controversial for several decades, with debates raging on the merits of
‘transracial adoption’ on the one hand and ‘ethnic matching’ on the
other. The coalition government attempted to eliminate perceived
barriers to transracial adoption by removing the legal requirement for
adoption agencies to consider ‘ethnicity’ decisions. The justification
was that over-emphasis on ethnicity (rooted in ‘political
correctness’) was leading to delay and denial of adoption for children,
who consequently languished in the care system. However, Derek Kirton argues
the evidence for this is questionable and the removal of ethnicity from
legislation is better understood as a political move, framed by a
combination of populism and neoliberalism.
As a policy issue, adoption of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME)
children has passed through three phases. The first, covering the 1960s
and 1970s saw the rise of transracial adoption as part of initiatives
to challenge the idea that the children were ‘unadoptable’ because of
prejudiced attitudes towards them. A second phase beginning in the 1970s
and gathering momentum in the 1980s promoted the principle of racial or
ethnic matching. This was premised on the idea that families from
similar ethnic backgrounds would be best placed to meet children’s
identity needs in terms of race, ethnicity and culture and to help them
survive in a racist society. It was also argued that the apparent
‘shortage’ of BAME adoptive families reflected the ethnocentric and
sometimes discriminatory practices of adoption agencies. Preference for
ethnic matching became prevalent and was officially endorsed in
government guidance in the early 1990s. From there, however, a long
third phase began in which government issued ever sterner warnings
against over-emphasising ethnicity if this led to delay in the adoption.
The Children and Families Act 2014 can be seen as an attempt to bring
closure to this phase.
The government’s case rested on two key planks: first that BAME
children suffered from lower and slower rates of adoption and second,
that the legal requirement to consider ethnicity was an important causal
factor for this. On rates, it should be noted that this does not apply
to children classified as of Mixed backgrounds, whose headline adoption
rates at least match those of White children. However, in a fairly
consistent pattern over time, those categorised as Black or Asian are
statistically much less likely to
be adopted, with rates of 2 and 3 per cent respectively compared with 8
per cent for white British children in care in 2014-15. When figures
have been released on ethnicity and delay, this has been found to apply
only to Black children, whose adoptions took over 40 per cent longer. On the basis of these figures, it is regularly claimed by the media and government ministers that BAME children languish in care as a result.
Yet research has shown
that the rates were partly explicable by the (older) age profile of
Black children entering care. More importantly, a focus on adoptions
ignores other routes out of care, such as return to birth or extended
family or long-term foster care. Remarkably,it was also found that
children from those ethnic groups least likely to be adopted spent the shortest average time in
care. This remains an under-researched area, but certainly casts
significant doubt on simplistic assumptions of ‘languishing’. What is
interesting here is that The Children Act 1989 clearly prioritises
(where in the child’s best interests) placement within the family over
adoption, yet the lower rates of adoption for some BAME groups are held
to be self-evidently discriminatory. The second plank reflected a view
that these (s)lower rates of adoption reflected social workers, under
the spell of political correctness, pursuing perfect ethnic matches.
Evidence for this is very weak, while it is also unclear how far if at all, any such pursuit was rooted in the wording of legislation.
In a recent article,
I analysed the Parliamentary debates and passage of the Children and
Families Act as they related to ethnicity and adoption. The most
striking feature was the coalition government’s increasingly
contradictory stance on the (un)importance of ethnicity. The process
began with pre-legislative scrutiny in the House of Lords, where the
committee chaired by Baroness Butler Sloss concluded that
there was no need for legal change and made clear its opposition to
deletion of the ‘ethnicity clause’. In a compromise move, however, it
conceded that existing legislation could be seen as giving ethnicity
undue prominence and proposed moving the content of the clause into the
‘welfare checklist’ that is used to support decision making for
children.
For its part, the government held doggedly to the position that the
clause must be removed entirely from the statute book in order to
achieve the necessary degree of change. However, faced with strong and
articulate opposition, it began to assert in ever more strident tones
how much ethnicity mattered, how it must be taken fully taken into
account on every front and in all decisions relating to adoption for
BAME children. Moreover, it was in any event ‘automatically’ included as
one of the ‘other characteristics’ in the welfare checklist.
Procedurally, the growing contradiction was managed by a sharp
separation between statute (from which any reference to ethnicity must
be erased) and guidance (where its implications could seemingly be
explored copiously). Part of the explanation for this two-faced approach
almost certainly rests with a desire to deliver up a populist symbolic
victory over political correctness to the media.
Equally apparent is the influence of neoliberalism, including on
matters of race and ethnicity. In child welfare, in a climate where
austerity has impacted particularly on the poorest (and often disproportionately on
minority ethnic groups), there has been a growing emphasis on ‘child
rescue’, a willingness to remove children from their families and do so
permanently through adoption. As Goldberg has argued,
racial neoliberalism speaks to a post-race society while historic and
contemporary racism are ‘buried alive’ and victimhood is reversed. And
so in mainstream media coverage the
pervasive disinterest in BAME children and families is typically
suspended when there is white victimhood i.e. when prospective adopters
are rejected.
Racial neoliberalism’s policy influence is discernible in the
unwillingness to use the levers of government to address the needs of
BAME children other than through the privatised solution of adoption or
to recruit more BAME families. Rhetorically, government representatives positioned themselves as champions of racial equality (with flourishes on Mandela and Marin Luther King) and engaged in the ‘non-performative’ use of language, in this instance through regular disclaimers that they ‘take race seriously’ while their actions belied this.
Given the contradictory messages of law and guidance, it remains to
be seen how implementation will occur and it is entirely possible that
the long running tussle between media, politicians and adoption
practitioners will continue.
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