Forced adoption in the UK

Forced Adoption is a practice whereby children are forcibly removed from their parents and wider family and adopted out to strangers against theirs and their parents wishes by the local education authority. In 2010 alone there were 1360 such cases.
The practice of forced adoption has drawn significant criticism from MP John Hemming and the press, with parallels drawn between the current policy of the UK Government and those of the policy of Forced adoption in Australia in the 20th Century.
The government of Slovakia threatened to take a case to the European Court of Human Rights, after the children of a Slovakian couple resident in the UK was taken into care following concerns about one of the children's injuries. The children were adopted in the UK, but the Slovakian government had favoured placing the children with a grandmother in Slovakia.
Many families victimised by this policy have spoken out about the scandal, and 100 families are planning to take the UK Government to the International Criminal Court in The Hague for the practice, arguing that their human rights have been breached.
Once a child is placed for adoption the child and parents have no recourse open to them to reverse the process, even when evidence comes to light that shows that the reasons for the adoption were flawed.
There are significant financial incentives for Local Authorities to secure adoptions. So much so that in one shocking case Norfolk social workers flew to France and illegally kidnapped a French child and took her to the UK to be forcibly adopted. The Local authority was later forced to return the child after a High Court Judge deemed social workers actions to be illegal.
Parents targeted by the practice are forbidden from talking about what has been done to their family and if they dare to speak out publicly they are imprisoned by secret courts, such as the Court of Protection. Families are also forbidden from attempting to contact the forcibly adopted children and are jailed if they attempt to do so.
There is a growing number of politicians, activists and journalists, such as John Hemming, Ian Josephs, Christopher Booker and Denise Robertson that have began to investigate the problem with an annual conference now being held under the banner of 'Stop Forced Adoption'.
Protests regularly take place across the UK about the practice, and in recent years a large and growing number of families victimised by the policy have began to organise against this injustice, often utilizing mass-communications tools such as social media. Many families that become aware that they are to be targeted by the authorities often decide to leave the country and seek refuge in less hostile regimes. There are human rights organizations that now actively help families flee the country, with many seeking asylum in countries such as Ireland and France.
In the defence of the policy of forced adoption the UK Government states that it is putting the interests of the children first and wants to ensure that children are placed in a new home as soon as possible. Conservative MP and Education Secretary Michael Gove, who was himself adopted as a baby, is a staunch defender of the policy. Although criticisms of his approach have been raised by a special committee of peers chaired by Britain’s most senior authority on family law, Baroness Butler-Sloss, the former president of the High Court Family Division. Peers were worried that the focus on adoption could break up families unnecessarily.
Former Judge Alan Goldsack QC has also praised the policy calling for the UK Government to go further and to forcibly remove children from 'criminal families' at birth and to place them for adoption. His remarks have been strongly criticised and he has been accused of "criminalising babies".

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