VIII. Who Can Adopt?, Page 3

Language

The question of language is of course closely related to race and ethnicity. Matching language can be a definite consideration in placing, for example, a Turkish Cypriot child, who is more likely to be placed with a Turkish family than with a Greek Cypriot family. A child who already has acquired one language is going to find the shock of changing families much greater if she has to change languages on top of everything else. But English people often forget that there are also white cultures in Britain who do not speak English as their home or first language, and not all of these are Continental immigrants. The Welsh-, Irish- and Gaelic-speaking communities of Britain are discriminated against in adoption because of their languages. There are very few children who speak Celtic languages available for adoption (i.e., who are old enough to have begun to talk), and babies from Celtic-language backgrounds are often placed in English-speaking homes as if language didn’t matter for them. I have never heard of people rejected for adoption because of their language taking their case to the courts, and would be interested to see what the results might be. But as a Welsh-speaking family we were rejected by a number of agencies solely on those grounds, although we later successfully adopted an older English-speaking child and we know other families who have done the same.

Your Citizenship and Legal Residence

Non-residence is one of the legal bars to adoption. To adopt in England and Wales you must be a resident of the UK, with the right to live here permanently, and intending to stay here. The rules are less strict in Scotland, where you need only to have lived there for a year: legal domicile is not necessary. You don’t have to be a British citizen. If you are a British citizen living abroad you cannot adopt here, unless the child is one you already know well. If you are a member of HM armed forces, see your welfare officer about special regulations which may apply to you, and also contact the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association for advice; their services are also available to former service personnel. If you are a foreign national intending to return to your own country to live before the adoption is final, you need a court order to allow you to take the child with you for adoption in your home country.

Your Marital Status and Sexuality

Until the passing of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 only single people and married couples could adopt. Gay men and lesbians and unmarried cohabiting heterosexuals could and did have children placed with them for adoption, but only one partner could legally adopt. This is no longer the case. Adoption by both members of unmarried cohabiting couples is now legal, including gay and lesbian couples.

A previous divorce is not necessarily a bar to adopting, although more than one divorce may rule you out in the eyes of many agencies. The social worker will want to know quite a lot about any previous marriages and why they ended.

Adoption by single women is not uncommon, but adoption by single men is still rare. In some cases adoption by a single person is best for a particular child (for example, one who has been seriously abused by a father may not want an adoptive home where there is a man living). Single men still find it very difficult to be assessed for adoption, because of fears about paedophiles. Single women find it much easier.

There is no particular legal reason why a trans-sexual should not be able to adopt. But British law does not yet allow for gender reassignment to be retrospective, and trans-sexuals legally remain the sex they were born. For this reason trans-sexuals cannot legally marry members of the (new) opposite sex; so if you are cohabiting only one of you will be able to adopt, just as used to be the case with heterosexual and gay couples. This is likely to change in the foreseeable future, due to rulings in 2002 in the European Court of Human Rights, declaring Britain’s ban on retrospective gender reassignment illegal, opening up the possibility that a couple including a trans-sexual will also be able to adopt as a couple.

All applicants, married or not, will be asked about their sexual relationships and other personal details of their lives.

What about Role Swapping?

There should be no problem for partners who have swapped roles. In fact it can be a plus if you are adopting a child whose background has made him unable to bond as well or quickly with women as with men. Social workers’ attitudes have relaxed considerably. What they are most interested in is whether the child will have loving and consistent care in a happy, well-functioning family, not who does the washing up or changes the oil in the car.

When we adopted our first child in the early 80s we were both working. My wife intended to give up work, but it was inconvenient to do so right away, whereas I was able to take several months off at short notice, or take the baby to work with me. The social workers were not very happy with this arrangement, but reckoned it would be OK as it was only going to be for a few weeks. Ten years and several adoptions later we had swapped roles completely, and it was a definite advantage for one placement because of our child’s history of difficult relationships with women.

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