UK adoption service fails abandoned and orphaned children across the world

The breakdown of the UK adoption system is failing countless vulnerable young lives across the world – not just in Britain.

That is the damning verdict of the international charity Hope and homes for Children, which is calling for a shakeup in the UK’s childcare system as part of National Adoption Week (October 31 – November 6).

The number of children being rescued from care and placed in adoptive homes in theUKis falling each year - with an all-time low of 3,200 children last year. On average it took a staggering two years and seven months for a child to be adopted.

Hope and Homes for Children partners with willing governments in ten countries across Europe and Africa, closing harmful orphanages and establishing modern family-based alternative care. Despite not operating in the UK, it believes a failure in Britain’s adoption system is having serious repercussions on its in-country fostering and adoption work overseas.

“While the UK’s over bureaucratic childcare system fails the most vulnerable children in our country today, it also undermines Hope and Homes for Children’s leverage with overseas governments in helping to reform their outdated childcare practices,” said Mark Cook OBE, the founder of Hope and Homes for Children.

“Our overseas projects have demonstrated that children living in orphanages can be successfully and sustainably reunited with their birth families, or placed with new loving foster and adoptive families.

“Much of our success has been based on adoption models that were developed in the UK– a field in which it was once a world leader. 

“Unfortunately, this is no longer the case.”

With only 70 children under the age of one being adopted in theUK last year, compared to 4,000 in 1976, Hope and Homes for Children believes the childcare system is in desperate need of an overhaul.

Mark said matters had got so bad in theUKthat valuable lessons could be learnt from his charity’s achievements in Central and Eastern Europe.

“Our overseas work relies on real political courage from foreign governments – the same is now required from our own,” said Mark.

“How can we stand idly by, while so many children’s lives are systematically destroyed by bureaucracy and ignorance?

“We obviously welcome Prime Minister David Cameron’s pledge to take tough action on councils who fail to meet adoption targets, but an increase in the number of adoptions should not be to the determent of the quality of adoptions.”

The theme of the 2010 National Adoption Week is ‘every child deserves a family’ – a cornerstone of Hope and Homes for Children’s groundbreaking work. It is a philosophy which in 2010, alone, enabled the charity to close eight harmful orphanages, while having a positive impact on 26,000 vulnerable lives.

For information about National Adoption Week visit www.nationaladoptionweek.org.uk