6.17 Practice Guide to Meting the Identity Needs of Children of Black and Minority Ethnicity in Permanent Placements

SCOPE OF THIS CHAPTER

This Wandsworth practice guide was developed in August 2011 and added to this manual in November 2011.

Introduction
Legislative Framework
Permanency Planning
Recruitment Practice

1. Introduction

The publication of the Adoption Guidance 2011 has initiated a debate amongst practitioners about best practice in seeking to meet the permanency needs of children of black and minority heritage. There is potential for polarization in this debate.

There is a view expressed by the government, that the major presenting problem for looked after children of black and minority ethnic background is the disproportionate delay in achieving permanent placement for them, and that part of the cause is that agencies place too much emphasis on meeting their identity needs through placement with families which closely reflect their heritage.

There are others who take the view that same race placement practice has developed out of a proper and informed concern that the identity needs of minority ethnic children who are subject to discrimination and racism in an unequal society have historically been neglected and undervalued.

Both views can be supported by reference to relevant research.

As ever the challenge for practitioners is to achieve the right balance of considerations in making judgements about particular children and matching with particular families, seeking to ensure that there is no avoidable delay in permanent placement on the one hand and no substantive risk of unmet identity needs on the other.

2. Legislative Framework

The Council's decision-making in addressing racial, cultural and religious needs in permanent placements must comply with government regulation and take proper account of guidance, including:

Care Standards Act, 2000, which states:

"Children are matched with adopters who best meet their assessed needs. Wherever possible this should be with a family which reflects their ethnic origin, cultural background, religion and language.

Where the child cannot be matched with a family which reflects their ethnic origin , cultural background, religion and language, the adoption agency makes every effort to find an alternative suitable family within a realistic timescale to ensure the child is not left waiting indefinitely in the care system".

National Minimum Standards 2011, Standard 13, which states:

"Children feel loved, safe and secure with their prospective adoptive parents... and these children were placed within 12 months of the decision of the agency's decision maker that they should be placed for adoption."

National Minimum Standards 2011, Standard 17.8, which states:

"The adoption panel makes a considered recommendation on the proposed placement of a child with particular prospective adopters within 6 months of the agency's decision maker deciding that the child should be placed for adoption"

Adoption Guidance 2011 issued by the Department for Education which states:

"If the prospective adopter can meet most of the child's needs the social worker must not delay placing a child with the prospective adopter because... they do not share the child's racial or cultural background".

"any practice that classifies people in a way that effectively rules out adoption because they and the child do not share the same racial or cultural background is not child-centered and is unacceptable".

In the Adoption Guidance 2011 the essential principles of practice are:

That a prospective adopter can be matched with a child with whom they do not share the same ethnicity provided they can meet the child's other identified needs. The core issue is what qualities, experiences and attributes the prospective adopter can draw on and their level of understanding of the discrimination and racism the child may be confronted with when growing up. This applies equally whether the child is placed in a black or minority ethnic family, a white family, or a family which includes members of different ethnic origins;
All families should help children placed with them to understand and appreciate their background and culture. Where the child and the adopter do not share the same background the adopter will need flexible and creative support to be given by their agency. This should be in the form of education and training, not just simplistic advice given in a vacuum on learning their children's cultural traditions, or about the food and cooking from their birth heritage. The support plan should consider how the child's understanding of their background and origin might be enhanced. This can include providing opportunities for children to meet others from similar backgrounds, and to practice their religion- both in a formal place of worship and in the home. Maintaining continuity of their heritage of the birth family is important to most children: it is a means of retaining knowledge of their identity and feeling that although they have left their birth family they have not abandoned important cultural, religious or linguistic values of their community. This will be of particular significance as they reach adulthood.

