UKIP Foster Care Row: Investigation Launched

Rotherham Council has launched an investigation into the decision to remove three foster children from a couple because of their membership of the UK Independence Party.

Councillor Paul Lakin, cabinet member for children, young people and family services, made the announcement following criticism from across the political spectrum.

"This was a decision taken by social services professionals and I have ordered an immediate investigation to establish the full facts of this decision and asked for the report to be on my desk on Monday morning," he said.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage condemned the case as "outrageous", while Education Secretary Michael Gove, who was himself adopted as a child, said the Labour-controlled council's decision was "plain wrong" and "indefensible".

Three children were removed from the care of an unnamed couple from South Yorkshire who have been fostering for seven years.

They took on a baby girl, a boy and an older girl from an ethnic and troubled family background in September.

Council Leader Roger Stone has ordered an immediate investigation

Less than eight weeks into the placement they were visited by a Rotherham social worker and foster agency official who accused them of belonging to a party with "racist policies" which meant they were unsuitable to look after the children.

The husband and wife told The Daily Telegraph they were left "dumbfounded" and "offended".

The visit followed an anonymous tip-off about the couple's party membership.

Rotherham Council said earlier it needed to consider the children's "cultural and ethnic needs" and highlighted UKIP's policy on multiculturalism.

Mr Gove told Sky News: "I think it's quite, quite wrong for Rotherham Council, or indeed for any other local authority, to say that people should not be foster or adoptive parents on these grounds.

"We need more people to come forward to be foster or adoptive parents, and if we start saying there's a very tightly prescribed range of political views to which you have to agree before you can be a foster or adoptive parent, then we won't get the fosterers or the adoptive parents that we need."

The couple say the children were take away because of their UKIP membership

He added he had asked staff in his department to get to the bottom of the matter as quickly as possible to clarify the guidance.

Joyce Thacker, strategic director of children and young people's services at the council, said the children had been placed with the couple as an emergency and it was never going to be a long-term arrangement.

"These children are from EU migrant backgrounds and UKIP has very clear statements on ending multiculturalism, not having that going forward, and I have to think about how sensitive I am being to those children," she told BBC Breakfast.

Mr Farage demanded the council apologise "wholeheartedly for the "concern and the upset they have caused".

He told Sky News he had spoken to the couple, who were "very upset and distressed" by what had happened.

"My first and primary concern is that they get a fair deal and these three children get a fair deal because what has happened is outrageous," he said.

"UKIP is a non-racist, non-sectarian political party. I mean, for goodness sake, we have got the Croydon North by-election going on at the moment where Jamaican-born Winston McKenzie is our candidate, so there are absolutely no grounds for this at all."

He said the council was now "backtracking" and had decided the couple can foster again.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage has condemned the decision "outrageous"

"I am pleased that at least they have done that, but what they've said is rather insulting - they've said the couple may foster again, but only white children," Mr Farage continued.

"That, frankly, is pursuing an apartheid-style policy, dividing up children and categorising adults. That simply isn't good enough ... heads should roll within that council."

He added: "I think we should be colourblind in these things ... it's the interest of the child that matters, not some politically-correct theory."

Labour leader Ed Milband told Sky News: "Being a member of UKIP should not be a bar to adopting or fostering children."

The Daily Telegraph said the couple had denied they were racist and told the officials they would not have taken them on if they were.

The wife said: "I was dumbfounded. Then my question to both of them was, 'What has UKIP got to do with having the children removed?'

"Then one of them said, 'Well, UKIP have got racist policies'. The implication was that we were racist."

"I said, 'I am absolutely offended that you could come in my house and accuse me of being a member of a racist party.'"

The youngsters were taken away from the couple, who are former Labour voters, within a week last Friday.

She said she was left "bereft", adding: "We felt like we were criminals. From having a little baby in my arms, suddenly there was an empty cot."

The woman also said the council feared the couple could not meet the children's cultural needs in the long term - a claim the family denied.

"We were actively encouraging these children to speak their own language and to teach us their language," she was quoted as saying by the Sheffield-based Star newspaper.

"We enjoyed singing one of their folk songs in their native language, and having been told of the religious denomination of these children, we took steps to ensure that a school of their denomination was found."

Robert Tapsfield, chief executive of Fostering Network, said: "On the face of it this does appear to be a very strange decision. The children we understand were being well cared for by the foster carers and if there was a need to move them in the longer-term, there certainly doesn't appear to be a need to have moved them in the shorter-term."

Parliamentary by-elections for Rotherham, Middlesbrough and Croydon North are due to take place next Thursday.

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