Can I adopt or foster a child of a different ethnicity to me?
Ideally, an adoptive or permanent foster family should meet a child’s emotional, identity, health and development needs, as well as their ethnic and cultural identity
A child’s wellbeing is linked to who they are, and feeling comfortable with their identity. This is built up through their ethnicity, religious, cultural and linguistic background, community, relationship with their birth family, and current and past experiences.
In BAAF’s view, practice experience indicates that children do best when brought up in a family that reflects their ethnic and racial identity as closely as possible. In part, this is informed by reports from black and minority ethnic adopted adults who grew up with families who did not match their ethnic and racial identity, describing difficulties in belonging to any community outside of their immediate family.
What this means in practice is that vigorous efforts are made to find a family that matches the child’s individual identity. Although people from all ethnic origins and religions can adopt or foster, this is still not always achievable. In these instances, social workers will have to make a decision about when to consider alternative families in order to minimise delay for the child. Children would then be placed with families that best match most of their needs, even if this means they are of a different ethnic group.
Have you seen the Be My Parent features on ethnicity?
Last updated: 01 March 10
