§ Ms JowellTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what steps she intends to take to ensure that both adoptive parents and young people who have been the subjects of trans-racial adoptions are consulted as part of the consultations on her White Paper on the future of adoption.
§ Mr. BowisThe White Paper "Adoption: The Future" is not a consultation document but contains the Government proposals for reforming adoption law. Publication of the White Paper followed four years work of reviewing adoption law by an inter-departmental working group during which time several consultative documents were issued.
Views on the Government's plans from parents who have adopted children from ethnic minority cultures, as well as the young people themselves, have been made known to the Department through responses received from local authority social services, voluntary adoption agencies and adoption support groups as well as individual correspondents.
In formulating the adoption proposals, the Government have taken account of the responses to the various consultation documents as well as the latest research, thinking and practice on a variety of adoption issues.