Ban on mixed-race adoption to be lifted under new proposals that could release thousands of children from care 

• Social workers will no longer have to take a child's cultural background into account when finding them a new home
• Proposed changes contained in Government’s Children and Families Bill
• Bill would also give all employees the right to ask for flexible working hours

By Steve Doughty for the Daily Mail

Published: 19:24 EST, 5 February 2013 | Updated: 19:24 EST, 5 February 2013

Education Secretary Michael Gove hopes to end two decades of racial profiling in the adoption system with the new law

The racial bar that has stopped tens of thousands of children living in state care from finding new families through adoption is to be lifted under a new law published yesterday.

In future, social workers will no longer be legally bound to take the ethnic or religious or cultural background of a child under their care into account when they decide his or her future.

Instead the rules will say that finding ‘a perfect or partial ethnic match’ must not become a barrier to finding new parents for child.

The reforms designed by Education Secretary Michael Gove to end two decades of racial profiling in the adoption system are contained in the Government’s Children and Families Bill.

They come as ministers press social workers to speed up an adoption system that has failed to increase numbers of children in care finding new families despite more than a decade of pressure from both Tony Blair’s and David Cameron’s governments.

In the 1970s, some 20,000 children were adopted each year, including many babies. But even though there are 67,000 children in the state care system, last year only 3,450 children were rescued from children’s homes or frequently-changing foster homes by adoption. Among them were just 70 babies.

Official figures show that in 2011, a third of children living long-term in state care failed to learn to read by the time they were seven. Seven out of eight failed to reach the benchmark for a decent education, five A*-C passes at GCSE or equivalent including English and maths.

Critics have accused social workers opposing adoption and putting up barriers to prevent children being settled with new parents. Alongside race rules that have forbidden adoption unless a child and its adoptive parents are a perfect ethnic match, adoptions have been prevented because couples are too old, because one of them smokes, or because they have unacceptable views.

Poor figures: Just 3,450 children were adopted last year despite 67,000 children being in the state care system (stock image)

In Rotherham, social workers recently removed children from their foster parents when they discovered the couple were UKIP supporters. And in Birmingham,  a recent report on social workers criticised them for insisting that one of an adoptive couple must give up their job before they can bring up a child.

The new law will give ministers powers to strip local council social workers of their right to run adoptions and hand them to an outside agency or firm if adoptions are going too slowly and suitable couples are being rejected for spurious reasons.

Children’s Minister Edward Timpson said: ‘I am determined that every young person should be able to fulfil their potential regardless of their background. For this to happen we must tackle the disadvantages faced by our most vulnerable children and families. Our measures do just that.

‘In this Bill we will overhaul adoption - breaking down barriers for adopters and provide more support to children. ‘

The new law also includes an attempt to cut delays in the secretive and over-stretched family justice system which deals with the cases of children in care. A new rule will bring in a time limit of 26 weeks on court decisions to take children into state care. Another will reinforce the responsibility of both parents in a separated couple for their children.

The legislation will also introduce the Coalition’s flexible working scheme, which will give all employees the right to ask for flexible hours and give both parents the right to share statutory parental leave after a baby is born.