Ministers are considering removing barriers to the adoption of ethnic minority children by white families after latest figures suggested a significant drop in the number of children being placed into adoptive families.

According to official figures, the number of children successfully placed into adoptive families fell from 2,500 at the end of March 2009 to 2,300 at the end of March this year - a fall of 15 per cent and 26 per cent fewer than in 2006, when 3,000 children were adopted. The Daily Mail quotes figures going back to 2004, when 3,800 successful adoptions took place, amounting to a drop of around 30 per cent.

The fall in numbers has prompted Education Secretary Michael Gove to consider making mixed-race adoptions easier.

According to official guidance, social workers are not obligated to match children and adoptive parents on ethnic grounds but they are advised that such matching is preferable and some feel that the guidance must be updated to make it clearer that children can be placed with families of a different ethnicity.

Children’s Minister Tim Loughton was quoted by the Daily Mail as saying: “Ethnicity should not be a barrier to adoption if there are loving, stable and secure families ready and waiting to adopt.”

Despite the fall in children being placed with families, the Government has yet to address the closure of Christian adoption agencies that refuse to place children with same-sex families.

The Christian Institute has expressed its concern over the Government’s silence.

It said: “Fewer children in care are being adopted into loving families. The Government wants to change that but will not talk about the sexual orientation laws that have shut down faith-based adoption agencies.”

The Sexual Orientation Regulations forced 10 Catholic adoption agencies to close down or secularise their ethos. The only surviving Catholic adoption agency, Catholic Care, is in the midst of a High Court battle to retain its right to refuse placing children with homosexual families.

It is appealing the recent decision by the Charity Commission for England and Wales to refuse to allow the charity to restrict its provision of adoption services on the grounds of sexual orientation.

Catholic Care has warned that if the High Court upholds the Charity Commission’s decision, it will lead to the closure of the charity’s services.

“The charity is not seeking to prevent same sex couples from adopting children. The charity is simply seeking to ensure that it can deliver a valuable service in accordance with both the law and the religious ethos of the charity,” a spokesperson for the charity said.

This week, a Pentecostal foster couple took their case to the High Court after they were told that they could not foster children because of their views on homosexuality.

Social workers in Derby told Eunice and Owen Johns that they could not foster children after they admitted that they would not be able to tell children that homosexuality was an acceptable lifestyle. The couple, who have fostered 15 children, are seeking clarification on whether their views on sexuality render them unfit to be foster carers under the Sexual Orientation Regulations.

Andrea Minichiello-Williams, of the Christian Legal Centre, said: “That the Court even needs to consider this is a remarkable reversal in the concept of the public good and the traditional definition of sexual morality.”



Correction: This article was originally published under the title 'Government mulls end to ban on mixed-race adoptions but still won't address closure of Christian adoption agencies'. Whilst Government guidelines encourage adoption agencies to find racial matches between children and adoptive parents wherever possible, they may look for alternatives if none can be found. However there is some concern that too many children are losing out on placements within a loving family because of a perception among social workers that they have to find the 'perfect match'. The title has been corrected to more accurately reflect this fact and Christian Today apologises if the term 'ban' was misleading.