Adoption & Fostering

The 1991 Criminal Justice Act introduced new legislation governing the way children may testify in courts in England and Wales. Helen Westcott reviews these legislative reforms in the light of recent research on child witnesses, and highlights some of the difficulties which will still remain for children called to testify.

In 1987 a survey was conducted of eleven hundred and sixty-five children with ‘special needs’ placed by the major voluntary adoption agencies with permanent new families between 1980 and 1984 (Thoburn & Rowe, 1988; Fratter et al, 1991). Among those placed were 241 black children and children from other minority ethnic groups. Marilyn Charles, Stephen Rashid and June Thoburn report on an exploratory study undertaken in 1991 and 1992 of this cohort of children.

The Children Act 1989 states that a child's race and culture must be considered in planning social work intervention. However, there are no guidelines on how social workers should address the particular needs of Black children, or indeed what these needs are likely to be. Nick Banks suggests ways in which social workers and carers can better understand and meet the identity needs of Black children.

For well over a decade now local authorities and some independent agencies have been successfully recruiting Black (mainly Afro-Caribbean and Asian) families to care for Black children. Unfortunately very little attention has been paid to how to train and equip these Black families to care for the children placed. Tarzan Almas attempts to fill this gap as far as the preparation and training of Asian carers is concerned.

Drawing on the experience of Save the Children's African Family Advisory Service¹ David Wright discusses the public duty and private responsibility implicit in private fostering and looks forward to how the spirit and letter of the Children Act and the Guidance and Regulations on Private Fostering will be put into effect.

Until comparatively recently children in the UK were viewed as the property of their parents. However, the government's ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in December 1991 represents a turning point. Gerison Lansdown urges statutory and voluntary organisations to ‘adopt’ the Convention and examine their policies and practice to ensure that children's rights are properly addressed.

The year 1990 saw the enactment of adoption information legislation in Queensland (May 1990) and New South Wales (October 1990), the last of the Australian states to grant rights of access to information. Queensland, sometimes referred to as ‘the deep north’, is customarily seen as the most conservative of the states, so there was considerable surprise that such legislation should have passed through the Queensland Parliament unimpeded, with acclaim from all parties. Margaret McDonald reports.