Funding for the adoption industry

Mike Robinson is in conversation with Brian Gerrish and David Scott on UK Column News, 23 March 2018:

"We`ve got to start adopting children faster..." says Mike Robinson... "So five new regional adoption agencies have been granted £3.4 million by the government as part of the government`s ambition to create a world leading adoption system with faster matchings of children who are placed in loving stable homes more quickly. So this additional funding is going to 17 councils to speed up the matching process between children awaiting adoption and adoptive families. And who`s involved? "

"The new Regional Adoption Agencies and the local authorities involved are:

Kent: made up of Kent, Bexley and Medway. Coast to Coast: Cumbria, Durham and Sunderland  Lancashire: Blackpool and Lancashire. Ambitious for Adoption: Harrow, Bromley, Redbridge, City of London and Slough.
Adoption for South East: Surrey, East Sussex, West Sussex, Brighton and Hove."

"And so apparently [they] will also provide more support for adoptive families going through the process and for those considering adoption as well as helping to improve the quality of services locally."

"Now this might sound to most people to be quite reasonable but we just bring people`s attention once again to this: Family court secrecy lets judges get away with mistakes, senior judge says. Sir James Munby who was in the press a couple of days ago expressing concerns once again of the secrecy in the family court system which seems to allow judges, he says, to get away with making, what he calls, mistakes."

 

"We have seen plenty of evidence to suggest that they`re not mistakes at all; in fact, judges accepting perjury in court, and so on; children being stolen from their homes and put into the adoption system. So he was speaking at an event last Tuesday and he said that judges were grotesquely overworked, that they were tired, and so more likely to make mistakes. But in a previous conversation James Munby had made the point, Brian; in many cases when parents are subject to these type of procedures; when the proceedings are completed; that they come out of court basically not understanding what has happened to them. So this process for parents who are having children taken away from them can be so brutal that they come out effectively traumatised."

Brian Gerish: "It is brutal Mike; there`s no question of it; and I`m not quite sure where James Munby is coming from on this, because as you say, tiredness eh? No. Incompetence? Possibly. But when of course a court refuses to take video evidence of the abuse of children then we`re into a very interesting situation and that`s happening up in the Midlands and of course we`ve got the case reported on yesterday where a man is trying to set up a business to film children being abused and he says: `Don`t worry because the ... clients are top politicians. There`s been a wall of silence over that Southern Crown Court case."

"So I think Sir James Munby needs to answer a lot more detailed questions. We can also ask what he actually discussed when he went into that East European Embassy a couple of years ago and had secret meetings over child adoption issues."

Mike Robinson: "Yes, David, it seems to me that what`s going on here is we`ve got a £13.4 million bung from the government to help develop an industry and we might use the word trafficking in a certain sense with regard to what`s going on here."

David Scott: "... Yes, why is the money needed? Where does the money go? It is an industry; ... it used to be a personal commitment to help another human being, to help a child; and the question I`ve asked via Twitter - I`ve asked my local authority because they`re always tweeting about how you campaign for adoption - the question that they don`t ask is: `how many of the children up for adoption are against the wishes of the parents, against the wishes of the child?` ... Well you`re not meant to answer that."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0Yk5UCmNSA&t=2833s&app=desktop