The continuing myth that the UK is the ‘only’ country that permits ‘forced adoption’.
It is ironic to note that the source of the title quote, so often used by the late great Sir Terry Pratchett has itself often been falsely attitributed – to both Mark Twain and Sir Winston Churchill. It seems likely that its source is Jonathan Swift – see further Freakonomics – Quotes Uncovered: How Lies Travel.
This underscores the central point – lies have traction because they are usually/often put in dramatic and exciting terms, can be simply stated, are unsupported (because they can’t be) and usually are attractive to those already primed to believe.
Those of us attempting to wave a flag for truth and accuracy therefore come limping after, having wasted valuable time collecting material to debunk what is untrue. I won’t say ‘lie’ because to me that implies some deliberate malice; I don’t think that is the motivation behind most people who promulgate untruths about the family system. I think its worse than that – I think they actually do believe what they say.
So I understand how this happens, but its still deeply depressing, particularly when the untruth continues to be relied upon and spread by our national press.
I refer in this post to the recent article in the Independent which offers us the real story behind ‘forced adoptions’ and is a comment to yet another attempt by the Daily Mail to whip up outrage on an assumption that one factor in a case (the age of the grandparents) is the ONLY factor and proof that the family law system is broken irreparably, etc, etc.
EDIT JULY 24th – the judgment is now available in the ‘too old grandparents’ case, and as ever, the reality is somewhat different to how the Daily Mail would like to see it. We can only hope that at least some of those who were shocked and upset by what the Mail said will now take the time to read about the actual issues.
EVEN MORE DEPRESSING EDIT JULY 24th
It turns out the author of the Independent article Caroline Selkirk is actually the Chief Executive of the British Association of Adoption and Fostering. I am astonished. Her identity is not made clear in the article. This is a clumsy propaganda. I have commented further here.
I had, probably naively rather higher hopes of the Independent. But while I am happy to see some attempts to counter the simplistic polemics of the Mail I am not sure that this is the way to do it:
Make no mistake about it: most children who are embroiled in the care system are there because of serious abuse or neglect. One of the reasons that contested adoption is legal here and illegal elsewhere is because UK law puts the welfare and rights of the child first, above those of parents and any associated relatives. It’s not always in the child’s best interests to stay with their birth family.
Well, yes. That is not entirely untrue. But of course it is itself a polemic without nuance or consideration of all the issues, raised by many in both academic and social work fields about the reasons WHY families may end up in such dire straits and what we as a society could and should be doing about it. Adoption is not a cure all for the problems generated by an increasingly unequal society and a lack of help and support for vulnerable people. It’s also odd to suggest that other jurisdictions don’t care about the rights/welfare of the child as much as we do.
But my real beef with the article is this:
The UK is the only country in Europe, and one of a tiny minority of countries in the world, that participates in so-called ‘forced adoption’.
This is simply untrue. I can see how this untruth gets perpetuated as it is everywhere – even Judges get it wrong, see Mostyn J in Re D (a Child) [2014] who seemed to think that only 3 out of 28 European Countries permitted ‘forced adoption’.
I turn to the people who should know – the Council of Europe, whose Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development produced a interim report in January and a final report in March 2015: Social services in Europe: legislation and practice of the removal of children from their families in Council of Europe member States.
At para 35 the report states:
Adoptions without the consent of the parents are not possible in France, Greece, Luxembourg and Spain. They are rare (practiced only exceptionally) in: Canada, Cyprus, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Romania, Serbia and Switzerland. In some countries which proscribe adoptions without the consent of the parents (for example, in Russia), the child can be given up for adoption if his/her parents are unknown, legally incapable or whose whereabouts have been recognised as unknown by a court. They are possible in Andorra, Croatia, Estonia, Georgia, Germany (in 2010, 250 children were placed for adoption without the parents’ consent), Hungary, Italy, Montenegro, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden, Turkey, and the United Kingdom (in 2013, 3.020 children were placed for adoption without the parents’ consent).
