2011: Stories That Changed the Way We Parent Now

Stories that have been popular in 2011 in regards to parents such as the gender-neutral Parenting and the digital classroom – which are both, reacting to the changing trends in society.

•  Parenting-related topics led Facebook’s most shared list
• Gender-Neutral Parenting  From the parents in Toronto who are raising their child, Storm, withour revealing teh baby’s sex to the proliferation of parents accepting their boys desire for tutus and their grils fro a mohawk gender-neutral, gender-free and gender choice dominated many conversations about parenting this year.
• The Digital Classroom: All year, Times reporters have been grading teh digital school with articles looking at the value of technology in the classroom. At best, results have been mixed. For every creative and laudable use of software or gadgets, there’s research reflecting limited success. We asked if a tablet computer for babies was really the worst toy of 2011, and in nearly the same breath considered apps for autistic children, educations apps for 3 year olds and apps for travelling. We’re unsure about how we should, as a society, bring technology into the lives of all children. I wrote here  in November that “digital schooling” seems to mean two different things for two different classes of student. I suspect the benefits are falling across the usual divide: “virtual schools that supplement active students and families learning at home, and virtual schools that substitute for active students learning with teachers in schools.” Many of you agreed. When we see schools, whether or not our children are enrolled in them, investing limited resources on unproven tools, we worry. There’s no doubt we’ll be talking about technology and education into 2012 and beyond.

 

http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/30/2011-stories-that-changed-the-way-we-parent-now/

Why Books Are Better than e-Books for Children

An article in relation to old methods vs. technology with the difference between books and e-books and how children’s reading is better when read to by a parents as the parent interacts with the child while reading as well allows the child to understand the book more clearly listening to their parents and can understand it more. Compared with an e-reader that reads to the child.

•  The answer, according to Lisa Guernsey of the New America Foundation’s Early Education Initiative, is that when we read with a child on an e-reader, we may actually impede our child’s ability to learn.
• Ms. Guernsey interpreted recent research on childhood literacy for Time magazine, and found that parents interact differently with children over an e-reader than over a physical book.
• That difference may make children slower to read and comprehend a story.
• Children sitting with a parent while an e-reader reads to them understand significantly less of what’s read than those hearing a parent read
• Researchers at Temple University, where the study was done, noted that parents reading books aloud regularly asked children questions about the book: “What do you think will happen next?” Parents sitting with the child while a device read to them (like a LeapPad or some iPad apps) didn’t ask these questions, or relate images or incidents in the book to the child’s real life.
• Children whose parents talk to them about what they’re reading gain reading skills faster, but children reading with parents from digital rather than physical books aren’t getting as much of that kind of interaction.

 

http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/28/why-books-are-better-than-e-books-for-children/

Early Learning centre window display redesign

 

Some idea that came from a brief set by Early Learning Centre for the redesign of their window display. This email was sent from John Lyle when he undertook this brief. This email shows how the market around children is changing and ways to slightly realign the business to better suit the changing market for kids play. There are 13 main points in all.

 

 

Ideas for improvement and promotions

•  In writing this proposal, we had rather a lot of ideas for promotions and ways to slightly realign the business offer to better suit the changing market for kids play.
• Some of these you may have already considered and dismissed, but hopefully some of the others will give you food for thought and show you the level of thinking and experience we bring as a team to something as ‘on show’ as your window displays.

 

1. Playing together with kids

• One thing that is lacking in your POS is parental involvement. It is almost certainly a policy decision to not use children with their parents, playing together, but for us, it is one of the key differences in your offer, to that of your peers.
• The play you offer is not just designed to allow the child to be ‘dumped’ for a while to make their own fun, it is more about helping the child develop and grow through a specifically designed route. This takes parental involvement, not parental abdication.
• The biggest single change in parenting in the last ten years, which you have adapted to serve is this parental involvement. This is not reflected in what you do and it could be. With the right image treatment, it could be a sensational approach.

