An independent adoption agency has been criticised for advertising children in a newspaper.
AdoptionPlus placed full page advertisements in Cambridgeshire newspapers highlighted real children available for adoption, the Telegraph reports.
The ads featured two boys, a four year-old and a three year-old, telling potential adopters:
“You don’t have to have had children; you don’t need to be in a relationship; you don’t need to be heterosexual; you don’t need to be young and you don’t need to be perfect. You just need to really want to make a difference in a child’s life.”
Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming said he doubted whether the advertisements would work. “It is about box ticking rather than finding them a good home.”
But Joanne Alper of Adoptionplus said they needed to draw attention to the plight of children in care.
“Basically the situation is there are four thousand children in the UK who need a family and a lot of authorities are struggling to find them. There is a lot of pressure on them to try and be a bit more creative. This advert is a new thing. It is us trying something different and it is unusual.”
She added:
“It is very easy when you just switch on the news and they say ‘blah blah blah’ but this kind of thing makes it seem more real. We just hope this could inspire interest. We try to get rid of myths like that you have to be in a relationship to adopt. I think the fact that there are so many children in the UK that need a home is desperately sad and we want to do everything we can.”
I would be interested to see what the adoption authorities would think of little old me, my child once subject of a S.47 investigation with me, his father, the presumed perpetrator, ha ha! On a serious note, people like myself could make a contribution to help less fortunate others even if not as parents; I’m skilled in several ways and regular time commitments could be made in some useful way to make a contribution to these poor children’s lives . Sadly, we wont; the system distrusts us, I guess, as presumed perpetrators, and having been bitten unfairly by the system, we certainly distrust them. I wouldn’t advise a parent to go anywhere near social services even if he or she had some ostensible cause to do so. Social workers spread poison.
The newspaper could make it a regular section, a right revenue builder. Humans one week, animals the next. They could even have a section for pythons that have grown too large or stick insects that have turned into praying mantises. Stuffed full of life, like in the Casbah.
Once they have the pipeline built though they’ll need a steady stream of children to fill it. I expect social services will do their best.