CNS reports that Catholic adoption services are ending in England, as a result of government insistence that children be placed with same-sex couples. In the Diocese of Lancaster, “the trustees of the adoption agency … voted to cut ties with the church in order to continue the agency’s work and to protect the jobs of 200 staff involved in a range of social work.”
The other consideration rather than splitting with the bishop or bowing out of the adoption effort entirely, is to retool and serve as advocates for prospective adoptive parents instead. With millions of parentless children worldwide, it is imperative that more couples come forward to adopt these boys and girls.
Sitting back and waiting for good couples to come isn’t effective. Infighting about same-sex or single parents is a waste of energy and effort. A child will always be better off in a stable, emotionally healthy home than in foster care. The priority of church and secular adoption agencies should be to empty foster homes and institutions as much as prudently possible.
There’s no lack of work that needs to get done. Prospective parents can be identified. Classes, workshops, and seminars can be offered. Parents can be trained and prepared for adopting older children. Support groups can be set up and monitored. Catholic agencies closing up shop completely is worse than if they compromised what they felt were vital religious ideals.
3 June 2008 at 5:45 pm
Wow: “new laws compelling them to place children in the care of same-sex couples”. That’s quite ludicrous.
3 June 2008 at 7:06 pm
How many children does this leave with less options to find a home?
3 June 2008 at 10:05 pm
OK, the new laws don’t actually compel agencies to place children in the care of same-sex couples.
They prevent agencies from refusing, as a matter of policy, to assess same-sex couples as prospective adoptive parents. The actual placement decision is made, as always, in the best interests of the child, and there is nothing to stop an agency taking into account the fact that prospective adoptive parents are a same sex couple, and considering whether that has any implications for the best interests of the child.
So an agency can assess a same-sex couple and recommend against them, but this has to be a case-by-case decision. What it cannot do is aodopt a blanket rule that it will not assess same sex couples, or that it will always assess them negatively.
Todd’s suggestin is a good one, except that it knocks the funding model for the agencies sideways. They are funded by the state to conduct assessments. Nobody is offering to fund them to campaign for more people to offer themselves for assessment, or to train and support adopters and prospective adopters. The UK government funds agencies which do all that [i]and[/i] conduct assessments, but it only funds them on the condition already noted. Given its stance, there’s no obvious reason why it should fund agencies that do part only of the job.
4 June 2008 at 8:51 am
I think adoption is good by any couple as they’d be giving a home to a kid who needs it.