Too Indian to adopt

I am not surprised that the mother of a white Christian girl should be upset that her daughter was placed by Tower Hamlets council in London with a foster family reported to adhere to a strict form of Islam. But my experience is very different — one in which cultural sensibilities were taken into account, but to an extreme and absurd degree. Our story is about adoption, not fostering, but one assumes that similar decision-making guidelines govern the placement of vulnerable children.

My wife and I are British Sikhs, but not practising ones. We have open minds — we like to think there is something out there but we are far from being religious. We both, as it happened, went to Roman Catholic schools. We both work in business and our closest circle of friends are white British. We do not seek to convert anyone to Sikhism or any other religion. Yet on the basis that our parents came from India, we have been prevented from adopting any white British child. Given that we live in Berkshire, which is not exactly brimming with Sikh children in need of adoption, this means we have effectively been banned from adopting.

When we first got in touch with the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, every-thing seemed so promising. They put us in touch with their adoption arm, Adopt Berkshire. We went to an introductory workshop where we were received with a very positive attitude. The message seemed to be: everyone is welcome, different races, different sexualities and so on. We pondered over adopting for another six months before deciding that it was something we really wanted to do. We weren’t demanding a newborn — because we were a youngish couple in our lower and mid-thirties we had ticked the ‘under two’ box. But when we called Adopt Berkshire, their attitude had changed.