“As a couple, we didn’t picture our life without a family. Having attended introductory workshops organised by RBWM and Adopt Berkshire, giving an adopted child, no matter what race, the security of a loving home was all we wanted to do. We were so encouraged by the welcoming attitude at the introductory workshops of all races, religions and sexualities.
“What we didn’t expect was a refusal for us to even apply for adoption, not because of our incapability to adopt, but because our cultural heritage was defined as “Indian/Pakistani”. Having both been born and raised in the UK, we felt it was not fair that priority was given to White/European adopters and for us to be excluded from the application process.
“The child’s welfare is most important of all and, while we believe that factors such as race and religion should be taken into account, we don’t believe decisions prohibiting couples from applying to adopt should be solely based on this, rather a number of factors should be looked at.
“We are young, happily married for almost ten years, financially secure, and we have a home with space to adopt more than one child. We know this shouldn’t have guaranteed us approval, but we felt it should have at least got us to the point to make an application.
“To add to the frustration, we were further disappointed by the complaints procedure at RBWM. Even having alerted the leader of the council to our discrimination complaint, which he acknowledged, we were bewildered with the missed deadlines for official responses and their failure to investigate.
“We are now focusing on intercountry adoption from the USA and are very pleased and excited we have been approved for this. But we hope by revealing our treatment within the domestic system, we can raise awareness of this issue and help other couples from different ethnic backgrounds to be considered fairly, rather than being rejected at the first hurdle as we were.”