Which, do you reckon, is more repellent – the decision by Tower Hamlets, a borough rotten to the marrow, to place a Christian child with two successive Muslim foster parents of uncompromising Islamic views, or its reaction to the Times’ coverage of the story yesterday, with a council spokesman saying that its fostering service “provides a loving, stable home for hundreds of children every year”? Both, I’d say, are par for the course.
There’s nothing wrong in itself for a child to be placed with foster parents of a different ethnicity or religion, provided that the care is respectful of her background and religion – indeed it’s a requirement for the local authority to take account of the child’s religious persuasion and ethnicity in making foster placements. But the most cursory interview with the niqab-wearing initial foster mother might have revealed problems on that score, viz, that she wouldn’t allow the five year old girl, who was baptised in church, to eat spaghetti carbonara (bacon, obv), took the cross she was wearing off her and for good measure didn’t speak English while at home.
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