Why is it so difficult to adopt a child in Britain?

Last Thursday, the day before our panel, the Times ran a feature on adoption in their Times 2 section. The front page of the supplement carried the headline "Why is it so difficult to adopt a child in Britain"?

One of the couples they mention who successfully adopted is a gay couple. I was a bit puzzled by the quote from one of the gay adopters, who says being gay may have helped their process “only because gay couples know immediately that they can't have children, so they don't waste time trying to conceive naturally - which means that they are often a better age to adopt and so come higher up the list.”

Whilst it's great that adoption by a same-sex couple is presented as a successful story and without any sensationalism, I think that the logic behind that statement is flawed: age is only one factor in the matching process and many gay people trying to adopt may be the same age as many heterosexual adopters who have "wasted time" trying to conceive (in fact one of the straight couples in our preparation groups were in their 20s). To say that being gay made getting a child easier is probably inaccurate (based on what our SW has told us, the literature on gay adoption, and on the experiences of some of the people we have talked to) and in a way negative, as it's the kind of thing that the Daily Mail and their like perceive as gay men and lesbians being given special treatment or prioritised.

The full article is here.