[LegalZone]

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Re: Access to information (Pre-commencement Adoptions) Regulations

The following is an excerpt from 'Empty Cradles' the book by Margaret Humphreys, who championed the cause of the people sent away to far of countries as small children, in the infamous ‘Child Migration Scheme’

<quote>

“.... Five weeks later, I finally sat down at a table with the major organizations involved in child migration and asked for their help.

The charities represented included the Salvation, Army, Barnardo's, the National Children's Home and representatives from the Church of England and Roman Catholic Church. An observer from the Dept. of Health also attended.

After an interminable silence Mr. Jarmen [Director of Child Care at Barnardo’s] began the meeting by telling me that there were people around the table who felt very hurt. I said nothing.

David ended the silence. He began to give a report on the enormity of the problems we had discovered. Afterwards, I tried to give them a sense of the desperation and isolation that the former child migrants were feeling. They needed help to find their families; they needed a professional post migration service. But, and it was a very big but, this service had to be neutral and totally independent of the charities and agencies that had sent them away. I felt a shudder go around the table. Yet those present who were professionals should have fully understood and endorsed the position of neutrality. They knew, just as I did, that you do not send abused children back to their abusers for help ....”

<end of quote>

Does anyone else here see a parallel with the adoption situation? Why should we as adoptees or as birth relatives who have had our families torn apart, have to accept a situation where the adoption agencies, in many cases the same agencies as were involved in the Child Migration Scheme (my adoption was arranged by Barnardo's and is in many ways very questionable) have a say about whether or not our search is "appropriate”? What an insult to all of us.

I had looked forward to the introduction of Adoption Support Agencies, as I had thought that for the first time we would have agencies to help that would be totally independent of the adoption agencies of the 1940s 50s 60s and 70s when adoption practice in the UK was frankly appalling. Now it appears that is not to be.

Please Please everyone write to your MP and tell him that this new law, which at the moment is just a draft, is not what we all want. We want proper Support Agencies that can not refuse a service on a whim, as is suggested in the new draft regulations, the only way an ASA or adoption agency should be able to refuse a service is if they have sought a judicial review and received a decision from a qualified Judge in the Family Division of the High Court.. We want a proper fee structure for ASA services not ‘charge whatever you like’ service that is suggested in the current draft

Please get writing today, write to your MP at

House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA

If you haven’t already done so download the consultation package,

http://www.dfes.gov.uk/consultations...ltationId=1248

fill out the Feedback Form send it back to them let them know how wrong this law is. and that we need a service that is full independent of the adoption agencies of yesteryear.

Robin Harritt

http://harritt.net

[Disgruntled SW]

Don't forget, you only have until 31 July 2004 to get your completed Feedback form back to the DfES

Please do something about this folks.

The whole document can be read online at

http://www.dfes.gov.uk/consultations...ltationId=1248

Consultation on Access to Information & Intermediary Services

Adoption and Children Act 2002 Implementation

Draft Regulations and Guidance for Consultation

* Access to information (Pre-commencement Adoptions)

* Access to Information (Post-commencement Adoptions)

* The Registrar General’s Functions