 

2. Outdoor play

• You have a great offer for outdoor play. The catalogue and website show some exciting structures and some innovative toys, but nothing that allows playing outdoors to be made easier in bad weather.
• We believe you should add play clothes to your offer. We understand that there is a potential conflict with the space of Mothercare, but in the bigger stores, this would be a sure fire winner and one you could test on a small scale anyway.
• We work very closely with Linda and Tomas of Kozikidz who produce Swedish designed kids clothing for the under 8’s. Their strapline is ‘designed in Sweden for playing outdoors’ and they would be a perfect partner for ELC as their quality is high, safety paramount and prices, pretty reasonable. Rather like your own offer!
• From a design perspective, this offers a real viable alternative to only being able to promote indoor play and creativity in the winter months.
• Again, this is backed by a very strong feeling amongst parents to get their kids out doing healthy things (like we were made to do), whatever the weather. You can see how much this is in the public consciousness with the whole move towards a ‘Change 4 Life’ programme being funded by the Government. We have seen a marked change in this attitude in the last three years since we opened BeWILDerwood.

 

3. Non H& S supervised play morning

• A recurring theme from your managers was how the play morning was rather less fun that it used to be, because of the stupid Health and Safety rules you now have to operate under.
• Our idea is to lift this for one morning a week. Yes you can make the parents sign a disclaimer, but by getting them into the store and playing properly, you get what we describe as ‘the benefit of proximity’. What this means in everyday language is that people who hang about with you and your brand a lot, tend to do a lot more business with you.
• If you get them back into the habit of visiting the store on a regular basis to play with their kids, you will get them buying. And again, we would suggest trialling it and see what parents think.

 

4. Tea and coffee for parents – and free squash for kids

• Now we appreciate that hot drinks and kids don’t go too well together, so we’re not suggesting you start hosting coffee mornings, but adding drinks for parents may make their play morning a little bit more enticing.
• Adding FREE soft drinks of the healthy variety for kids at any time could make a real difference. Particularly if you can get sponsorship from someone like Robinsons or another credible drinks supplier, who wants to be seen with the ELC brand. For them, it gives them access to your market at a time when people are switching to cheaper supermarket alternatives and for them it gets their perfect target audience hanging out with their product in a brilliant fun environment.

 

5. Changing facilities for kids

• This is obviously available in some of the larger stores, but it isn’t much publicised. We didn’t see a single poster letting parents know. Maybe it’s meant to be learnt through parental telepathy, but telling parents you have a facility that they can use freely will bring them in. again, it promotes the parents hanging out in your stores, which can only be good for long term growth.

 

6. Talking, learning and fun

• There are loads of ‘experts’ out there these days and you could become the home to some of them. we’re not saying that you should have Jo Frost Super nanny in every store every week, but someone who is of interest to your parental public could be an interesting draw.
• It could be a play expert, a modelling expert, a craft expert or even someone who could do kiddy singing (if you have a mini karaoke machine to promote) to make it feel fun and give them an opportunity to play.
• Its harder and harder to bring up a child, so may need all the help they can get. It need not be a celebrity, but someone who has experience and solid advice would make a good ‘voice’ for the company.
• You do have this ‘voice’ in place already in Dr Richard Woolfson, but you have to go through hoops to get to the information on the website and there is no evidence of his involvement instore.

 

7. Bigger promotions

• If the aim of the promotions such as ‘Win 1 of 5 wooden art easels’ is to gather names for the Big Birthday Club, it may be missing a trick as it is not really big enough to capture the imagination. It was some time in looking at the offer in detail, before we worked out that there were only five easels in total! We were looking at five easels per store at £20 each, with 215 stores, wow that’s £21,500!, but no, it’s nearer £100!
• The key to this could be partnership. If you can find the right brand partners to provide bigger prizes, you will get a much bigger take up on the promotion.
• The second simple rule is to incentivise (or KPI) the store staff on getting sign-ups. There needs to be internal competition between the managers that they are rewarded for getting people to sign up.
• The third simple rule is showing the previous winners in store. Few people believe that promotional winners are genuine, so they don’t bother entering in the first place. If you have a mini board, near the counter, showing previous winners, it would give you the opportunity to engage and encourage entry from the potential customers.

 

8. Split testing for windows

• One advantage of having a large estate is split testing different window designs. We have proposed some ideas that may not be for all and as such we would suggest that you produce some potential designs digitally and try them in a window that is representative of others. That way you can measure the effect of one store against a known set of data (ie what effect the other promotion had in previous period compared to the effect that this promotion had over the previous period).
• If it’s shown to work, then you can roll it out. If you get into real refinement, you could even introduce regional variations as is done by some of the bigger retailers.

