Campaigners demand end to non-consensual adoptions

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Support Not Separation (SNS) and the Disabled Mothers’ Rights Campaign have worked with the BBC to compile testimonies for the Fileon4 programme, airing on Tuesday, to raise awareness of the issues that lead to children being adopted.

About 90 per cent of adoptions in Britain are without parental consent, reports show, which the groups have called a “brutal and draconian abuse of power by the state.”

Anne Neale from SNS said the practice “must be stopped,” saying: “If mothers who are disabled, young and/or care leavers or fleeing domestic violence got the support they are entitled to, many fewer children would be in ‘care’ and many fewer would be adopted.

“And if resources now directed at removing children were put into keeping families together, mothers would be able to keep children safe.”

A mother whose children was adopted or placed into care after she was a victim of domestic violence said: “Social services’ manipulation of facts, rather than any support, has ruined my and my children’s lives — there’s no getting back the years that we’ve lost together, all the things we could have done together.”

An adult adoptee said: “I felt more like a pet than a person. I was something to show off, I was proof of how good [the adopters] were.

“Eighteen years of being unwanted and unloved, and then it turns out my mum has wanted me this whole time.”

A Department for Education spokesperson said children are “only ever put forward for adoption when there are no other safe, stable, or realistic options for their welfare,” adding that the government is investing £2.4 billion to give families earlier support.