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This email with attachments came from former MP John Hemming, after I put him in touch with the author of the ‘expert’ report on Adoption without Consent Dr Claire Flenton-Glynn:
I am happy to engage with the issues in the report. I chair the Justice for Families Campaign. I was MP for Birmingham, Yardley from 2005-15 and my degree is in Atomic, Nuclear and Theoretical Physics from Magdalen College, Oxford – I had a scholarship in Natural Sciences. My career outside politics has been in computing where I founded a company now called JHC Systems Ltd (JHC=John Hemming & Co) which now employs over 250 people with a turn over in excess of £20m – I chair the board. I was also a City Councillor in Birmingham from 1990-2008 and deputy leader of the council 2004-5. I came into this area looking at the numbers and identifying that there was injustice from the numbers.
The nub of the issue, however, is that there has continued to be pressure on practitioners from 2000 to date to increase the number of children adopted from care (with a slight lightening from 2008-10). The problem with that is that this results in children who would otherwise stay either with their extended family or indeed return to their natural parents instead of being adopted. In fact it causes children to be taken into care in England who would not be taken into care on the European Continent.
Adoption without consent in accordance with international law is supposed to be “exceptional”. The statistics (see table 2, not table 1 in the table 1/2 attachment) when looking at what happens to children under the age of 5 demonstrates that adoption without consent is not “exceptional” (within the context of the cohort of children in care).
The UK state argues that the word “exceptional” is within the context of the cohort of children as a whole. That is obviously nonsense as it is exceptional that a child is taken into care.
The second table “psahistoricadoptions” gives details of the grants given to childrens services authorities (a local authority) for increasing the numbers of adoptions in their area. The sources for this information are the English government.
From 2000-2006 there were “adoption targets” which set objectives for local authorities to increase the numbers of adoptions. PSA Public Service Agreements were in place to reward some LAs for specific increases, but also Ofsted put pressure on councils to increase numbers.
From 2006-8 the adoption targets were changed to permanence targets including Special Guardianship Orders and Residency Orders. It is misleading to say as is said in the report that there were no adoption targets as there were targets to increase adoptions (or SGOs or Residency Orders). Adoptions are cheaper for local authorities in the long term as in theory there is no ongoing cost.
Local authorities also had hypothecated funding for adoptions (see attachment – adoption grant78). The nature of large organisations is that they continue doing what they have bee