Can I adopt or foster a child of a different ethnicity to me?
Adopting or fostering a child of a different ethnicity
A child’s well-being 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.
People from all ethnic origins and religions can adopt or foster. Ideally, a new family should meet all a child’s emotional, identity, health and development needs. 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. Given the profile of prospective adopters or foster carers, this is 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: 11 December 07
