To ask your views on adoption wrt culture and heritage

[VladmirsPoutine]

I saw a news piece today regarding a Sikh couple that were refused ability to adopt a British 'white' child because the couple are essentially not white. However they dressed it up that's still what it came down to. It must be said that this couple are also British - the only difference happens to be that they are brown.

Got me thinking. My brother was adopted - my father was white and my mother was not. I couldn't fathom him not being in my life/family and I don't think your skin colour is a good precursor to the sort of parent you will make so the decision to refuse the couple to adopt is beyond me.

That said, perhaps there is something to be said of adhering to certain values - perhaps if both adoptive parents are white and are therefore adopting a white child then there are less hurdles to jump over - i.e. questions to child why their parents are a different colour to them etc. I recall I got this a lot as a child as I'm mixed race and neither one of my parents 'looked' like me when I was being asked if my dad was really my dad or where my mum came from etc.

Interested to know what you make of it?

It seems weird as know several white couples who have adopted black and mixed race children...why is it OK that way round?

Saw the couple in TV and they look very Indian to me! In fact I live in a very multicultural city not London and have many Sikh friends none of whom look remotely white British but do have Caucasian features

misspilly, that probably means there were more BME children needing adopting than there were BME people wanting to adopt, so the usual policy of trying to match culture/race was overlooked in favour of a family of a different race being better than no family.

That is not the case here where there are not lots of kids of any race languishing in foster care.

This couple should have tried a different agency instead of the media.

And if I read one more time that they have a 5 bed house.... FFS. That's not what matters to a traumatised child.

I'm a bit surprised by CORAM's reported stance tbh.

Agree with tdlr - they should have taken a pragmatic decision to go elsewhere. DP and I live in an area with many children from a particular ethnic group in care, so we went to a local authority who had children of our ethnicity coming up for adoption.

(To complicate things, DD is actually mixed race but presents as very white. The LA completely tied themselves in knots over whether this 'inter-racial' adoption could go ahead and we had to do a lot of persuading that we'd support her identity in the future).

To posters who say no kids are languishing in care because of a dearth of adopters of the right ethnicity, I know of one little boy where this is sadly the case. But if the LA got their finger out and worked across their consortium, they could easily find him a match. And it's not the case in Berkshire, clearly.