Francesca and Rick are the first British couple to adopt from Mexico. Italian born Francesca, who has an adopted brother, is not infertile, but wanted to give a child from a disadvantaged background the chance of living in a home with love, safety and stability. How unique is that!

However, they discovered how following the international adoption process was a tortuous route and Francesca wrote about their experiences in a brilliant book called Mexican Takeaway. It describes how they were forced to adopt from abroad after being turned down by their local authority in Ealing, and how they had offered to adopt a black or Asian child. But because there was a cap on white parents adopting black or Asian children, they were ludicrously told they were “too white” to adopt”. A poor child here missed out thanks to this ridiculous rule.

I am delighted to see that The Times has grasped this issue and is actively supporting the thoughts behind Francesca’s campaign, Adoption With Humanity. Last week it published a leading article which asked the same questions that Francesca has been asking for a long time:

“Why are well-meaning would-be parents going to China, America and Eastern European to find a child to cherish when there are 4,000 needy children waiting to be adopted here? Why is the process so bureaucratic and lengthy, condemning children to years of uncertainty?

“And why, as we report today, are ministers having to order local authorities to make more use of voluntary agencies that have much better records of placing difficult children than councils do?”

An urgent review is obviously needed so children do not continue to miss out and can be adopted by caring families.

I’m pleased to see that Children’s Minister Tim Loughton is proactively trying to improve matters and wants local authorities to be less prescriptive about matching ethnic and mixed race children, suggesting more flexibility is needed as a greater proportion of these children are never adopted at all because of these misguided guidelines. Thank goodness for commonsense.

If agencies are so much more successful than local authorities at placing children for adoption (they are four times more likely to find a family for a child), then why can’t they also help families who want to adopt from overseas too? Why can’t we have regulated international adoption agencies in the UK?

You probably saw Francesca when she was on TV recently promoting National Adoption Week when she talked about her experiences. Francesca’s book can be pre-ordered from this link. It is packed with a series of nail-biting unexpected twists and turns, and includes encounters with unsavoury characters straight from a Hollywood film, from manipulative women to shifty crooked characters and glamorous Catholic matriarchs. I have read the manuscript and it’s an exhilarating read.