 

9. Boxed in Window areas

• This is feedback directly from store. It seemed logical to them (and to us) to box in the window areas. This doesn’t mean they need to be fully boxed, so you can’t see inside them, but maybe at mid height to allow a more logical layout and consistency by store. It need not be expensive, but possibly something as simple as picket fencing, which would continue the rustic style approach in the store furniture.

 

10. Art area for kids to display

• In theory, having an art area would be losing some of your sales areas, but in certain stores, you have dead space already that is crying out for content.
• With the old programme Vision On, the highlight was the ‘Gallery’. If you sent your work in, they may display it on the telly. For us budding artists, this was a must see piece of viewing. They always made it clear that none of the work could be returned however and you could do the same.
• If you have an art area, you can display it for as long as you want, and then dispose of it. Maybe you could even do a picture of the budding Picasso posing in front of their picture. Digital cameras ensure that this need not have an onerous ongoing cost and a screen in store could display the stars in rotation.

 

11. Linked promotions to outdoor play areas (Eg BeWILDerwood)

• We previously suggested that you could ‘hang out’ with other brands with the soft drinks idea, but the same could be said for some of the better known and better quality outdoor play and adventure parks.
• We are obviously biased in recommending BeWILDerwood but in the best BBC language, other parks are available!
• This gives the advantage of linking your imaginative, but predominantly indoor play, with the fun of their outdoor play and vice versa.
• Most will offer family tickets or day tickets and these could make far more appealing promotional prizes. They could also be linked regionally if there was something strong in the area – at the discretion of your obviously intelligent managers.

 

12. Events

• You could do much more with events as they give people reason to continually revisit the stores. They do take a little effort – and not always an expensive one at that, but can be very engaging and fun for families.
• You essentially provide the platform for the parents and/or children to join in and have fun with some simple ideas as follows:

Mothers day

• Card making for Mummy. The child comes in with Dad and they either pay to get involved or use the crafting area you set up to produce a kid oriented card for Mummy. What works best in our experience is to make them free and use simple cheap materials to get them into your store and in the habit of crafting as kids.

Easter

• An Easter Egg hunt is great fun for kids and could get them rooting out clues, vouchers, sweets, pictures and anything little (and possibly end of line). It’s a lovely way to get people to have a real look around at the store and what you actually do stock.

Fathers Day

• Probably more likely than getting Dads to bring their kids in, is Mums bringing their kids into make a card for Dad. As you would have guessed, the idea is pretty similar to the one above.

Story telling

• Another huge ‘back to the future’ growth area is reading with kids. It’s the best way for children to learn to read and they love it. We have introduced story telling at BeWILDerwood and it is the most popular thing we do on any single day.
• As well as having play sessions, you could introduce a reading session for kids. In the bigger stores, you have enough space to host them, so it would be great to get reading set in such a lovely environment and it builds your brand with really positive associations.

 

13. And finally

• One area we will criticise and criticise quite hard is in the design of the price reduction stickers. These are plastered all over the creative materials to show their generous 20% price reduction.
• (insert pic of Price reduction – Creative promo and next to Price reduction – unloved stock)
• But the choice of sticker is exactly the same as that for the unloved stock.
• You are treating your Creative materials promo in the same way as you do with your discounted and end of line stock. This is not adding value, it is just cheapening the product and making the potential buyer suspicious as to whether they will ever see the store or the product again if they come back to re-buy it. It may even be having a detrimental effect in some product ranges.
• Sorry to be so harsh, but this is a serious error in our opinion.

Literacy fears as four million children don’t own a single book

Literacy fears as four million children don’t own a single book

 

• Almost four million children in the UK do not own a book
• number of children growing up without books is rising, with poorer youngsters more likely to miss out.
• The latest report by the National Literacy Trust, based on a survey of 18,000 youngsters, reveals a third – 3.8million – do not have books of their own.
• boys are more likely to be without books than girls
• children eligible for free school meals – are more likely to not own a book.
• 7.6 per cent of pupils who have books of their own are reading below the expected level
• 75% of children who read nine or more books a month read above the level expected of them, compared with 28.6% of those who read no books in a month.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2070032/Literacy-fears-million-children-dont-single-book.html

Obesity crisis in schools

15th Dec

An article in regards to the increasing obesity in England, with more then one in three children being too fat by age 11.