15 countries permit ‘adoptions without the consent of the parents’. They are ‘rare’ but do happen in another 7. Even some countries which forbid ‘forced adoption’ will allow it in certain circumstances, for e.g. Russia.
INTERESTING EDIT JULY 26
Profoundly thankful to Twitter which alerted me to this study by Dr Claire Fenton-Glynn in June 2015. She confirms that in fact, EVERY European country permits adoption without parental consent.
Curiously, some of these countries listed are not ‘European’ as I understand it. However, even for the most arithmetically challenged, on the basis of this information there is no justification whatsoever for any conclusion that the UK is the ‘only’ country in Europe that permits ‘forced adoption’.
The report is well worth a read as it highlights some very real concerns about what is going on in the UK. I accept that while we are certainly not the ‘only’ country to allow ‘forced adoption’ we do seem to be pretty unique in our promotion of adoption above other options. The report comments at para 72:
England and Wales are really unique in Europe in placing so many children for adoption, in particular in the young age group which is “popular” on the adoption market. Statistics show that under 20% of children forcibly taken from parents who leave care aged under 5, return to their parents. The former Prime Minister Tony Blair went so far as to establish “adoption targets” for local authorities from 2001 to 2008.25
But even this relatively sober and respectable document shows the danger of simplistic reporting with that last reference to ‘adoption targets’ – a phrase which throws up an enormous amount of debate and which requires very careful unpicking. If you are at all interested in that debate the Child Protection Resource has set out many of the issues in its post on Forced Adoption in the Myth Busting section.
So why am I bothered?
There seems to be a view in some quarters that this transparency lark is a bit futile – 0r even deluded. The argument is made that attempting to shine a light on inaccurate reporting/misunderstanding of cases will have little impact because of those who will simply refuse to accept any argument that goes against their firmly held narrative about the ‘secret and evil’ family courts.
But this is a self defeating and self fulfilling prophecy. I fear that this untruth about the ‘unique’ status of the UK has caused enormous damage. It needs to be countered. It is repeated over and over again, each source able to refer back to the previous source in support. It perpetuates the notion that there is something very rotten in the current system, if we are so alone out of all other European countries. But in so doing it does not shine a light upon the very real issues that need discussion but instead is another shiny distraction for the Daily Mail to wave at its followers. It means we don’t talk about the real problems, we are too busy being shocked at/attempting to debunk something that just isn’t true.
Of course I understand that newspapers are not in the business of providing worthy 3,000 word analyses of the Issues of the day. No one has got time for that. The media fulfils a vital role in disseminating information in an accessible way. So please, please, please therefore stop repeating simple untruths. If you don’t have time for nuance and debate, you must make time to get your fundamental facts right.
MUCH LESS DEPRESSING EDIT JULY 26th
Credit where credit is due to Joe Shute of the Telegraph who DID read the judgment about the ‘too old grandparents’ and provided a clear and honest appraisal of its content and consequences. The Transparency Project collectively is delighted – particularly given some of the misinformation that the Telegraph has previously published.
Of course, it cannot undo entirely the damage done by the earlier, sensationalised and inaccurate reporting by both the Mail and the Telegraph- but its a start. So well done The Telegraph – and that is not something I thought I would ever say. Let’s hope this is the start of a trend.
Perhaps that Independent article was poorly edited. There are legal systems in the UK that ensure that a parent who may have their children permanently removed has full legal representation and a number of stages in the court process at which the local authority case can be challenged. I’m not claiming this is perfect – no system is – there all sorts of problems and I completely agree that supporting birth families should come first. However a legal system exists. ‘Forced adoption’ is a description for the horrors of Franco’s Spain or young women in the 1960s, where parents had no rights. Those historical experiences are devalued by people who are quick to label all contested adoption as ‘forced’. And why on earth is anyone still using the phrase ‘put up for’ adoption in the 21st century?
I’m a social worker who is with Sir Mark Hedley on the vagaries of family life. I think we have experienced a perfect storm of political ideology + the PLO + Adoption Reforms + managerialism + cuts + austerity = it was all beginning to look a bit like eugenics rather than social justice. Cuts mean LAs mainly have call center’s to triage risk and early intervention services that we once could signpost to no longer exist.
