'Race issues to blame' for fall in adoptions

THE adoption rate has collapsed because of prejudice against ethnic minority children being placed with white parents, according to the outgoing chief executive of the UK's largest children's charity.

Martin Narey from Barnardo's said the adoption rate of babies should increase fourfold, and more toddlers and older children also needed to be placed with new families.

Only 70 babies were adopted last year, compared with 4,000 in 1976, he said.

"Early adoptions are particularly successful and yet it remains out of fashion," he added.

Narey added that local authorities and adoption agencies were reluctant to allow white couples to adopt children from different ethnic backgrounds.

"A child should not stay in care for an undue length of time while waiting for adoptive parents of the same ethnicity," he said. "But the reality is that black, Asian and mixed-race children wait three times longer than white children."