just won't adopt. If it really was a policy approach it appears to have been decided in order to make life harder for non whites and to maintain racial segregation - that would make it a hard right approach. However, I can imagine that if you've got two potential families for a child, and one of them is of the same cultural background, then it might help SOME children if they were placed with the same-background family. Conversely other children might be better off with parents of different cultural heritage. So I suspect that Goves edict should have been an operational issue - determined by the social workers on the ground and on a case by case basis. Turning to the issue of social workers perceived vaccilation over placing children with foster/adopted parents. I can remember a family of ours tried to foster. Subjects that arose were smacking, smoking, and the visitation rights of the true parents. Apparently you could not smack (I can understand this one though its not how I would bring my children up), but smoking? I don't smoke, but I know you need to consider the child. The reality is most children are taken into care only once they have been truly fucked up by their real parents. Social services appear to only swing into action on the most extreme cases (a mother cavorting with a known paedophile may not be enough!) - and even then only YEARS into ongoing abuse. So you can foster say