Letter: Making adoption pay

Sir: Charging potential adopters to be vetted may have commercial attractions, but it goes against the nature and purpose of adoption. Adoption is a service for children who need a permanent home, not a service for childless couples. It makes no sense, therefore, to charge the parents.

Charging children to find them adopters - through a loan, perhaps, to be repaid when the child is old enough to be put to work in the mill - will no doubt appeal to some members of the Cabinet, but it's an idea whose time has not quite come.

Yours faithfully,

LORRAINE HEMINGWAY

Department of Applied

Social Studies

University of Bradford

Bradford

10 July