Foster children ‘live in a twilight world’

THOUSANDS of children in foster care cannot be legally adopted and are denied a chance of enjoying a “second family” because they have no specific rights of their own, it emerged yesterday.

The Constitution must be changed to give these foster children their own rights that would allow a High Court judge sanction their adoption if it was in their best interest, said child law expert Geoffrey Shannon. These children cannot be adopted because their foster parents would have to go into the High Court and prove that the natural parents were negligent, said Mr Shannon.

Very few foster parents want to tell the child that they had to fight their first family to secure his place in their home, he said. “These children live in a twilight world between a family that loves them but cannot have them and a family that does not want them,” Mr Shannon told the first day of public hearings on family rights held by the All-Party Committee on the Constitution.