Family Forum / Parenting / Adoption / July 2008

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/jul/06/children.communities1

Race dilemma at the heart of our adoption crisis
The majority of children awaiting adoption in Britain are black, Asian
or mixed-race while most available adopters are white. The issue of
'transracial' adoption is hugely controversial with experts divided on
what is best for the young, vulnerable children. Chief reporter Tracy
McVeigh investigates
Tracy McVeigh
The Observer, Sunday July 6, 2008

Fiona Graham is white, but she has been racially abused when out with
her children over the past few years. 'They don't shout at the kids,
but there have been a few choice things said to me,' she says. 'Paki
lover' is a favourite. That's if she's not with her oil rig worker
husband, who is as white as she is and of an intimidating stature.

The Grahams have two children, Aisha, 10, and Burhan, five, who were
born to a British Pakistani woman and a white father in the north-east
of England.

The couple, from Stirlingshire, adopted the children three years ago
and Graham knows they will have some unique issues ahead of them as a
family, but she is determined to be as prepared for them as she
possibly can. 'Aisha had been in care for two years and Burhan for 17
months, all his life, when we first asked about them. But we were
refused point blank because they were looking for a Pakistani Muslim
couple. It took another five months before their social worker would
consider us. But as far as I was concerned, the kids were being
brought up with white Christian foster carers with no one else in
sight for them. When Aisha first arrived here she had never even heard
the word Pakistan. I do see how much they need to learn about their
heritage; in fact, I see it more now than I maybe even realised at
that time. Already Burhan recognises there is a difference in colour
between us. The need to belong is inbuilt in them and as their colour
and their heritage did not come from us, then we need to make sure
they understand and explore that part of them.

'I absolutely know we did the right thing and you have to consider
children's need for love and security and everything else comes after
that. If I didn't think that, my kids would still be in care.'

But as Britain becomes an ever more multicultural society, families
like the Grahams are becoming increasingly controversial. The debate
over transracial adoptions that has gone on, almost unheard, in
Britain since the 1950s is hitting a crescendo, challenging the
adoption agencies and social workers to clarify policy and accusing
them of 'taking the foot off the pedal'. The first government-
commissioned report in nearly a decade to look at the issues around
black and ethnic minority children in care is due to be published this
month and tomorrow a major conference on the issue, organised by the
British Association for Adoption and Fostering (BAAF) and entitled
'Why Am I Waiting?', will take place in London.

Adoption has changed since the days when childless married couples
toured children's homes and, as long as they had a clean house, could
choose the cutest baby. No longer are single mothers shamed into
putting their babies up for adoption, and with more fertility
treatment available there are fewer prospective adopters around too.
In 1976 some 22,000 children were adopted. In 2007 it was less than
3,500 - 2,200 of them were children from care.

Most of the children who need new families have begun life with
alcoholic, drug-dependent, abusive or potentially abusive parents.
Finding them a new family has become intensely complex. For each child
in their care, local authorities will look through their own books for
an adopter. But if there is no match in their own pool of parents,
then there are funding considerations - looking further afield and
approaching other local authorities to search their waiting lists
brings an 'inter-agency' fee.

Time spent in care is directly related to well-being. Research shows
children in care fare far worse than adopted children and are
susceptible to brain damage and emotional and attachment issues. One
per cent of children from the care system reach university, compared
to 40 per cent of the general population.

There were approximately 65,000 children in care in England and Wales
in 2005, of whom around 40 per cent will return to their birth
families. Just under 80 per cent are white in a country where 87 per
cent of the population describe themselves as white British - meaning
children from ethnic minorities are over-represented in the care
system, and staying there longer. The issue has been sending a slow
shockwave through the system and behind the growing calls for a
rethink on the approach to transracial adoption are two phenomona. The
first is that efforts to match children's ethnicity with the ethnicity
of adopters slows down the process for black and mixed-race children.
The vast majority of available adopters in this country are white and
middle-class.

The second are the new voices joining the debate - black and mixed-
race children who were adopted by white families in the Sixties and
Seventies are now adults and are becoming increasingly vocal about
their experiences of lifelong identity issues, mental health problems
and deep feelings of isolation that came with even the most loving of
homes. Their mantra is that 'love is not enough'.

David, now a 45-year-old academic, of dual heritage - white and Arab -
was adopted by a white couple in 1962. 'Love is not enough,' he said,
'and there's a living community struggling with the consequences.
Where do these children [placed in white families] get their
linguistic, religious and cultural knowledge from? The main problem is
the under-theorisation of the issues.

'The experience of racism had a profound impact on me. It would have
been helpful for people around me to have had an understanding of that
and of the cultural issues that one inevitably struggles with. It's
about a sense of isolation - one never fits in with either community.
We exist in a third space, outside other communities. It is a
debilitating experience. We need a radical rethink on transracial
adoptions.'

His parents were 'supportive and loving', but for David that did not
counteract what he describes as a 'lifelong experience of verbal and
physical abuse and various types of sophisticated institutional
racisms'. He has found tremendous similarities with other interracial
adoptees and says: 'All of us are on a journey, but it will have no
resolution for us. I don't think they [social workers] have a grasp of
the enormity of it. People aren't tracked through life. Mental health
services have no grasp of it.

'It's not simply a case of whether children should not be placed in
white families; a family setting is always preferable. But it would
need parents prepared far more than they are, prior and during the
adoption process. "We're liberal parents, we'll do all we can" - this
is just tokenism. "We'll explain Eid, we'll explain Ramadan," a few
Islamic books around the house ... that's not good enough, that's just
insulting.'

