The adoption crisis is a legacy of target culture A baby girl with cerebral palsy is rejected by her birth parents and social services intervene, placing her with a foster family in preparation for adoption. But the parents change their minds and, despite a history of violence, are given a second chance. They torture their helpless daughter. When the child's grandmother finds out what is happening, she tells the council and the little girl is taken away for good. The parents are jailed for 22 years. It was cases such as this, as well as the notorious death of Baby P, that spurred the Coalition into changing adoption guidelines in 2011, not only to increase the likelihood of an abused child being adopted but also to speed up the whole process. A baby or toddler who spends months or years in limbo with a succession of foster carers loses crucial opportunities to bond with her "new" parents. Giving birth parents the benefit of the doubt may come at too high a price for children who deserve a fresh start. The then education secretary, Michael Gove, knew from experience the huge benefits of swift and permanent adoption. Indeed, so attached is Mr Gove to his own adoptive parents that he has never sought to trace his birth mother or father. His new guidelines required local authorities to complete each adoption within six months, and changed the emphasis to increase the likelihood of adoption taking place, for example, across ethnic boundaries. Social workers were, in his view, placing too many obstacles in the way of adoption. The subsequent 60 per cent increase in completed adoption orders gave Mr Gove's successor, Nicky Morgan, plenty to boast about earlier this year. But as The Telegraph reported yesterday, these figures have since gone into reverse, thanks to a Court of Appeal judgment last September in which the head of the family courts, Lord Justice Munby, criticised the quality of the adoption reports supplied to the courts by social workers. As he rightly pointed out, removing children irrevocably from their birth parents is a momentous decision; if the evidence for so doing is flimsy, a terrible miscarriage of justice may result. Since that judgment was given, adoption orders have fallen by nearly half. As the Coalition's adoption adviser, Martin Narey, former head of Barnardos, has hastened to explain, the judgment does not mean that the new adoption guidelines were wrong, but it does require local authorities to meet higher standards of proof if they want an adoption order to be made. I thought we had learnt from the Labour government's obsession with initiatives that setting a target for the delivery of a public service will not necessarily cause an improvement in that service. Indeed, the reverse can apply: the shift in priorities to tick the target box often undermines the quality of care. Giving social workers a time limit was intended to concentrate their efforts on securing the best result for a child in the shortest reasonable time. But it wasn't advocating the cutting of corners, or denying parents the chance to be heard. Unfortunately, the Coalition's decision to make sharp cuts in legal aid for family court proceedings hasn't helped matters. Last week, Lord Justice Munby expressed his disquiet in a case where a local authority was seeking to have a child adopted against the wishes of his parents and those of his wider family (who were willing to care for him if the parents were judged unable to do so). The parents did not qualify for legal aid, nor could they afford to pay for lawyers, so were reliant on free representation by a volunteer from a local law firm. As he declared, it is surely wrong that a decision of this magnitude could be made without parents having a chance to be legally represented. The wisdom of Solomon is required of a court when deciding where a child's best interests lie. If the decision is wrong, lives may be ruined. Mr Gove correctly perceived that there had for many years been a strong predisposition on the part of social workers to maintain the biological connection between parent and child. The focus on inherited identity, encouraging adopted children to keep in touch with their birth parents, and bias against interracial adoption, all linked to a belief that adoption into a new family must be the last resort. As a result, some children suffered terribly at the hands of their parents or step-parents. Thousands more grew up in "temporary" foster care instead of finding new homes and a better life. This was clearly wrong. In seeking to reverse the social workers" mindset, the Coalition and its advisers had the best of motives. But as the latest figures show, it will take more than a set of targets to achieve a culture change. And as that change occurs, it is vital that the public can trust in the system and be confident that speedy justice is about saving children's lives, not simply cutting costs. Jill Kirby is a writer and policy analyst