Children Forcibly Taken From Parents to 'Meet Ministry Targets'

A record number of young children are being taken from their parents and put up for adoption, many times unjustly, so that that government targets can be fulfilled, claims BBC Radio 4's Face the Facts.

The staggering figures reveal that at present each year up to 1,300 babies under a month old are being placed in care before adoption. This figure is a huge increase to the 500 per year when the Government came to power, BBC Radio 4's Face the Facts has claimed.

The programme also indicated that there are now more than 1000 cases of possible "miscarriages of justice" whereby children are forcibly or unjustly adopted. There could now be record levels of cases where parents in England have lost their children despite there being insufficient evidence that they were causing any harm to them.

Social workers have complained that they are under pressure to meet Government adoption targets, promoting the policy for more children in care to be adopted.

The Times, meanwhile, questioned whether parents were being given a proper chance to challenge adoptions due to the short period being offered to appeal and the secrecy of the family courts.

Lawyers added: "Secrecy breeds bad practice, it breeds suspicion. It feeds parents' sense of injustice when they have their children removed that they're not able to talk about it. They're not able to air their grievances. Children have been removed from their families unjustly. There's no two ways about that."

A social work manager with 25 years of experience in child protection told the BBC that parents had little chance of getting a hearing and overturning a decision made by the authorities: "People will find that their children have been removed and freed for adoption without them having had a proper chance to defend themselves and their families and their children."

A number of MPs have also spoken out against the adoption system and are campaigning for a public inquiry. John Hemming, the Liberal Democrat member for Birmingham Yardley, who is also chairman of the Justice for Families group, said: "We are seeing perhaps three to four new cases being referred to us every day."

The programme hears from one mother who claims she was actually giving birth when the authorities arrived to remove her baby, and from a father who had his two sons unjustly adopted. He later received a written apology from the local authority. However, because his children had already been adopted, he will never get them back.

In response, the Department for Children, Schools and Families has denied that there is a target for taking children from their birth parents to meet overall adoption targets. A spokesman said that government policy has always been that children should live with their parents wherever possible, even to the extent where if necessary, families should be given extra support to stay together.

He did admit ,however, that there had been a national target to increase the number of "looked-after children" being adopted and to place children for adoption more quickly. But he added that this was only if they had already been assessed as suitable for adoption and only after it had been decided that adoption was "in the child's best interests".

He concluded: "It is for a court to decide whether or not to make a placement or an adoption order on the basis of the welfare of the child."