3. Permanency Planning

The Profile of the child drawn up for the purposes of family finding at the Initial Placement Planning Meeting will identify a range of needs including defining the racial/cultural/religious needs which should be met for a best possible match. This may include some prioritisation of specific needs. It should consider the views of birth family and if appropriate the child. The profile should consider what support services might contribute to a successful placement;
The profile of the child may be used in advertising including a description of the type of family needed. In compliance with the guidance it is not acceptable to limit the profile of the family needed in order to exclude any persons on the basis that they do not share the same racial background as the child. The standard language of advertisements in Be My Parent has been revised to seek a family who "can reflect or actively develop the ethnic and cultural identity of the child";
The clear message of the guidance is that agencies should consider positively any proposed match with a family which meets most of the child's identified needs. Any decisions not to proceed in matching in such circumstances should be recorded on the child's case file with an explanation of the reason;
There is a clear drive towards the elimination of avoidable delay as this is detrimental to the interests of the child;
Permanency planning should from the outset include consideration of families approved within the agency, adopters approved by other local authorities and voluntary adoption agencies, families approved within adoption consortium arrangements, and families referred by the Adoption Register;
Review of the progress of the care plan in Permanency Planning meetings, Child care reviews and the considered recommendations of the adoption panel should take account of the principles of good practice above. The practice of "widening the search" in terms of ethnicity and culture arising from review of the care plan is no longer seen to be appropriate, as the search should be no less wide from the outset. Agencies are directed to consider whether there is any family which is available through any of the sources above which meets most of the child's needs and which can reflect or actively develop the child's ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic identity, regardless of the ethnic and cultural background of the family itself;
Where the agency has been unsuccessful in placing the child within an acceptable timescale the review should consider other aspects of the care plan, including contact plans, whether to continue to seek to place siblings together, and the legal basis of permanency;
Whilst there is some ambiguity in the NMS about the acceptable timescale to achieve permanent placement, delay is clearly seen as detrimental to the child's welfare, and furthermore as cumulatively detrimental, as it diminishes the likelihood of actually achieving permanent placement.

4. Recruitment Practice

It is important that we are clear and transparent with the general public about our policy in respect of the recruitment of adopters of any ethnic or religious background or in the case of couples any mix of backgrounds, and about our policy in respect of the matching of children following their approval.

It has in the past been a principle of recruitment practice that we were guided by government to focus on recruitment of adopters whose ethnic background broadly reflected the ethnic background of the population of children looked after by the authority and who needed adoptive placement. As a result of this it was legitimate and compliant with guidance to refer on and away from the agency those adoptive applicants who were of a minority ethnicity or ethnic mix where we were unlikely to be able to place a child of similar background.

The approach to ethnic matching of the 2011 Guidance suggests that this practice is no longer appropriate, as the local authority might be expected to place any child with adopters of another ethnic background, subject to the capacity of those adopters to actively develop the identity needs of that child, in the context of the ongoing active support of the placing agency to enable them to do so.

In this approach we are steered towards an openness to adoptive applicants of any ethnic background, unhindered by considerations of the availability of children of any particular ethnicity.

The new emphasis is on the capacity of the adopters to meet the identity needs of the child, and this equally implies a new emphasis on the professional assessment of this capacity as an aspect of the adopter's suitability to adopt.

Arguably from 2011 we are in new territory, neither being in a place where we may rigorously hold to a same race placement policy to ensure that adopters can protect the heritage and identity needs of ethnic minority children, nor are we in the place that we once were in the 1970's where we were as a profession colour-blind, being unaware of the impact on minority ethnic children of placing them permanently in white families- families who may additionally have lived in white communities and had no understanding of racism or of the need for positive black role models or the importance of many aspects of difference including language, religion, culture or nationality in a child's heritage. This historically had a powerfully negative impact for some children of minority ethnicity, as is testified within research and literature, and it is vitally important that we do not return to such practice.

Therefore it is all-important that we develop effective tools for an assessment practice which tests out the capacity of adoptive applicants who are open to the placement of a child from another ethnic background to deliver in terms of developing a child's identity needs. As adoption is a life-long process this is no short term measure, and as the identity needs of children change over time, the adopters will need to have a developing, learning, and reflective capacity to meet these changing needs.

The child's identity is in continuous process of development, partly contingent on their age and experience. Factors such as their age, their experience, (including their experience of being looked after in a foster family which perhaps closely reflected their own ethnic background), their skin tone and self-concept of skin tone, their wishes and feelings if of an age of understanding- these are all factors which are likely to have a significant impact on their identity needs, and hence have significant implications for the capacity of adopters of a different ethnic background to meet those needs. All have implications for the breadth and depth of our assessment method.

Finally, the identity needs of any child is unique to that child, and the capacity of the adopters to meet the identity needs of a particular child is something which must further be explored during the matching process, recorded in the minutes of the agency's matching meeting, reflected in the Adoption Placement Report and quality assured through the process of the matching panel.