Adoption Targets

Unusually, this month sees the emergence of a system that creates an disincentive to adoption for Local Authorities, if this report on Family Law is correct. It suggests that as a result of the target being drawn so as to require all children for whom the plan is adoption to be placed within 12 months, [...]

Book Review: Bubble Wrapped Children – How social networking is transforming the face of 21st century adoption

This review is a guest post written by  Sarah Phillimore, barrister at St John’s Chambers (@svphillimore), Bristol. Sarah joined St Johns Chambers in January 2011 from Coram Chambers in London. She has experience of all areas of family law and is training to become an accredited family mediator. Bubble Wrapped Children: How social networking is transforming the face [...]

Protecting Our Children

Episode 2 of Protecting Our Children aired on BBC2 tonight. And if it didn’t bring a tear in Episode One, Episode Two will definitely do it for you. I only caught the second half of Episode 1 last week, and was left wondering whether there might be some gaps in coverage (above and beyond the [...]

Guest Post: Social media – our master or our servant?

This is a guest post written by Sarah Phillimore (@svphillimore), a barrister at St John’s Chambers. It arises from a discussion Sarah, myself and other colleagues had last weekend about the difficulty in obtaining s26 contact orders in placement proceedings and the spate of media reports of teenagers tracked down on Facebook by their biological [...]

Managing Adoption Services to Achieve Financial Savings

OMFG. Yes, that is a legal-technical term. When I read the following extracts from Martin Narey’s review of adoption services in Kent, sent to me by a legal friend who often suggests material for the blog, OMFG seemed to be an apposite response: “Adoption should never be pursued simply because it saves money. But there [...]

What She Said – Adopting Words on Adoption

David Cameron has stepped into the adoption debate this week, distracting us all from the economic catastrophe with a message of hope for all those children “put up” for adoption who are “languishing” in care as a result of court delay (caused by lawyers, natch and probably ones with a human rights obsession too) and political [...]

Narey Report Part II – Blueprint or Fairy Story?

Once upon a time a long long time ago I wrote a blog post about a report written by Mr Narey. Mr Narey was a naughty man who wanted to take lots of babies away from their mummies. I wrote a story telling all the people about why Mr Narey’s naughty report said lots of [...]

Success is all in my mind

Bit busy at the moment. But here’s a few things to keep you occupied: Slightly belated news that the Justice Select Committee has published it’s report on the Operation of the Family Courts. Scroll down to paragraph 239 and you will find a quote from Lucy Reed, author of Family Courts without a Lawyer – [...]

The Narey Report: A Blueprint for the nation’s lost children?

The Narey Report was published early last week (5 July). You may not have read it because, unusually for a report which purports to be signally important in the development of government policy on matters of such public interest and importance as the permanent severing of the child : parent relationship, it is behind a [...]

Adoption Tzar

Although not formally confirmed yet on the Department of Education website it is reported in Community Care that “Former Barnardo’s chief Martin Narey will be tasked with encouraging “sceptical” social workers to see adoption as an option for more children in care in his role as the government’s first adoption tsar.” I’m all for permanence [...]