[Romantic Old Bird]

Hello everyone, old and new faces alike!

I have been working with children and their families (or lack of them) for 20 years plus, and I have tried to teach, impart and support parenting skills to couples and singles of all varieties, abilities, genders etc.

I could bore for Britain on what makes a good and nuturing home environment for a child.

So I will!

As well as offering the basic human needs of shelter and food, it is somewhere where a child finds acceptance and encouragement, warmth in relationships, opportunities to learn and explore, and (very important) consistent and predictable boundaries.

Who offers this care is less important. In the last 20 years I have seen the 'nuclear' family set-up disintegrate on such a scale we cannot use it as a measure any longer. It seems the perfect set up, but it often isn't.

Family dynamics are complex in the extreme. 'Joined up' families, with sets and subsets of half and step siblings and the incumbent trail of parents, step parents, mum's boyfriend, girlfriend etc. Mind blowing!

So it makes sense to me that we need to look to the loving and nurturing home as the measure of care, rather than the individual units of family membership.

It is absoutely correct to say that children moving through the 'Looked After' process (in care) fare exceptionally badly in every way. Children placed in the care of foster parents experience massive disruption also - moving from short to long term care, placement to placement.

Most people think of adoption as taking on an unwanted baby or very small child. This is in fact phenomenally rare. The figures quoted above as waiting are made up of children of all ages, many of whom have significant learning, emotional and behavioural dificulties. The older the child, the more difficult to place.

Since the Children Act the onus is to keep children in their own families wherever possible. This entails first trying to assess the situation, and offering support to keep the child in his/her own home. If this breaks down, they look to the wider family, who also have to be assessed as potential carers.

This can go on for months or years. When ultimately it does break down the children are so individually traumatised that they enter the care scenario unable to fit in to the 'traditional family'. The carers are unlikely to cope without significant support and specialised resources. There are precious little of either available. So the placement fails, and they move on to another family or unit.

I am not as au fait with the niceties of adoption law. To me, that is a formality of little significance in relation to the provision of long term committed love and care to a child. I do appreciate that those people currently denied the opportunity to adopt feel strongly that they are being denied access to a fundamental human right.

However, I do know the law of parental responsibilty as it stands means that thousands, if not millions of cohabiting men are unaware that they cannot legally give consent for their child to have surgery. If they are not married to the mother at the time of the child's birth, they also have to go through the process of adoption. The vast majority do not, but it bears little relationship to their ability to parent or the depth of their relationship with their child.

So, if we take the legal component out of the equation for a moment, we are left with which people can and do offer care which will nurture the child through into adulthood.

As well as birth parents and their families, I work with single and married foster parents, and lesbian and gay couples. The latter two are admittedly less common, but I personally feel this is as much due to their lack of awareness and the consequent failure to come forward as potential carers. In the area I work in, my colleagues in Social Services have undertaken positive steps to encourage applications from everyone and anyone who can offer the warmth and stability needed.

My answer (at last) to the question Fyodor is that of course they should! The torturous machinations of Parliament may well continue to thwart the changes necessary to acheive it, although even the tory boys defied their leader to support the change this time. Sooner or later the Lords will have to acquiese.

In the meantime, if you are single, married, able bodied, disabled (another overlooked group as potential adopters) gay, bi, lesbian or whatever, and able to offer the nurturing environment a child needs, and WANT to do it, put yourself forward as a foster parent!

PHEW!