The legislature and the judiciary are having a row about adoption at the moment which isn’t terribly helpful to anyone. It is amusing when Narey busts myths that aren’t myths at all and credits Munby in that document, then Munby uses a subsequent judgement to say it was not something he endorsed. Amusing but not really progress for children and their families. The debate about non consensual adoption needs to be held promptly by those who understand it. By whom I mean not Martin Narey and not those on the Child Protection Task Force. I think the comment about what was happening pre Re B-S is probably not that children were adopted who shouldn’t have been but they were adopted despite the analysis of permanency options not being robustly set out for the court. Munby was after all asking for better quality SW reports. There was never a time post Children Act 1989 that we moved away from the ethos that a child is better placed within their family of origin than in care. For a myriad of reasons, the state doesn’t make a good parent. This means family and friends/kinship/connected persons etc. were always considered before the alternatives and usually in the form of parallel planning.
There is much to look at, I am interested in the rise of SGOs, and the fact that there isn’t a raft of applications in court to which a judge is responding that the LA should review their plans because they don’t include adoption.
There are myths I would find helpful to explode before we debate ‘forced adoption’ and they are the idea of bonuses and targets which are obstacles to a productive discussion. The government clearly view adoption as the best outcome for children in care who require permanency outside their family of origin, they are politically centrist/right wing and alongside this tend to view public sector workers as clunky and slow. The targets and investment were all aimed at SW not working effectively. They were not about having enough children available for adoption or SW being rewarded for that task. It is confusing that some LAs offer golden handshakes where they are struggling to recruit to key posts but this is the nearest thing to a bonus I have ever seen in SW. Well performing LAs tend to attract government money, regardless of the area of performance being measured, even highways. This is wrong anyway, poorly performing LAs need the funds more.
I agree we need to be looking at the ‘bonuses and targets’ myths – but when I have tried, LA have not exactly been helpful.
See http://www.childprotectionresource.org.uk/are-bonuses-paid-to-social-workers/
Completely agree with you about the ‘perfect storm’. What I hadn’t anticipated is that the attempted ‘response’ to the conspiracy theorists would be quite so ham fisted.
I did read that post at the time and agree you met obstacles. There is confusion, some of it is peddled by the DfE who are vocal about how much money they are giving LAs to perform better around adoption, and it succeeds in obfuscating. How high up in an LA would you like to go to get clarity, I might be able to find you someone?
ooo yes please! they don’t help themselves really. Not a hard question is it? I would be delighted to find anyone who would be prepared to engage with me.
Ok, there are a couple of service managers I can contact and an AD. Might be a slight delay as not in LA at the moment but might not make any difference.
thanks, would be much appreciated.
While we’re at it, can somebody please debunk that 2008 tabloid article about social workers getting paid for adoptions? In every social media thread about this story every other poster links to it, spreading the lie.
I have tried
http://www.childprotectionresource.org.uk/forced-adoption/
Oh & I quote that article about children who kill other children endlessly. It throws the Bulger case into sharp relief.
That comment should have been on the other blog …
Which countries practice “forced adoption” is difficult to establish as often the we are comparing legal oranges and apples. I can’t imagine there is anywhere which does not accept that some children cannot be cared for within their birth families, when to do so is to perpetuate the damage which has already been caused.
The present state of the law is grossly unfair on everyone. In my view recent developments are the worst of all worlds, the arbitrary 26 weeks imposed under the PLO is unfair on parents who are late to recognise their deficiencies, whilst the fear of the consequences has pushed courts in unsatisfactory SGO arrangements which will collapse in a few years time causing more heartbreak all round.
As to Mr Narey’s Mythbusting, it should simply be withdrawn with an apology. It’s poor law, poor social work and poor advice by someone who is an amateur in both fields. I enjoy premiership football and jazz but would never dream I could give useful advice to professionals in either field.
As to opening the Court to the press, all too predictably reporting has been partial and at times malicious. We need Leveson first, otherwise we’ll all see through a Daily Mail glass darkly.
