Rise in adopted children living with gay couples

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One in every 20 children adopted from care goes to live with a gay couple, official figures revealed yesterday.

The number of adoptions by same sex couples is rising by more than 50 per cent a year in many parts of the country, encouraged by social workers.

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In some towns where councils are most sympathetic to the gay rights cause, the likelihood of a child in care being adopted by a same sex couple is as high as one in five.

The figures - obtained from local authorities under freedom of information rules - show that gay adoption has become common in the four years since Tony Blair's reforms first made it possible for homosexual couples legally to adopt a child.

Numbers of adoptions of children in care rose to 3,700 last year, up around 35 per cent from the level seven years ago when the Prime Minister was championing adoption reform as an "eye-catching initiative".

However, Mr Blair's attempt to make adoption easier and find permanent new parents for the 60,000-plus children stuck in the care system has failed to reach its target of a 50 per cent increase in adoptions.

Under Labour, social workers have been pressing for more gay adoption.

Advice from the councils' umbrella body, the Local Government Association, has praised authorities that encourage gay adoption and instructed social workers to strike off from their list of potential adoptive parents anybody who disagrees with gay adoption.

And author Lynette Burrows was warned by Scotland Yard that she was being recorded as responsible for a "homophobic incident" after she criticised gay adoption on BBC Radio Five.

The new figures show that the highest rate of gay adoptions is in Brighton, where one in every five children adopted goes to a gay couple. In Brighton, ten gay couples have adopted children since 2004.

In Manchester, seven children have been adopted by gay couples.

Some 47 gay adoptions were approved in the year to April 2006 among 67 authorities that gave details.

In the following six months, there were a further 36 approvals, an increase in the rate of approval of more than 50 per cent.

For the 12 months to April 2006, the number of gay adoptions approved by social workers and the courts went up by 34 per cent.

Until Mr Blair's 2002 Adoption Act children could be adopted only by married couples or by individuals.

Gays were permitted to adopt if they applied as individuals rather than a couple.

In practice, children who had been damaged by sexual abuse by a man were commonly given to lesbians for adoption on the grounds that they would benefit from living in a home without men.

Controversy over gay adoption has led to a number of clashes between opponents of gay rights, in particular Christians, and social work chiefs.

Two social workers on Merseyside were moved away from adoption duties with Sefton council after objecting to gay adoption; a member of Wiltshire's adoption panel, Ed Greening, was removed after making clear his opposition, and a magistrate in Sheffield, Andrew McClintock, has been forced to resign from family court duties because of his objections.

The Roman Catholic Church has threatened to close its nine adoption and fostering agencies if the new Sexual Orientation Regulations - due to come into force in April - compel them to place children with gay couples.

Tony Blair's use of adoption to try to portray himself as a sympathetic to family values was revealed in 2000 when a memo from the Prime Minister to his advisers was leaked.

In it, Mr Blair wrote that concerns about the spread of gay adoption were "rubbish".

His memo read: "On the family, we need two or three eye-catching initiatives that are entirely conventional in terms of their attitude to the family.

"Despite the rubbish about gay couples, the adoption issue worked well. We need more.

"I should personally be associated with as much of this as possible."

 

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