The Guardian view on fostering: cultural sensitivity needed | Editorial

The row over a Christian girl fostered by Muslim carers raises ugly emotions which must not obscure the principles

The decision to take a child into care is never easy. Both the child and its natural parents will normally feel a great loss, and these feelings must be respected even if the alternative appears to be even worse. But the sundering of such a fundamental relationship will stir up strong feelings in onlookers too. The reports of a case in Tower Hamlets, where a white, Christian child is reported to have been put into the care of culturally insensitive Muslim foster parents, has awoken variously atavistic responses. The most helpful is the decision of the children’s commissioner, Anne Longfield, to look into the case.

At the moment we know very little beyond newspaper reports which are necessarily based on third-party accounts of what a distressed five-year-old child has said. We do not know any other sides of the story, and it’s not clear that more publicity would serve the interests of the child at the heart of this. Family courts deliberate in private for very good reasons.

Continue reading...

from Children | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2wfOBDv