Babies removed from parents to meet targets claims Birmingham Lib Dem MP

11.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Fri 26th Jan 2007

John Hemming MP

Birmingham Lib Dem MP John Hemming says that babies are being removed from their parents so that councils can meet adoption targets. Mr Hemming, who has tabled a Commons motion on the issue, said it was a "national scandal". He argued that social services departments are under pressure to meet targets set by government on children in care being adopted.

In an Early Day Motion, with cross-party support from 12 MPs, he warns of "increasing numbers of babies being taken into care, not for the safety of the infant, but because they are easy to get adopted". In 2000, ministers set a target of a 50% increase in the number of children in local authority being adopted by March 2006. According to the latest available figures, the number of "looked after" children being adopted had gone up from 2,700 in 2000 to 3,700 in 2004, an increase of 37.7%. The biggest increase was in the one to four-year-old age range.

These figures would be "laudable" if it meant children were being rescued from a life in care, said Mr Hemming. But he said he had evidence from constituents, prevented from publication by contempt of court laws, that children were being separated from parents without proper grounds. And he called on the government to reveal "how many of the children that are adopted would otherwise have remained with their birth parents".

Mr Hemming pointed to figures showing an increase in the number of children aged under one being taken into care. "A thousand kids a year are being taken off their birth parents just to satisfy targets. It is a national scandal," said the Lib Dem MP.

He said children were increasingly placed under "care orders" - where they remain with their birth parents but are kept under supervision by social workers - rather than with foster parents.

And this supervision meant some social workers were "gradually taking them away from the parents, step by step, and giving them to someone else," the Birmingham Yardley MP said.

He called for more transparency in the proceedings of Family Courts and an independent watchdog to scrutinise the work of social services departments.