I agree. I think it is a mistake to appear to favour one model of childcare over another and that the questions of finance and the use of SGOs need more attention.
We have seen that the courts believe it is the duty of social workers to explore all available options for permanence arrangements when placing children, and that adoption should be favoured only when it is clearly the best option and when it has been weighed against other possibilities. There is an understandable fear that if the Minister creates a new range of Rolls-Royce adoption consortia and we end up with a massive flow of resources to these agencies, adoption will inevitably acquire a new elevated status, especially among social workers and cash-strapped local authorities battling to find permanent solutions with ever-decreasing resources. That would be wrong. It would not be in the best interests of the child, it would fail to recognise the phenomenal success that other models of care can achieve, and it would amount to a form of social engineering that belongs more to a bygone era than to the present day. Parliament will have a right to know what impact the Bill is having on other forms of childcare, so it is only right and proper that there should be a routine report on it.
Perhaps more than anything else, what the House needs to know is that the Government’s measures succeed not only in speeding up adoption and preventing children from languishing in the care system, but in ensuring that the quality of the placements leads to long-term better outcomes for the children.
5.15 pm
I am full of admiration for foster parents and those who adopt children. It takes special people to take on children who have been damaged by early-life experiences and to nurture them to a stage when they are able to come to terms with the past, if not entirely put it behind them, and move on to make something of their lives. It is rarely an easy journey for those who take on that role. It will often mean tantrums, sometimes violence and other aggressive behaviour, sometimes criminality and often mental health problems.