A fight with local authority bureacracy and a 'catalogue of horrors' caused a couple to almost give up adopting their son
When Ann and her husband adopted their older son, it was "absolutely textbook good". Four years later, trying to adopt his half-brother, the couple, then professionals in their 30s, faced "a complete catalogue of horrors" so bad they almost pulled out of the process.
As the government announced plans to overhaul a sluggish and over-bureaucratic adoption process, the couple's traumatic experience well illustrates how ideology, postcode, lack of resources, incompetence and poor management by some local authorities has contributed to children languishing indefinitely in care while families remain desperate to have them.
"Our first experience was great, swift and humane," said Ann (not her real name), who works in the media. "The assessment process was fair and objective. We were told about the child when he was two months old. He'd been abandoned by his birth mother; he was drug-addicted. The family did object but were overridden. We brought him home when he was five months. There was just no way [his birth family] could have looked after him."
The local authority, in the part of London they then lived in, had a policy of placing children as quickly as possible. "They said they had been criticised often in social work circles for placing too many kids for adoption too soon," said Ann. "But they made no apologies for it. They didn't want scenarios where children go back to their families, disaster happens, they're back in care, then back with their families. And it's ding dong ding dong and their lives are ruined. They wanted to break that cycle."
The couple's son is now eight, with "tonnes of friends" doing "exceptionally well at school" and is a demonstrably "happy and loving" secure little boy.
How different the process would be with his half-brother. It was not as if Ann and her husband had set out to adopt his sibling. By then they had moved out of London and had been reassessed as suitable for a second child – after a year's delay, and had by then moved out of London. There had been a year's delay in re-assessing them. "They [the council] had no personnel, a lack of resources, so that leaves children languishing in care," said Ann.
While they waited they learned about their son's half-brother, who was then two months old. "Same situation, drug-addicted at birth, family homeless, nothing had changed, in fact things had got worse."
The couple thought him perfect for their family unit after being told he was being considered for adoption. As they had moved, a different local authority was in charge of the process.
Initially the boy was in foster care while it was hoped he might be able to stay with his mother. In the meantime he was in foster care. When the couple were asked if they would consider taking him, they readily agreed.
But he would remain in foster care until he was 18 months old. "The foster carer was lovely, but she had seven kids in the house, from a baby up to a teenager. It was overcrowded, and they pressed her to take extra children," said Ann.
Her son's infant brother "got fed and cuddled a bit" but had little one-to-one, despite his foster mother's best endeavours. "As our social worker said, it's just warehousing for kids."
There was a six-month delay while the birth mother's suitability was assessed.
When the couple pressed for information, they eventually discovered an agency social worker responsible for his and several other cases had done "absolutely nothing" and his "was one of dozens of cases just shoved in a drawer". The social worker was subsequently sacked.
Then, said Ann, the "issue of race reared its head". The boy was of mixed African-Caribbean and white race, while the couple are European white.
"We were told they wanted a black or mixed-race family for him. We said, 'Well fine, go ahead and find one, but why didn't you say that to us when he was two months old?' We were happy with that, we just wanted to know he was safe.
"But they didn't have any [of those families] on their books, and they couldn't find one. Even if they had, it would have taken a year to assess them, he would have sat in care for another year, and there were many other black and mixed-race children waiting for adoption, so he may not have got lucky.
"They didn't like us because we were articulate white people who, in their view, were trying to take a mixed-race child. It was awful. All along we kept saying, 'we don't think we've got a right to have him, but we don't want him in care, and we are worried about him because he has a blood relative in our home.'"
Another obstacle then appeared in the form of the children's guardian, appointed by the court to protect the boy's interests.
On three occasions she applied for adjournments to reassess the birth mother's suitability. As time ticked by, the couple, by now under intolerable strain, decided if another adjournment was granted they would pull out of the process.
In a heartfelt letter to the judge, they explained it was "destroying our family emotionally".
Their other son, whom they had been advised to tell about the prospect of his baby brother living with them, was becoming increasingly distressed.
"It was dominating our lives, and we felt we would have to pull out if there were any further delays, even though we would feel really really sorry about it, because we just could not carry on like this.
"It had been almost 18 months and the strain was intolerable. And our other son had rights too."
Shortly afterwards the adoption was approved.
"We had to spend over a year fighting for our son, and throughout it all we were treated as though the state was doing us a favour.
"It is essential to speed the process up, but the lack of resources and accountability and whole structure needs looking at.
"And anything that moves race off the top of the agenda is a good thing. I can fully see why it would be ideal to place black and mixed-race children in black and mixed-race households. But the second best has got to be a loving family of any kind. Anything is better than warehousing a child."