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.

The 10-day hearing is being held at the Taoiseach’s request and the committee, chaired by Denis O’Donovan, will recommend what changes need to be made to bring the Constitution in line with modern family life. Mr Shannon, who represented Barnardos, the National Children Resource Centre and the Law Society, said the Constitution must be changed to give children basic rights they are entitled to under international conventions.

Law Society spokeswoman Rosemary Horgan supported this view and said that even if the natural parents agree to allow their children to be adopted by the foster parents, the children were denied a chance of enjoying a second family because of the Constitution. Meanwhile, the Family Support Agency, the statutory agency responsible for supporting families - said the rights of children living in 21 different types of families must be given protection in the Constitution and legislation.

Family Support Agency chairperson Michael O’Kennedy, a senior counsel, said the Constitution only protected the rights of children within a marriage.

“The children of those families should not be discriminated against because they come from different family units,” Mr O’Kennedy said. The Constitution should be changed to protect the children not just within marriage but within family life,” said Mr O’Kennedy.

The Irish Society for the Protection of Children (ISPCC) said the definition of the family in the Constitution must be changed in line with social reality. AMEN, the support group for single fathers, said that when it comes to the big issues in family law - child access, money and the family home - men were the losers. The Constitution had to be changed to ensure that children’s rights are central and men cannot be automatically put out of the family home.