A host of well-known figures who were adopted a generation ago have thrown their weight behind the Times campaign to increase the number of children placed with permanent families.
Kate Adie, the former BBC war correspondent, said that things had changed since she was adopted after the Second World War, but the system had to change to keep up with the new realities of vulnerable children’s lives.
She welcomed the report by Martin Narey, the former head of the Prison Service, compiled for The Times, saying that it tackled all the hard questions.
“My own circumstances were typical of the postwar times when there was a huge supply of tiny babies with no obvious problems. What we have today is a dearth of little babies with no problems and a great number of children often in desperate need — children with disabilities, or with big emotional or developmental problems — who need wonderful parenting,” she said.
“Martin Narey’s argument is that as these children grow older, their problems grow bigger. His argument for much earlier intervention is more radical but he is so right. A baby who is ignored from birth until two years old, the time which all modern research said is the most significant time of life, if it has no care and protection, if it is ignored or abused, then it is a repair process that is required,” she said.
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Ms Adie, who has written a book on adoption, also voiced her frustration at the vetting process. “I have met couples who were asked by social workers to explain why they had so many books, as if they were going to intellectually force-feed an adopted child. This sort of prejudice is clogging up the system,” she said. “We just need parents who are going to love and nurture their children and it does not matter if they are rich or poor, or what class they are.”
After the publication of the Narey report, James O’Brien, a presenter on London’s talk radio station LBC, devoted part of his programme to discussing it. Mr O’Brien was adopted as a baby in the 1970s.
“It seems obvious to me that the interests of the child are best served by placing them in safe environment as soon as humanly possible. My birth mother was just too young and inexperienced to care for a baby. But to let the biological parents fail before taking action defies all the laws of logic, never mind compassion,” he told The Times.
Mr Narey was commissioned by The Times in January to conduct an analysis of the system and make recommendations on how the number of children adopted could be increased — it has fallen to 3,200 in the past year with the figure this year expected to be even lower. He made 19 recommendations to address what he described as “antipathy” by social workers towards adoption.
Nicky Campbell, the Radio 5 Live presenter, also backed the campaign. “Adoption is a truly magical thing. The day I was adopted was my lottery win. It is suddenly giving a child a secure living environment that is the making of a person, and not having that is the breaking of a person.”
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David Yelland, former Editor of The Sun and now a partner at the communications company Brunswick, said that being adopted was the making of him: “Of course some children can be challenging, but no child is inherently bad and a loving environment can solve so many problems. It certainly worked for me.”