Children advertised like pets for sale

Anonymity doesn't apply in the case of adoption. It is hypocritical, and the result is distasteful

Children can be openly advertised for adoption, which can be hurtful to the biological parent Photo: ALAMY

By Christopher Booker

5:13PM BST 24 Aug 2013

There are few things our “child protection” system is keener to enforce than the rigorous secrecy rules that it claims are vital to protect the identity of children who have been removed from their families. Although the laws passed by Parliament only require measures to be taken to conceal the identity of the children themselves, whose names or photographs must never be published, the courts have widened this out to make it illegal to identify anyone involved in care proceedings.

This is why when journalists wish to write about all those cases where the system seems to have made some tragic mistake, we are strictly forbidden, except very rarely, to name the judges, the local authorities or anyone else responsible for these travesties of justice – even the part of the country where they took place. All this is supposedly in the name of protecting the identity of the children.

But when it comes to sending these children for adoption, all the rules are suspended. Consider, for instance, 22 pages published on the internet by the British Association for Adoption and Fostering, a charity which earns £2  million a year for arranging for children to be placed in new homes. The 114 children pictured, almost all with their real names, are given glutinous little profiles, describing them as “bubbly”, “bright”, “loving”, “likes cuddles”, “gorgeous, smiley, happy little boy”, and so forth. At least these don’t reveal where in the country the children come from, which means that their parents may be spared the agony of seeing their child being advertised, much in the same way that pedigree dogs or cats are offered for sale.

But I also have a similar advertisement from a national newspaper, in which all the children named and photographed are from the same council area, so that anyone living in Tower Hamlets might immediately have been able to recognise the child who suddenly disappeared from a neighbour’s house. In the case of one of these children, I am told, the parents sat quietly through the court proceedings by which their beloved daughter was being removed from them. But when the judge agreed that the local authority could advertise their child by name, the father’s patience finally snapped. He threw an empty plastic cup across the courtroom, which fell way short of the judicial bench. The judge angrily ruled that for this contempt of court the father should be removed at once to a prison cell. If I were to name that judge I could equally be punished for contempt – but only, of course, to protect the identity of the child.