 

Obesity crisis in schools: How one child in three is too fat by the age of 11

• NHS data reveals 19 per cent of Year 6 children obese
• London has highest proportion of obese children
• Obesity more common in towns and cities than rural areas
• One child in three is overweight when they leave primary school at the age of 11
• Almost a fifth are classed as obese, meaning they are so fat they risk knocking years off their lives.
•  Experts warn that many of these youngsters will stay fat for the rest of their lives, putting them at greater risk of heart disease, diabetes and other serious illnesses.
• 33.4 per cent of children in Year 6, the final year of primary school, are overweight or obese.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2074057/Obesity-crisis-primary-schools-11-year-olds-grossly-overweight.html

Will The Next Generation Be Worse Off Than Current Generations?

7th Dec

The next generation are set to be worse off than current generations due to the financial crises as well as the increasing amounts of health issues including obesity unhealthy eating habits and lack of physical activity.

Will The Next Generation Be Worse Off Than Current Generations?

• financial future of the young is looking more grim than the future once did for older generations
•  58% of Massachusetts citizens polled for a recent WBUR article. The problems aren’t just financial

“Because of the increasing rates of obesity, unhealthy eating habits, and physical inactivity, we may see the first generation that will be less healthy and have a shorter life expectancy than their parents,”

U.S. Surgeon General at the time, Richard Carmona

http://charlestown.patch.com/articles/will-the-next-generation-be-worse-off-than-current-generations-a7c03e62

Most Britons believe children will have worse lives than their parents – poll

4th Dec

More facts in regards to how the next generations will be worst off then the current generations due to the bad economic crises and the lack of jobs within Britian. As well as the high pricing of housing etc

Most Britons believe children will have worse lives than their parents – poll

• Current generation of children will have a lower standard of living than their parents, as concern about the economic crisis hardens into long-term pessimism, a new poll shows.
• Some 64% of those questioned believed it was unlikely that today’s youth would have a better life than their parents, while just 32% thought it was likely. When asked whether their children would have a higher or lower quality of life when they reached their age, just 23% said they believed it would be higher, while 35% said it would be lower, with 32% saying it would be about the same.

“The central economic issue is how to stimulate productive investment when public finances are constrained. I focus on three economic priorities. The need for financial reform, for example through a British Investment Bank. The need to promote better workplaces that engage employees… And the need to use public sector power… as a coherent driver of the private sector investment equation.”

David Miliband

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/dec/03/britons-children-lives-parents-poll?newsfeed=true

Crisis on maternity wards as births to women over 40 soar 70% in ten years

28th Nov

The increasing number of women having children over the age of 40. This is proving a difficultly due to the shortage in midwifes, but this is made worst by the fact that older women having children usually experience more problems during pregnancy and labour therefore require more attention. Which is proving very difficult and an added cost for the economy.

Crisis on maternity wards as births to women over 40 soar 70% in ten years

• A baby boom among women aged over 40 is fuelling a crisis on maternity wards, midwives are warning.
• Nearly 28,000 women from this age group gave birth last year, a rise of more than 70 per cent since 2001.
• The trend is putting pressure on maternity services because older mothers are far more likely to suffer complications during labour, according to a report from the Royal College of Midwives.
• Older mothers are at more risk of the high blood pressure condition pre-eclampsia, premature births or the foetus becoming unwell just before the labour.
• Consequently midwives and obstetricians are increasingly having to attend to these women, meaning they have less time to care for others on the wards.
• In 2001 there were 16,210 births to women aged over 40 but this rose to 27,731 last year. The RCM warns this dramatic increase is contributing to a ‘looming crisis’ in maternity services
• The report warns that the situation is being made worse by a ‘chronic shortage’ of midwives, as staffing levels have simply not kept pace with the country’s soaring birth rate.

The birth rate has increased by 22 per cent since 2001, up from 594,634 to 723,165 last year. But by contrast, the number of midwives has only increased by 15 per cent over the same period, from 18,048 to 20,790.

