Thread by @ogleforth

Adoption: a 🧵.

It's exactly three years since our daughter's social worker told us that they couldn't provide us with a passport for her, because it turned out (despite their previous insistence otherwise) that she wasn't a British citizen.

The background: every UK local authority pledges to provide every child taken into their care with citizenship. However, because the UK govt charges more than £1k per application, local authorities routinely let that issue slide.

This leaves the most vulnerable children in our society stateless unless - and until - they are adopted. White baby girls are most likely to be adopted (you can work out the rest), so this disproportionately affects Global Majority boys who are in the care system.

I use the term "the care system" advisedly, since it is out of date, and I should, rightly, use the term "Looked After" to describe these children. However, these children are NOT being 'looked after' in terms of their citizenship and identity.

In 2020, I started a UK govt petition to "Exempt looked after children from citizenship fees."

It got 670 signatures.

During the same period, a petition asking for gyms to stay open during the pandemic got 621,440 signatures.

That same year, twin boys were threatened with deportation precisely because their local authority had not provided them with citizenship when they became 'Looked After.' theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/j…

Meanwhile, amongst innumerable other problems and challenges, children who remain 'looked after' will find that, should they wish to apply to further education courses later in life, they will be charged international fees, despite never having left this country.

We keep a five-year-to-a-page diary for our daughter, which is why I noticed this anniversary. At the meeting following this bombshell, I offered to split the costs of citizenship with the LA. They laughed. I said I was serious. They said they'd look into it. They didn't.

This wasn't, by any means, the most disturbing or problematic aspect of the adoption system, but it's the one I feel able to write about publicly right now.

I got much-valued retweets of my original petition by @lemnsissay & @Nigella_Lawson, which no doubt boosted the numbers, but I'm genuinely lost as to what we can expect if we're more interested in gym access than children's rights. If I start another campaign, would you sign it?

#Adoption #LookedAfterChildren #LGBTAdoption

UPDATE:
Thanks to everyone who has replied.
@PRCBC1
have informed me that, thanks to their brilliant work, as of 16th June (next week!), all looked after children will be exempt from the UK citizenship registration fee. prcbc.org/news-updates/

From that article:
"The failure of the Home Secretary to consider children’s best interests in setting this fee was found to be unlawful by the High Court in the case of PRCBC, O & A v Secretary of State for the Home Department in December 2019. [cont.]

[cont.] This was confirmed by the Court of Appeal in dismissing the Home Secretary’s appeal against that finding in February 2021."

So our Home Secretary appealed to prevent children from being exempted from this fee. So much work still to be done...