Learning about adoption... and early intervention

Sir Michael Wilshaw has been asked by Michael Gove to review adoption processes, with the expectation that local authorities would be found to be at fault for all the delays in the system. (As so often, Michael Gove is right about the problem - delays in adoption are excessive and hugely damaging to the children concerned - but wrong about his diagnosis.)

But Sir Michael, who was only recently a headteacher, has discovered that the adoption is very much more complex than he had thought. And to do him credit, he's reported that by far the largest part of the delay is caused by the legal processes. (I'm not knocking Sir Michael, by the way, he has learned what so many of us ex-education directors learned when we became directors of children's services - I can recall reading the 1989 Act, sitting and talking with social workers, and attending family courts while I was learning the trade.)

 Notwithstanding the ongoing campaign by Christopher Booker in the Telegraph against over-zealous social workers ripping children from the bosom of their families, I'm steadily becoming more hawkish on this. There must be checks and balances but the interests of the child must come first. And if the human rights of the child have to be weighed against the human rights of the parents, I know where my judgment would lie. Just taking one example, if a baby shows the gross physical manifestations of fetal alcohol syndrome, I can see little justification for assuming that the mother will not abuse the baby after birth as she did before birth. While this is an extreme example, as I say, I'm becoming generally more hawkish.

So I hope that Sir Michael will be able to persuade Michael Gove that the legislation needs to focus on minimising all delay in adoption, putting the onus on all concerned to make the rights of the child paramount.

In this context, I read today, on the front page of the Daily Mail, that in an NHS trial, 'dangerously overweight mothers-to-be have started taking a diabetes drug during pregnancy' with the aim of preventing the babies becoming obese in their turn. There has been a 50% increase in babies weighing more than 5 kilograms in the last four years, and more than 15% of pregnant women are obese. Big babies are twice as likely to grow into obese children and adults. The theory, as I understand it, is that if the pre-programming in the womb can be switched off, then the babies are less likely to become obese.

If it works, it works, and I would applaud it, on the same basis that I think fluoridation of drinking water is a good thing. But it's like pretending that fluoridation means that you need not worry about dental hygiene. We need, as a society, to make sure that abuse of children in the womb is seen as serious as post-birth abuse even though it is less visible. Early intervention can't start early enough.What would we do if a mother gave her new-born child alcohol to drink, or forces her toddler to sit in a room full of cigarette smoke? What do we do if a pregnant woman forces her fetus to imbibe alcohol, or forces her fetus to struggle for oxygen?

I don't think that either the law or social work practice practice can provide a magic bullet. But they can help shift societal norms. It will take time, and much public effort, along the lines of the safety belt and anti-drink-driving legislation. People still do drive when drunk, or don't wear their safety belts, but these behaviours have become much less common and much less socially accepted over the decades. Let's work to make the same true for the welfare of unborn children.