I guarantee that adoption teams up and down the country are constantly told that they aren’t working hard enough to encourage potential adopters from diverse backgrounds. Which begs the question, are gay and BAME couples fast tracked through the system to tick some diversity boxes?
It should never be about not being heterosexual or not being white, it should be about who are the best, most informed, most secure people.
Seems to be a common thread in these stories of child murder that the “parents” (using scare quotes deliberately) were completely and utterly unprepared for the reality of caring for a distressed and traumatised infant who was a stranger to them. The fact we’ve had several cases like this over the last decade suggests that something has changed over the years. Easy to assume that the process of being approved is less vigorous, and babies are being inadequately safeguarded after placement.
I honestly feel as if parents in general, adoptive and birth, are less and less prepared for infants every year.
I don't know if it's because family size has shrunken since widespread contraception so people have less familiarity with infants until they have one, or whether it's the relatively ease of a life with more technological advances making adults lazier; but you'd think with knowledge easily available to everyone at any time that early years understanding would be better than ever; but people seem more and more expectant of having children as like completing a video game level (ticked the house, marriage and dog box, better have kids) and less and less capable of recognising the impact they have on children.
There's just this idea they're these pre-assigned personalities - a baby isn't crying because that's literally a baby's only way to communicate, they're 'spoilt' and 'annoying'. Also there's the narcissism that the parent is the 'main character', like I think sharing parental stressors is a good way to vent, but somewhere along the line, it's become acceptable for people to speak about having children as if it's something that happened to them, and not something they chose - or in these two's case, eagerly persuaded.
Gotta say, also a massive red flag that the partner was safeguarding lead - I work in a CYP field, and safeguarding is incredibly backward on this.
There's a lack of Asian and male applications, so our council explicitly welcomes applicants from either of these backgrounds, if not both, so males benefit from positive discrimination.
In addition, a DSL (designated safeguarding lead) is a role which generally means better pay as well as potentially promotion to SLT (senior leadership team), and titles and pay packets have long been thrown at men in education to keep them (see the glass escalator effect also seen in nursing.) rather than decided on applicant's trustworthiness with children. Safeguarding also brings you into contact with vulnerable pupils in a way that a standard teaching role may not.
