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A 13-year-old boy is feared to have killed himself after his body was found in bed at his care home. Mohammed Alam Naseem was discovered in his bed at Woodside House specialist children’s home Darwen, Lancashire, on Monday lunchtime. Police investigating the youngster’s death are looking into the possibility that he suffocated, adding that there [...]

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The mother says she made a pact with the father during a restaurant meeting before the boy was conceived that she and her lover would fill the role of “primary parents” within a “nuclear family” and that he would not stand on his paternal rights. But now she and her partner say they feel “bitter [...]

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Singles who long for children without the obligation of romantic involvement can now search for their perfect ‘co-parenting’ match online, thanks to a new website. Launched last week, Modamily calls itself: ‘The first online community to facilitate introductions between responsible, like-minded adults committed to co-parenting a child.’ So far the New-York based service that caters [...]

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John Goldup, Deputy Chief Inspector at Ofsted, said in the past the quango had failed to concentrate on the most important aspects of the treatment for vulnerable children. He said inspectors were assessing adoption providers within an “inappropriate straitjacket” that ignored how quickly adoptive parents could be found, and people were right to question why [...]

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Non-identical twins Emilie Falk and Lin Backman – strangers until last year – were separated nearly 29 years ago. According to a DNA test the pair had done two months after reuniting in January last year, and which they shared with AFP, there is a 99.98 per cent chance of them being sisters. A complex [...]

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The bodies of civil servants Robert Kamin, 55, and Susan Poff, 50, were found under blankets in a parked car outside their home in Oakland, California. They had been strangled. Police believe someone then tried to set light to the car which was charred. Friends and relatives said the couple had worked tirelessly for the [...]

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A couple in their fifties who looked after a baby girl for a year have been told they are too old to legally adopt the child. The foster parents in Whitley, Berkshire had looked after the child to help out her 17-year-old natural mother and had raised the little girl since last March. But after [...]

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After scandals such as Baby P, many social workers feel criticised from all sides. The difficult nature of their job is revealed as the BBC is given unprecedented access to the Bristol child protection team. It was newly qualified social worker Susanne’s first case. Three-year-old Toby could not speak and still had to use a [...]

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The fostering system is failing thousands of vulnerable children who end up in jail and lacking basic qualifications, a report has warned. The number of youngsters in placements has risen 16% since 2006 to more than 48,000, putting carers under huge strain. Only a third of youngsters in the system achieve basic levels in maths [...]

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A Taiwanese woman, sold to a family as a slave at the age of seven, has just been reunited with the mother that sent her away. Going by the fake name ‘Isabel’ for fear that her former owners may track her down, the domestic slave spent around 20 years in squalid conditions, dreaming of the [...]

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Ben Elliot, the Duchess of Cornwall’s nephew, does not yet have any children with his glamorous new wife, but he may soon be the guardian to the offspring of numerous oligarchs. Mandrake can disclose that Elliot is extending his concierge service, Quintessentially, into the increasingly lucrative market for children’s tutors. As part of his service, [...]

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On a day at the seaside last summer, David Wren watched a father and his son playing crazy golf in the sunshine. “They just looked so happy together. I turned to my partner and said: ‘I want a kid.’ He replied: ‘Me too’ and that was how we came to apply to adopt.” The same-sex [...]

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All children under five in care in London should be sent a free book a month to boost their reading and prospects later in life, the Commons was being told today. Senior Labour MP John Healey urged Mayor Boris Johnson and his Labour challenger Ken Livingstone to back the Imagination Library scheme, already running in [...]

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Sallyanne Jones is cradling her seven-month-old baby on her lap, smiling at her little face. But how would she feel if she had to give her child up this afternoon, knowing she wouldn’t see her again for at least 18 years, and possibly never? It’s not a question you would usually put to a new [...]

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Turkish authorities have asked the British government to help obtain evidence to prosecute the Duchess over allegations that she breached the privacy of children living in state-run institutions. The Turkish government accused the Duchess of trying to smear the country’s image three years ago with an investigative television report about conditions in its orphanages. On [...]

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Ofsted, the quango that monitors all young people’s services including schools, is to focus its visits on four main areas rather than 13. It will also cut the notice time given before inspectors arrive from eight weeks to 10 days. Users of adoption agencies, including birth and adoptive parents as well as children themselves, will [...]

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Children are being abandoned on Greece’s streets by their poverty-stricken families who cannot afford to look after them any more. Youngsters are being dumped by their parents who are struggling to make ends meet in what is fast becoming the most tragic human consequence of the Euro crisis. It comes as pharmacists revealed the country [...]

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Greece’s financial crisis has made some families so desperate they are giving up the most precious thing of all – their children. One morning a few weeks before Christmas a kindergarten teacher in Athens found a note about one of her four-year-old pupils. “I will not be coming to pick up Anna today because I [...]

