By Sandrea:-MY OPINION
Following the recent report in the ‘New Zealand Herald’ in which it has been reported that the Race should no longer be key criteria for social workers seeking adoptive families for children in care, Britain’s Government said – stressing that the priority must be to find a child a new home quickly.
I would agree with the Government stance on this issue. We can argue that a black child need to be place within a black family and that would have been the correct thing to do twenty years ago however, the vast contingency of mixed race family have more than double within the last decade and there can be no reason why a black child cannot be placed with a white family so long as that family as the child’s interest above their colour.
It cannot be right that a white child spend 610 days in care whereby a black child will spend over 900 days before they are considered for adoption. There are certain expectations that a child should have once they are born and when their natural parent does not offer those expectations irrespective of the reasons then it is up to the social services to ensure that this child is given the best chance of acquiring the fundamental rights that they indeed should have.
I am of the firm believe that irrespective of the fact that the adoptive parent maybe white this should not be a deterrent for that family to be barred from undertaking the adoption of a black child. It is up to the social services to ensure that the family can meet the needs of the child, in offering that child a safe environment, love, respect and allowed that child to flourish within the environ and ensure that they become productive citizen within our society.
The only concerns that I would have in a white family adopting a black child is if there are no establish monitoring facility to assist the adoptive families. If we are going to allow white families to adopt black children then there must be an effective monitoring system established in order to support these families and do not just allow them to adopt a child then leave them to fend for themselves, hoping that everything is going to be ok.
If the adoption is that of a baby then the dynamics change as they are able to have better control over the manner in which they raise the child however, when we talk about adoption of children between the ages of five to ten then this is where the support mechanism must be effective as those children have already form certain opinions of themselves and could be exposed to negative information regarding their perspective adoptive parent especially when they are white families.
Although, I have no problems with white adopting black, I hope this is not one of the government schemes to get rid of children quickly out of care and just adopting them out then leaving the adoptive parents without the necessary help and assistance that they need. I hope this initiative will work and that many more children will leave care home and go into loving and caring family environment, irrespective of whether it is a white or other ethnic group providing the home environment and the stability these children need.
Bureaucracy or interracial clap-trap should be the last concern of Social services in the placement of a child for adoption, the fundamental concerns should be can this family cope with the child and how well the child will develop in the environment and being white should not be criteria for keeping black children longer in care because the social services and their bigoted behaviour believe that a white family do not have the ability to care effectively for a black child.
This is the 21st century and we must start getting rid of these archaic attitudes. There are several white families who are caring for black children and if I might say so are doing a fantastic job of it and we should be encouraging more white families to adopt black children not treating them like vampire, and putting obstacles in their path. Let’s hope that we can begin to get rid of old stereotype and give the children in care hope and the white families who want to adopt them the opportunity to do so.
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