Saturday, January 22, 2011

For the children?

Adoption is a serious business local councils charged with it go to great lengths to try and place kids in their care with loving families and by and large they are successful, for a given value of successful. For it seems only the natives in this land are prepared to adopt in any great numbers, other ethnicities apparently not so and because they are over represented in the adoption agencies this is becoming a problem as any attempt to do anything about it immediately brings up the racist cries.

BBC.
The reluctance of some councils to arrange adoptions because of a child's race means the UK faces a collapse in adoption rates, the outgoing chief executive of Barnardo's has warned.
Martin Narey told the Guardian this "prejudice" was so entrenched that it would be difficult to reverse.
He said the adoption rate of babies must "quadruple" in the next few years.
Children's Minister Tim Loughton has said it is unacceptable to deny a child a home because of ethnic differences.
Children from ethnic minorities are over-represented among those seeking adoption, but it typically takes three times as long to place them.
Official figures show that 2,300 children were placed for adoption in 2009, compared with 2,500 the previous year, and down from 3,400 in 2005.
In about 20% of cases identified as suitable for adoption, no placement is found.
"The law is very clear. A child should not stay in care for an undue length of time while waiting for adoptive parents of the same ethnicity.
"But the reality is that black, Asian and mixed race children wait three times longer than white children," he said.
 Tricky situation the righteous have created for themselves here, lots of, well lets call them white couples willing to adopt and lots of, lets call them coloured babies and kids up for adoption. But as every righteous knows, white people are racist and so shouldn't be allowed near coloured kids in case our intolerant culture rubs off on them and they find themselves adrift in society (no doubt believing that old whitey isn't racist at all which would be terribly wrong) and so they struggle to place them with members of their own ethnicity, because cultural differences mean that other ethnicities are reluctant to bring up someone else's sprogs as they tend to see the immediate family as far more important than the general nation. All attempts to get more Blacks and Asians to adopt runs into this brick wall, if the kids aren't family, they generally don't want to know, the correct term is amoral familism, but essentially it's a tribal thing.

This is the problem councils and adoption agencies have dug themselves into so sensitive have they become to criticisms of their own nations and people in regard to others that they are very, very reluctant to put kids into a loving home of a white family and would rather keep coloured kids in care.

So just who are the racists here?

7 annotations:

Anonymous said...

hmm, a little one sided but that is ok, blogs are for expressing one's opinion after all. One question I would like to ask. what do you think the result would be if we got the percentage of white people out of the total white population in England who chose to adopt and did the same with ethnic minorities.

I am just saying that their are less ethnic minorities in the UK than white British people therefore you would expect their to be less adopters from ethnic minorities.

a sensitive problem indeed as you have rightly pointed out ethnic minority children are over represented in need of adoptive places.

I think that you may find that many agencies are willing to place children in trans-racial adoptive placements but the difficulty is finding white adopters who don't want to the pretend the child is their own birth child and therefore want a white child and finding white families who live in diverse area's and have a diverse friendship group who do want to adopt and can meet the cultural needs of the child in question.

Where both of these problems can be overcome I think councils are happy to make such placements.

James Higham said...

very reluctant to put kids into a loving home of a white family and would rather keep coloured kids in care

It's a form of madness, QM. So stuck in false constructions that they err in every way from then on, the basic premise being flawed.

Quiet_Man said...

Whilst I would agree that it would be better if we could get the same percentage of ethnic minorities to adopt as we do white people, fact is they don't and for mostly the reason I stated, differing cultural mores. This means that due to this and the shame factor of unwed mothers in their communities means that we have a problem here of ethnic minority children being over represented in the system.
Whilst there is a factor of wanting a baby of your own amongst certain adopters, this does not apply to older children so the problem remains the same. Too many ethnic children and not enough ethnic adoptees plus a reluctance by agencies to place ethnic children in all white households despite a lot of these households being willing to adopt any child.

Anonymous said...

I think you missed my point. I think we do have the same percentage of their respective populations who do want to adopt. I think the cultural differences you spoke of in relation to not wanting to bring up other peoples children does not exist especially in the black community. we do not have any trouble placing Asian babies.

We have massive problems in placing older children of all nationalities. so in my area the black community make up around 20% of the population. About 70% are white. so for every 7 white adopters we should expect to have 2 black adopters and we do. the problem is that for every 7 white children there are there need adopting there are more like 5 black children leaving us three short every time. I do live in a diverse are and we have placed 3 sets of black children with white adopters in the last four months. And I am sure there will be much more this year.

Quiet_Man said...

Perhaps the question you should be asking yourself is why there is an excess of children from these groups? Some I know can't be helped, others though?

Anonymous said...

with that question I agree completely

Foxy Brown said...

Despite the fact that race permeates almost every facet of American life, the United States has less of a problem with trans-racial adoption. The needs of the child are paramount.

I underwent foster-care training, and this issue took up most of the course content. I was appalled that non-white children who have formed bonds with white carers are frequently moved to a more "ethnically" suitable family. This leads to attachment disorder, and all manner of problems.