Cathy Warwick, chief executive of the Royal College of Midwives, said: ‘It needs to be recognised across the UK that demands are made on maternity services, not just from high birth rates, but also from the increasing complexity of births.The increasing age of women giving birth adds to this, but other issues such as rising obesity also lead to increasing demands on midwives’ time.

Belinda Phipps, chief executive of National Childbirth Trust, the UK’s largest charity for parents, said: ‘The greater likelihood of older women experiencing complications during pregnancy and birth means additional midwifery time is needed to provide appropriate care and help these women achieve a healthy birth.’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2064944/Crisis-maternity-wards-births-women-40-soar-70-years.html

Too young, too slow: sad state of youth

28th Nov

A survey carried out in Australia alliterating the fact that most kids cannot carry out basic forms of exercise and prefer to sit in front of the TV. As one Principle has suggested, we need to take a few action not just one – we need to target all behaviours – eating, screen time and physical activity to see any types of results or change.

Too young, too slow: sad state of youth

• Australian children are too inactive
• more than half of the primary students and almost three-quarters of the high school students spend more than the recommended time each day in front of a TV, computer or other screen.
• Ability to carry out some basic physical skills correctly, such as jumping and throwing a ball, has declined since 2004
• Louise Hardy, principal investigator of the NSW Schools Physical Activity and Nutrition Survey “We have to target all behaviours – eating, screen time and physical activity. No one action is going to be the panacea to fix this,”

http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/diet-and-fitness/too-young-too-slow-sad-state-of-youth-20111120-1npei.html

 

Why we couldn’t adopt in Britain: Three of these couples adopted from abroad and the reasons they were rejected by British agencies will leave you in despair

New figures show that last year only 3,050 children were adopted from 65,000 children in care – eight per cent fewer than in 2007.

Many blame social workers for turning down prospective parents for the most spurious reasons.

The Mail spoke to four couples who, rejected by the UK adoption process, found other ways to fulfil their dreams.

TOO WHITE

Stevan Whitehead, 55, who runs a building company, and his wife Ellie, 60, a special needs teacher, were turned down by seven UK adoption agencies in 1996 for being ‘too white’.

The couple, from West London, went on to adopt their two children Ossie, 14, and Veronica, 13 (pictured), from Guatemala in 1999. Stevan says:

Walking nervously into the hotel lobby, Ellie and I finally caught sight of the little boy and girl we’d waited so long to meet.

The months of paperwork, stress, raised and shattered hopes were forgotten as the three-year-boy and 18-month-old girl reached up for a cuddle.

It was as if we’d always known them. From that first moment on, they felt like our children.

Yet that meeting wasn’t taking place in Britain. We’d had to travel all the way to Guatemala to make our dream of parenthood possible.

My wife and I were turned down for adoption in the UK — not because the agencies thought we were unsuitable parents, but because we were deemed ‘too white’.

We first approached our local authority, Hounslow, in West London, to ask whether we could be considered to adopt in early 1996, following years of failed IVF.

The answer was blunt. ‘We don’t have a need for you. We have more than enough white, middle-class parents waiting to adopt.’

We were absolutely furious. We’d said from the outset that we were perfectly willing to consider any child, of any race, but we were told that wasn’t the way things were done.

Ethnic guidelines in adoption are one of only a handful of areas of life in Britain where it is still lawful for public officials to discriminate on grounds of race as they try to match children to prospective parents of the same ethnicity.

To be dismissed in just ten seconds flat with the tick of a box felt so petty. I felt like shouting: ‘There’s so much more to us than skin colour, if you could just be bothered to listen!’

My wife works as a special needs teacher and I’m a linguist, who speaks Croatian and Russian. We could offer a child — any child — so much, but the system was completely unyielding.

Our concern going into the process was that our ages might be an issue, if anything, but while that was taken into account, it was not deemed to be the main problem. We were white, and therefore surplus to demand.

Severely disappointed, but determined to stay positive, we decided to try to adopt a child from abroad instead.

Three years, several thousand pounds and many glitches later, we finally flew out to collect our two children from Central America. They were in a foster home together, but are not blood-related.

Or, I should say, collect one of our children — British government inefficiency over providing essential paperwork meant we could take only Veronica home, leaving poor Ossie behind.

