

 

But is this the right approach to what has become a signature issue for Conservatives after Cameron’s explicit references to it in his address to the Tory Party conference earlier in the month? Here’s what the commentariat had to say:

 

‘Tough action’ is needed. The Times (£) is really pushing the case for more adoption, with a front page article on Cameron’s reforms, an exclusive interview with the Prime Minister on the subject and a leader in Monday’s issue alone. The leader opines that the government is taking the right step with publishing these league tables, but that “the publication of performance data” is not enough. “If and when local authorities are judged not to be placing children into adoptive families quickly enough, they should be stripped of their responsibilities”, they contend, also arguing that “court proceedings need to be expedited”.

 

Performance will be improved by these league tables. In an interview for The Daily Telegraph, Martin Narey said that he “would be astonished if adoptions don’t begin to rise steadily next year”, but said that “a lot of work” needed to be done on the assessment process. “League tables do a lot of things in themselves”, he added. “If there isn’t an effect, then the government will have to think again”.

 

Statistics are not helpful. Cameron’s assertion that only 60 out of 3,660 children in care last year were adopted ignores the “reality” of the situation — most children are in temporary care while their parents face “hideous but solvable things” such as drug addiction according to The Guardian’s Deborah Orr, who also took issue with the idea that race is to blame for low adoption figures.

 

League tables are ‘the wrong approach.’ Hilton Dawson of the British Association of Social Workers told BBC Breakfast “it’s an absurd way forward quite honestly — it overlooks the fact that adoption is only one tool in the box”. He praised Hackney Council’s “outstanding approach to supporting families” and said it was the fault of the “crude, simplistic approach” of league tables that it found itself at the bottom of the table. The British Association for Adoption and Fostering’s John Simmonds explained that many of the children in question were in “contested care” and that the processes must take time as many parents “want to be given the option” to not give their child up for adoption.

 

It's enough to make you want to barf. Well, me anyway.

[Paulie Dangerously]

I've got an adopted cousin. He recently set fire to his bedroom in a fit of rage.

 

 

True story

[VladimirIlyich]

How about the multi millionaires in the cabinet give out some of the spare rooms in their mansions and employ a couple of more nannies to look after those adopted kids?

[Tyler Durden]

Ahh, private sector. The answer to all our woes, apparently.

[Tyler Durden]

How about the multi millionaires in the cabinet give out some of the spare rooms in their mansions and employ a couple of more nannies to look after those adopted kids?

 

Know what your not far wrong there, seens they are asking it of the public whose finances are constantly being squeezed, what better gesture then for Cameron or a few of them to adopt to get this new initiative moving.

 

I'm sure it's a lot easier for a multi-millionaire to take on an extra child then joe public

[VladimirIlyich]

Theres also a massive house in the middle of london with dozens of spare bedrooms that could accomodate a few cockney waifs for relatively little cost.

The family who live there get £40 million of taxpayers money each year so it could be a way of getting a bit of value for that money.

[Strontium]

The family who live there get £40 million of taxpayers money each year

 

 

No, they don't. They get an allowance from the Crown Estate, on which the state makes a tidy profit.

[Elmyn Noos]

Ahh, private sector. The answer to all our woes, apparently.

 

and league tables too. Problem solved.

[Flying Pig]

Does anyone know how much 'funding' an a adoptee parent gets for looking after a little Oliver Twist? I have a spare room and 3 dogs that need cleaning everyday. Not one will my pooches have a shit free garden but a little street urchin will have something else to do apart from asking Harry Seacombe for more soup, and I'll get paid.

[VladimirIlyich]

No, they don't. They get an allowance from the Crown Estate, on which the state makes a tidy profit.

 

The £40 million is for the upkeep of castles,mansions and all the other shit 'they own' after stealing it from serfs over the past couple of hundred years.

[Liverpool lad]

I wouldn't adopt a dog let alone a kid, too much baggage.

[Cath]

I've got an adopted cousin. He recently set fire to his bedroom in a fit of rage.

 

 

True story

 

He should show more gratitude and wake up to just how lucky he is...

 

May I suggest a copy of this lovely little book for Xmas.

[Remmie]

Can't Madonna just buy them all?

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

No, they don't. They get an allowance from the Crown Estate, on which the state makes a tidy profit.

 

We'd still make a massive profit without them. Most of all, their outmoded and anti-democratic.

[Strontium]

I wasn't arguing for their continued existence, just clarifying the situation as it stands. It's a red herring anyway, the cost (or otherwise) of your head of state is no indicator of whether it's the right system.

[lifetime fan]

Councils deemed to have let down children in their care face having their responsibilities handed over to another local authority or sub-contracted out to the private sector...

 

And this proposal is being taken seriously?

 

I wish I believed in God, if I did I'd be praying like fuck!

[Section_31]

Councils deemed to have let down children in their care face having their responsibilities handed over to another local authority or sub-contracted out to the private sector

 

Heh heh. The private sector will sort it out!

[She Knows It]

It'll end up going back to the 1960s when we were selling children in care to colonial orphanages for slave labour and buggery. Why is the headline not "Cameron puts pressure on councils to steal your children and give them to childless, middle-class couples"?

[VladimirIlyich]

No, they don't. They get an allowance from the Crown Estate, on which the state makes a tidy profit.

 

An allowance? Theyve got a cheek considering the stock they own offshore in Uranium mines and Nuclear energy,the cheeky bastards.

 

And their accrued fortune has come from a mixture of taxpayers money and dodgy business dealings.

 

They also had a surplus of £35 million back in 1993 but instead of paying it back to public funds they decided they needed it 'just in case'.

 

Let them live off the vast fortune they already have and have to pay for everything they need like ordinary people do and if they want a treat then they should stump up for it themselves.

 

But I digress and lets get back to the next generation of Oliver Twists and Artful Dodgers.

[Anubis]

This private sector wouldn't be the Rio de Janeiro police force would it. Haven't they got form for killi... ...I mean 'assisting' with homeless children?

[Anubis]

The new Conservative : Incorporating The Liberal Democrats slogan will be :

 

 

 

 

 

A Working Child Is A Happy Child

 

[zigackly]

I blame the Liberal Democrats.

[VladimirIlyich]

[YOUTUBE]VX4Ppm-cPZI&feature=related[/YOUTUBE]

[Strontium]

Councils deemed to have let down children in their care face having their responsibilities handed over to another local authority or sub-contracted out to the private sector...

 

And this proposal is being taken seriously?

 

I wish I believed in God, if I did I'd be praying like fuck!

 

 

They already do this with poor performing local education authorities, Islington's was the first to get privatised in 2000*. Liverpool was perilously close to it until my dad and Colin Hilton turned it around between them.

 

But I guess it wasn't a bad idea when Labour brought it in...

 

(* Islington's education service was brought back under council control last year, the decade-long privatisation having been a roaring success)

[lifetime fan]

They already do this with poor performing local education authorities, Islington's was the first to get privatised in 2000*. Liverpool was perilously close to it until my dad and Colin Hilton turned it around between them.

 

But I guess it wasn't a bad idea when Labour brought it in...

 

(* Islington's education service was brought back under council control last year, the decade-long privatisation having been a roaring success)

 

This is the thing Stronts, I don't blindly defend anything just belacause Labour introduced it. I've in fact let my membership lapse and have no intention of renewing it at the mmoment.

 

It is a fucking stupid idea and it doesn't matter who thought it up.