Last chance

The following is part of an e-mail I received from the DfES which has taken over ministerial responsibility for adoption from the DoH .... Of course, as the consultation document [on access to information] makes clear, we welcome the written comments of any person with an interest in adoption and guarantee that all written responses will be carefully considered before the regulations and guidance are finalised. We are also looking at developing more detailed good practice guidance before the regulations come into force in September 2005 and this may present further opportunities for service users to contribute. ....Ӕ The consultation document is available as PDFs on-line at [url]http://www.children.doh.gov.uk/adoption[/url] It is also available on the DfES' e-consultation system. This allows users to view the document on screen and to provide written comments/feedback on-line. This site can be accessed at [url]http://www.dfes.gov.uk/consultations/conDetails.cfm?consultationId=1248[/url]

Do you really want a social worker to be the person who decides whether it is "appropriate" for your birth relative to be able to find you? Or are you like me? I reckon the only person who should be deciding who should contact me is me. Not some adoptive parent, not some birthmother who wants to keep me a secret from my brothers and sisters and definitely not some social worker from the agency that dumped me in this mess in the first place.

So is that's it then? No one else bothered? Everyone of you happy that the only way you'll be able to find a birth relative is if the social worker at the adoption agency thinks it's "appropriate"? No one worried that it might cost hundreds of pounds? No one concerned that it may become illegal for anyone in the UK not registered as an ASA to give advice on support groups such as this one? Does no one care that a law that some of us fought hard to get, may in the end make things more difficult for many birth relatives not easier. It doesn't have to be like that. This is a consultation exercise if enough people tell them that this just isn't good enough, it will be improved. If only politicians and adoption workers have a say, then it won't be. But I don't suppose anyone will, were British aren't we, we'll just leave it for now and have a good old whinge about how awful it is for poor birth relatives, when it's far too late to do anything about it.

So, now that we've all downloaded the consultation package from [url]http://www.dfes.gov.uk/consultations/conDetails.cfm?consultationId=1248[/url] and had time to digest it. What answers are you people thinking of giving to each of the questions? Which questions do you think are most important for us all to answer? Questions 7 through 10 look to be the most important to me but we should also be answering the questions about the ACR, what do you all think? Robin Harritt [url]http://harritt.net[/url]