It was another six months before we were able to collect him. We were so worried he would hate us for abandoning him. There were tears from all three of us on that first flight home.

Eleven years later, I can safely say that we have two remarkably well-adjusted and happy teenagers.
We’ve taken them back to Guatemala to see the famous Easter celebrations, explore the Mayan ruins and even sample the street food — we want them to know every aspect of their culture and feel proud of it.

Raising them has been fantastic. As any parent will tell you, there’s so much more to being a happy family than all having the same skin colour.

It makes me furious to think of the children who are being denied a family life because of this ridiculous rule.

 

TOO SOUTHERN

Anna Francis, 39, former stockbroker and author of Russian Adoption: A Practical Guide (russianadoptionguide.com) and her husband Damian Wallis, 44, a financial translator, adopted their three-year-old daughter Ivy, from Russia last October.

This followed years of failed IVF after Anna went through a premature menopause. The family, who live in London, were turned down by northern adoption agencies in 2008 for living too ‘far south’. Anna says:

Adopting our gorgeous little girl was a process that cost us more than £25,000 — money we could barely afford and would be out of reach for most adoptive parents.

Why? Because the only children in the UK who had been deemed a ‘suitable’ match for us, as a white, middle-class couple, were in the North of England — and we were ‘too far’ away for the adoption agencies concerned to visit.

So we had to embark on the process of adopting a child from abroad instead. It’s hard to explain how galling that rejection was: to be denied the chance to offer a good home to needy children because of a few hundred miles and the price of a train ticket.

Adoption was the only way Damian and I could have children after I discovered at the age of just 33 that I was going through an early menopause.

The following year was a rush of drugs, injections, IVF, and donor eggs, but by the end of 2007, we realised adoption was the only option left.

We were actually relieved. You’re never sure of the outcome with IVF, but with adoption, you feel almost certain there must be a child to whom you could offer a loving home.

We weren’t too old, we were healthy, we had a comfortable lifestyle and a lovely home in London — everything would be fine. Or so we thought.

Not so. First, we were ordered to wait three months until I’d ‘mourned my infertility’, before being told, in January 2008, that there were no white children under the age of six available for adoption.

And a white child was all we were suitable for, because social services are still very reluctant to place children from different ethnic backgrounds with white couples.

Thinking this might be just a problem with our council, I rounded up a list of about 15 agencies around the UK and called one after another. But the answer was the same: no suitable children.

That was until I came across a few agencies in the North which said they did have some prospective suitable children — but they wouldn’t be able to visit London to vet us. Even though we offered to visit them or pay for someone to come down to assess us, the answer remained the same.

Our social worker advised us to look into adoption abroad — so we were going to have to pay a fortune to adopt a child from another country while there were suitable children for us here, just a few hours away, who would inevitably end up in care.

After ten months of form-filling and more than £7,000 paid to various UK agencies, we started the adoption process in Russia. We met Ivy in September 2009 and brought her home last October, 13 months later.

It took Ivy nine months to settle; she loves nursery now and is very sociable and happy, but after more than two years in an orphanage, she still rocks herself to sleep at night, just like she did all that time when she was deprived of a parent’s attention and affection.

It’s so sad. It just shows that delays in adoption are unforgivable.

 

WRONG ETHNIC MIX

Alex Bemrose, 49, an adoption campaigner and author of Our Son From Afar, and her husband Dominic, 36, a conference manager, from Middlesex, adopted their Guatemalan son Jose, four, in 2008 after being deemed too white to adopt.

They were subsequently refused permission to adopt a second child from the UK despite being classed as a ‘mixed race’ family since adopting Jose. Alex says:

Being turned down for adoption once on the grounds of ethnicity was bad enough.

But my husband and I were turned down twice, the first time for being too white and the second — as unbelievable as it sounds — for being the wrong type of mixed race.

I was already in my 40s when I met and fell in love with Dominic, so we always knew it might be difficult for me to get pregnant.

When we failed to have a baby naturally, adoption seemed a great solution. We would have a family, and give two children (we wanted to adopt siblings) a secure and loving home.

But it was with trepidation that I approached our meeting with the local authority in October 2005.

