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The Scottish Question

This Scottish Question is about adoption. Scotland had 120 children adopted from care in 5-6. England had 3,700 in 2006. Scotland has a population of about 5M and England about 51M. For all that it matters you can scale up the scottish figures by 10. That would give 1,200 adoptions from care.

Scotland has a form of jury in children's cases.

Is that the reason why more children are adopted from care in England than Scotland?

If it isn't what is?

Comments

moira said…
One judge who gave a woman her baby back after social workers in England had taken her others,said the English law system was contentious.

He criticised social services for entering her labour and said her circumstances had changed since she had lost the other children. In England they would automatically take the baby if others had been removed.

So maybe they have more common sense in Scotland's family courts and a different law system
watchdog said…
Maybe preparing for the courts with juries take longer and the social worker numbers per head of population are the same

or maybe the density of the population is lower so people get less stressed

or maybe the lower numbers in smaller settlements mean that neighbours are less likely to witness dodgy behaviour.

Clearly further research is necessary...come on social science schools....
moira said…
Scotland does have a serious drug problem and they do have a high rate of children going into care.

Maybe one reason is that the Scottish councils do not have financial and other incentives to adopt. Or has Tony Blair's targets reached Scotland yet?

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