One of my clients is an amazing lady called Robynne. She has a family of children that she has saved from foster care. She has loved them and opened her heart to them when the authorities would have been happy to let them languish without anyone to love them.
Her family now lives here in the UK and they are trying to adopt another child. This is proving very difficult because on nonsensical legislation. Please read over the email (below) that she sent to me. Lets get behind her and her to offer a deserving child the family life that he / she is being deprived of.
Sian.
Most of you know that my husband and I have both biological and adopted children. We are particularly passionate about children who desperately need families but languish in foster care instead. In the US we were trainers, teachers and advocates of foster care and adoption. Here, we have been thrust into the limelight about an issue we feel strongly about:
Interracial adoption.
We've been turned down to adopt a mixed race sibling group who has been looking for a forever family for about 2 years. Simply because we are white. We've even been told that it is better for a child to NEVER have a forever family of their own than to have one a different colour. We could not disagree more.
What's even more frustrating, is that there is a double standard in place...fully black couples, for example, are allowed to adopt half black and half white children, but white couples can't do the same. As a result, if you are a child of colour in the UK, your chances of being split from your biological brothers and sisters or never being adopted is extremely high.
We want this to change. Race should be a factor in deciding adoptive placements, but only ONE of the many that you must consider. Every family is unique and every child is unique. We just believe that, in a system which says that old, young, convicted criminals, singles, couples, gay, straight, married or not, rich or poor, etc. can be considered for a child, race should not automatically block loving families from adopting children of mixed races.
If you agree, we would be so thrilled for you to sign our petition, and forward it on to anyone you think might be interested:
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/adoptionchange/
Ian and I are going to be on BBC1's The Big Questions this Sunday at 10am discussing the issue, if you want to hear more about the issue and problems it creates in the UK.
Robynne Cole
Managing Director
Sierra Distribution, Ltd.
www.armsreach.co.uk
Please get behind them by leaving a comment here, re tweeting this information and signing the petition.
thanks. xx