I was concerned that my age might make it more difficult. But that didn’t turn out to be the issue.

One social worker admitted there would be three things that would make it difficult for us to adopt in the UK: we were white, middle class and heterosexual.

It just felt like political correctness gone mad.

Like other couples in our situation, we were finally forced to look overseas, and we adopted our son three years ago from Guatemala, when he was 11 months old.

So, perhaps naively, we thought that when we approached our local authority six months later to see if we could adopt a sibling for our son, it would be much easier than it had been the first time.

After all, we were no longer ‘all white’, and not only did we have a mix of cultures in our family, but we had months of experience with local social workers in our favour.

They were also perfectly happy with the way we were raising Jose (we made sure he was aware of his birth culture and are even teaching him Spanish). But it wasn’t to be.

Extraordinarily, it turned out we were now deemed even more unsuitable.

Could we adopt a mixed-race child? No, not unless they, too, were Guatemalan — and how many of those are available for adoption in the South-East of England?

So could we adopt a white child then? No, because now we counted as a ‘mixed-race’ family.

The anger hasn’t gone away. Not anger for myself and my husband, but for all the children in care who are being refused a home.

That’s why I’m now a director for the campaign group Adoption with Humanity. Our aim is to fight for an adoption system that prioritises children’s needs.

It’s not just my husband and I who have missed out on adopting a second child — I feel sorry for our son.

We would have loved for him to have a brother or sister but we just can’t afford another international adoption, so it’s not to be.

 

OCCASIONAL SMOKER

Paul Kersey, 48, is a Merchant Navy captain from St Austell, Cornwall.

He is married to Ella, 32, a full-time mother to their two-year-old son Freddie, a ‘miracle’ baby who was conceived naturally after years of infertility.

Five years ago, Paul and Ella were turned down as adoptive parents by Cornwall Social Services.

One of the primary reasons was Paul’s admission that he occasionally smokes in the garden. He says:

Our mistake was to be too honest, I know that now. No one would have known I smoked if I hadn’t told them. It wasn’t as if the social worker visiting our house to assess us was going to walk into a fume-filled, nicotine-stained hovel with overflowing ashtrays everywhere.

I enjoy the odd cigarette, but always in the garden, never in the house or the car and never around a child. But, stupidly, I mentioned it.

Ella and I first approached social services to adopt in 2006 after years of fruitless attempts to have a baby. We had tried IVF treatment in 2004, only to endure two heartbreaking miscarriages. Adoption seemed the logical next step.

We have a rock-solid relationship: we’ve been married for seven years and together for 11. We live in a lovely, two-bedroom cottage near the sea — the perfect place for a child to grow up.

When we were invited to a preliminary meeting at Truro County Hall five years ago, we resolved to be honest about everything from the start.

My work meant I was away for several weeks at a time (counter-balanced with several weeks of on-shore leave) and Ella, who’s originally from Turkmenistan, hadn’t yet been granted full British citizenship, although it was only a few months away.

Oh, and I had the odd cigarette in the garden now and then. Not a problem, we were reassured.

The next stage was the home visit. Again, we answered all the questions truthfully, thinking it was a done deal.

We were heartbroken when a letter arrived a month later saying that we had been deemed ‘unsuitable’.

My smoking was cited as one reason, as well as the fact that my job took me away from home.

On that basis, no one who serves in any of the Armed Forces would be allowed to become a parent.

Besides, what about all the single women who are allowed to adopt without any man in their lives?

My wife’s citizenship was also mentioned as a reason — even though we had been told it wouldn’t be an issue and it was resolved very quickly.

As for the smoking, yes, I could have given it up. But considering how few cigarettes I smoked, it wouldn’t make me a better parent, and who was to say they wouldn’t find another reason to reject us even if I did?

It made me furious to think they were denying a child a happy, stable family home on such a flimsy excuse.

So we gave up and didn’t re-apply. We couldn’t fight such a flawed system.

We tried one more round of unsuccessful IVF treatment before, in 2009, nature played the most amazing trick on us imaginable and Ella became pregnant.

Freddie was born in August 2009, and looking at our happy, healthy child is all the proof we need of the idiocy of the system. Of course we were — we are — suitable parents.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2062031/Adoption-Couples-rejected-UK-agencies-white.html