A thousand thanks to Bruce Oldfield, one of the UK’s leading fashion designers, for agreeing to write the foreword in a book for my client Francesca Polini who is campaigning for fairer adoption processes to benefit both children seeking new homes and loving families who want to provide them with stability and security.

Francesca made headline news when the Daily Mail described how she was turned down by her local authority for being “too white” to adopt. As a result, and after a long series of dramatic, amusing and heart rending escapades, Francesca adopted a baby girl in Mexico, followed by a baby boy just before Christmas.  She described her hair raising experiences in a book called Mexican Takeaway which will be published in the next few weeks. What makes Francesca’s story so heart-warming is that she didn’t adopt because of infertility problems, but because she wanted to offer a child from a disadvantaged background a loving and supportive environment.

Its publication is very timely as the government as Children’s Minister Tim Loughton – who was outstanding in a Tower Block of Commons – has been reviewing the present domestic and international adoption processes, and Francesca has an appointment to discuss this with him later this month.

She is naturally delighted to read on the front of today’s Times that the government plans new laws which will lift the colour bar for mixed-race adoptions. Thank heavens for their common sense approach and new adoption guidelines for local authorities which will be based on a family being able to provide the essential emotional and developmental needs of a child, and that their ethnicity will not be a deciding factor.

It will no doubt also be music to the ears of Bruce, a former Barnado’s boy, who is tipped to design Kate Middleton’s wedding dress. You can read the moving story of his childhood here. He was fostered to a white woman who encouraged and inspired him in his interest in sewing and fashion, and says his colour was never an issue. So why should it be an issue today?

Bruce has been amazingly kind and shown what a lovely person he is, even writing to Francesca on Christmas Eve to say how much he was enjoying reading her manuscript. This is an extract from the foreword he has written in Mexican Takeaway which reflects on his personal experiences:

It appears that our society has replaced basic human needs (especially those of children in care) with the kind of obsessive bureaucracy that has led to race, religion and class becoming key criteria for matching children and potential parents. As desirable as this looks on paper, it doesn’t acknowledge the realities of the world we live in; a world where the majority of children looking for homes are black or of mixed race and the majority of parents willing or able to adopt are white. The system also fails to recognize that children do pass their sell-by date in the adoption stakes once they leave toddler-hood so it’s ill-advised to let children languish in temporary care, waiting for all the boxes to be ticked in the search for a politically correct ‘fit’.

This is as much a book about a life-changing journey as it is a story of a couple’s attempts to adopt. My view is that even if you are not directly interested in the subject of adoption you will be gripped by this emotional, funny and observant road trip through Mexico.

At the same time Mexican Takeaway raises some key issues that I hope will inspire discussion and action. When tens of thousands of children, both here and abroad, languish in care until they are teenagers only to be thrown into the big wide world with no support, something isn’t right.

Thank you Bruce. You are truly a wonderful person!

*As I write this, Francesca has told me that a BBC taxi is collecting her to interview her in their studies on the new adoption guidelines! Here is her latest BBC link.