In one survey of adults who had been adopted as children, around 46
per cent of white people said that, even though it was a positive
adoption, they felt a sense of not belonging. With transracial
adoptees that figure leapt to almost three-quarters. 'Research is
scant: there are a lot of small-scale studies but there is a real
drought of understanding. I think the foot has been taken off the
pedal for black and ethnic minority children whose needs, meanwhile,
have been continuing to grow. Interracial adoption is a relatively new
phenomenon, an 18-year period really,' said Sue Cotton, head of
adoption services at the children's charity NCH.

'There's a gap in knowledge. We know there's an over-representation of
black and ethnic minority children in care, just as there is over-
representation in the prison service, in mental health services, but
we don't know why. The overriding thing we do know is that kids in
families do better than kids in care, but one of the big driving
forces behind everyone now is these testimonies from the adopted
children of the Sixties and Seventies who are reporting that impact,
those very human issues of identity that no one expected to be so
fundamental.'

There are not enough adopters coming forward from ethnically diverse
backgrounds, says Savita de Sousa of BAAF. The Soul Kids Campaign in
1975 in London was the first attempt to recruit black adoptive
families and, along with another project in the 1980s, they blamed the
shortage on the agencies themselves for showing 'eurocentrism'.

'Things have been constantly changing in this debate. The Blair
government said, "Love and care is enough," but it's unresolved,' said
de Sousa. 'Love is an important factor but it's not the only factor.
We cannot be colour blind. It's what they do in the US; it's illegal
to consider race in the placing of African-American children, and it's
being challenged there as it's not working. Current research sees
delays in the system because social workers are so busy looking for
the right match, but we need rigorous imaginative recruitment. That's
our real challenge.'

In the 1950s and 1960s black children were considered 'unadoptable'.
The practice was to match children in terms of physical resemblance,
so adopted children should look as if they had been 'born to' their
families, but race matches were seen as impractical at a time when
many black communitites were socially deprived. In 1965 there was a
recruitment drive to find parents willing to transracially adopt.
Those who came forward were middle-class, educated, already parents
and living in predominantly white areas.

By the 1970s there were three factors backing transracial adoption: it
was seen as successful, there was a shortage of black adopters and the
thinking was that 'permanency' was best. The practice began to be
questioned, pushed by The Association of Black Social Workers and
Allied Professions, in the Eighties. But transracial adoptions have
never stopped. In the early 1980s it was estimated that over 80 per
cent of black and ethnic minority adoptions in the UK were
transracial. The Adoption and Children Act 2002 (enforced in 2005) was
the first legislation in more than 25 years. It most famously gave
unmarried and same-sex couples the right to jointly adopt, but it also
enshrined the demand that social workers should 'wherever possible'
put a child with a family which 'reflects their ethnic origin,
cultural background, religion and language'.

Speaking on condition of anonymity to social workers from local
authorities around England, The Observer found anecdotal evidence that
this has left many social workers feeling 'paralysed'.

Every one of them agreed they would be 'deeply uncomfortable' with
anything but a 'same race' match for a child in their care, even if
the child had spent six to 12 months in care. 'I have little
confidence white people really can ever understand racism - now
there's a pretty big matter right there. Unless you bring me a utopia
when everyone is colour blind, then I'm sorry but deep down I think we
as a society are nowhere near ready to have successful interracial
adoptions,' said one recently qualified man.

Another, from one of the handful of authorities actively trying to
recruit ethnic minority adoptions, agreed in part but said: 'Our
search for families is always having to be balanced by time but there
is no point in pushing a child into a new life that may be wrong for
them. For some, care may be their best option. We're not taking out a
colour chart and matching skin to skin, and sometimes you have to walk
away thinking, "Well, that's the best I could do." There are so many
backgrounds in some of the children we're seeing now, a lot of East
European mixes coming in now.'

For 'Chris', now 18, who spent nine years in care, never finding a
family is something he finds hard to forgive. 'I had some nice foster
carers, some not so bright, but the only one I hated was the one who
wasn't white. I was let down. I would have found myself a family if
they'd have let me. Now it's like, "Well that was my childhood ...
that was sh.t, wasn't it?" You know, when I was little I didn't care
about colour, I still have no colour - outside I do, but inside, no.
They talk about heritage... you know I'd rather just have had a mum,
thanks, black, white or even blue-dotted.'

Dr Perlita Harris pulled together the experiences of 57 transracially
adopted people, including David, into a book called In Search of
Belonging: Reflections by transracially adopted people. She says we
need a whole new mindset: 'It's those questions - can we really be
colour blind? Being transracially adopted is a complex, challenging,
and at times very painful, lifelong experience. These are adoptees who
were raised in families who, in the main, took a colour blind approach
- we see the child but not the colour. They are just like our other
(white) children.

'Too many transracially adopted adults report feeling alienated,
displaced and disconnected from their community of origin, unable to
speak the language of birth relatives when they do trace them, of
internalising the negative racist messages in society, of struggling
to understand who they are. The narratives of transracially adopted
adults demonstrate unequivocally that love, alone, is simply not
enough.'

As people such as Lesley Allison fight to give a home to ethnic
minority children, boys like Chris live with a deep need for a family,
black, white 'or blue-dotted', and transracially adopted adults such
as David endure a lifelong struggle for identity. The thing they all
have in common is a deep desire to want the best for some of the most
vulnerable children in Britain, but not all of them can be right.

The waiting game

· The US used to have same-race matching, and still does for Native
American children. In the mid-1990s, Congress passed the Multi-ethnic
Placement Act. Social workers are not allowed to emphasise race or
ethnicity when matching children with parents.

· There are more than 4,000 British children at any one time in the UK
awaiting to be found new families.

· Every month an average of 1,200 prospective adopters call the Be My
Parent newspaper and website, which advertises children who need
families, to ask about children featured there.

· More than half of all the children waiting for new families are
siblings who need to stay together. Older children, especially boys
aged over seven, wait longer than younger girls.