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Vulnerable children older than 10 are being “forgotten” amid an “urgent” need for foster carers, a charity has warned. According to Barnardo’s, at least 8,750 new foster families must be found within the next year. But while there is considerable focus on placing babies and younger children, “the needs of older children are being forgotten,” [...]

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Concerns about Facebook threats to adopted children are being raised again as children adopted because of abuse and neglect are still being contacted out of the blue by their birth parents. The decision to remove a child is, in my experience, not taken lightly, but made with the aim of changing a child’s likely developmental [...]

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This year Randy Ryder will meet his mother for the first time. When he was born in a hospital in Málaga, southern Spain, in 1971 the doctor who signed his birth certificate named his mother as Roswitha Huber, an Austrian woman who was unable to have children of her own. It was only a dozen [...]

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Adopted children are having their lives thrown into chaos by Facebook messages from birth parents who neglected or abused them when they were younger, charities have warned. A big increase in unsolicited contact from parents who track down children who were taken into care for safeguarding has led to serious disruptions in the adoption process. [...]

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The popularity of social networking websites has seen an increase in breaches of guidelines against unplanned contact with hundreds of adopted children unexpectedly hearing from their natural families. In the worst cases, some young people taken into care in the 1990s have seen relationships with their adoptive families completely break down after hearing from their [...]

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An adopted woman spent her whole life thinking she was an only child unaware she had nine siblings living minutes from her home. Susan Walton had always longed for a brother or sister to play with after being adopted when she was six months old. Now, at the age of 64, Susan has discovered she [...]

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What a refreshing change to read Anthony Douglas’s article (There is no right to adopt, 23 December).

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A baby at risk of becoming the victim of an ”honour killing” because she was born as the result of her Muslim mother’s secret affair must be adopted to keep her safe, the Court of Appeal has ruled.

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A fight with local authority bureacracy and a ‘catalogue of horrors’ caused a couple to almost give up adopting their son

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The system does need an overhaul. But speed isn’t everything, and children’s welfare must come first

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The government is to speed up the process of adoption in England, saying it is “painfully slow” and “unwelcoming”. It is a sentiment some people who have been through the system share.

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A Muslim man who had a baby with an unmarried woman has been told that his daughter must remain with an adopted family because there is too great a risk that his love child could become the victim of a so-called “honour killing”.

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The Government is to overhaul the assessment process for people looking to adopt amid concerns that the current system is too slow, unnecessarily bureaucratic and not fit for purpose.

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The red tape used by social workers to prevent couples from adopting children will finally be swept away by common sense reforms, ministers said today.

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Anne King has fostered children for two decades. But she found looking after young asylum seekers more challenging – and rewarding – than she could ever have imagined

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Thousands of families must come forward to avert a looming foster care crisis in the coming year, a report has warned.

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The Fostering Network is warning of a shortfall of almost 9,000 foster families in the UK, but for one lucky baby, a period of fostering led to successful adoption into a family.

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A Liberal Democrat MP is claiming up to 1,000 children a year in England are being adopted for the “wrong” reasons and should stay with their families.

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It was one of those days, writes Anthony Watt; but were the tantrums due to being adopted?

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A teenager who has had 15 different foster parents since being taken into care at the age of five is battling in the High Court to halt the closure of a children’s home. A judge was told that 17-year-old “B”, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has written to the Prime Minister in his [...]

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Breastfeeding among new adoptive mothers is on the rise.

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Three of these couples adopted from abroad and the reasons they were rejected by British agencies will leave you in despair

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National Autistic Society warns of significant breakdown in the assistance on offer from social services

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All primary-age children are to learn which school they will attend on the same day, under a shake-up that will also see adopted youngsters given priority for places.

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Race rules that have been used to prevent tens of thousands of middle-class parents adopting are to stay, it emerged yesterday.

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The Government’s adviser on adoption, Martin Narey, is confident new measures to name and shame the worst performing adoption services will lead to improvements.

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London councils were today exposed as among the worst in the country for adoption, failing thousands of children a year.

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Councils with the worst records for the adoption of children have been “named and shamed” as David Cameron warned that private agencies could be brought in to take over failing services.

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Private firms could take over the children’s services of poorly performing local authorities under plans to counter what the Prime Minister has described as the “shocking” level of adoptions.

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Private companies could take over the children’s services of poorly performing local authorities under plans to counter what the Prime Minister has described as the “shockingly” low level of adoptions.

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Two brothers are embroiled in a legal battle with their “adopted” sibling over their parents’ inheritance.

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One-year-old child will be put up for adoption
Judge turned down grandmother’s plea to be allowed to care for the baby

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