I have just found this in Dr Claire Fenton Glynn’s study for the European Parliament in June 2015
Contrary to popular opinion, every country in Europe has a mechanism for permitting adoption without parental consent, in certain circumstances. However, it must be acknowledged that few – if any – States exercise this power to the extent to which the English courts do.
see http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2015/519236/IPOL_STU(2015)519236_EN.pdf
Now I am confused. Reading para 4.1.1.1 of Dr Claire Fenton Glynn’s study for the European Parliament in June 2015 where she asserts:
Parental consent is not necessary on the basis of abandonment, lack of contact with the child, lack of interest in the upbringing, disinterest
One mechanism for permitting adoption without parental consent is where a child who has been deemed abandoned by their parents.
The precise grounds for not requiring consent in this area vary significantly, including:
abandonment (Cyprus, Italy);121
not contacting the child (Hungary, Malta);122
not showing interest (Portugal); 123
being manifestly disinterested (France);124
not participating in his or her upbringing (Czech Republic);125
parents’ whereabouts or residence is unknown (Slovenia, Austria, Hungary,
Estonia).126
Different time limits are also placed on authorities before they can dispense with consent for these reasons, ranging from:
three months (Portugal);127
six months (Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary);128
twelve months (France, Hungary, Luxembourg, Slovenia);129
eighteen months(Malta);130
“an extended period of time” (Estonia).131
So the European Council are WRONG about France not permitting adoption without parental consent? It’s pretty clearly on this list.
See http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2015/519236/IPOL_STU(2015)519236_EN.pdf
I wonder what being manifestly disinterested means too?
I can only assume ‘manifestly disinterested’ is a poor translation. The distinction between ‘uninterested’ and ‘disinterested’ is important but often ignored.
Perhaps we need a French speaker. ‘Disinterested’ is objective and ‘uninterested’ is subjective?
Disinterested and uninterested can be synonyms in English – ie. not engaged – although disinterested has a second meaning (which was admittedly its original meaning before it started to merge with uninterested in some respects).
The original text reads: “L’enfant recueilli par un particulier, un établissement ou un service de l’aide sociale à l’enfance, dont les parents se sont manifestement désintéressés pendant l’année qui précède l’introduction de la demande en déclaration d’abandon”.
It could also be translated as “a child in whom the parents are obviously uninterested”.
Thank you for clarifying Claire – I grew up with a father who would rage against the lack of distinction between ‘un’ and ‘dis’ interested so I thought they were very different indeed! (he also had strong views on the misuse of ‘coruscating’ and ‘refute’)
This is very interesting – what kind of factual circumstances lead to a decision that the parents are ‘obviously uninterested’ do you know? Is it straightforward abandonment (which must be pretty rare I would have thought) or parents who aren’t promoting a child’s education or health needs?
It would be a fascinating presentation at #CPConf2016 to compare and contrast how different European States judge defective parenting.
This is a section on abandonment. So it is established if the parents haven’t maintained a relationship such as would be necessary to maintain emotional ties. It is also stated that the revocation of consent for adoption, a request for continued information about the child, or an intention of reunification that is not followed through on are not sufficient to overturn a declaration of disinterest (or uninterest!).
In French it reads:
” Sont considérés comme s’étant manifestement désintéressés de leur enfant les parents qui n’ont pas entretenu avec lui les relations nécessaires au maintien de liens affectifs.
La simple rétractation du consentement à l’adoption, la demande de nouvelles ou l’intention exprimée mais non suivie d’effet de reprendre l’enfant n’est pas une marque d’intérêt suffisante pour motiver de plein droit le rejet d’une demande en déclaration d’abandon.”
There is another different section concerning defective parenting, which translates as “risk of compromising the child’s health or morals”.
Parental consent can also be dispensed with if the refusal is “abusive”.
As you rightly point out though, the question is what constitutes a comprise of a child’s health or morals, and what is “abusive” refusal. That is the area in which I haven’t researched yet, but am planning on doing so when I next have research time.