So would-be adopters can be turned down because they are white and the child is black - or because the couple smoke or are fat. Sometimes they are turned down for being too old - or at least they are deemed too old by the time the interminable assessments are completed. My father was 55 when I was born and I still like to feel he did a better job than if I had been brought up in the care system.

Rather less well understood but all the more insidious is the way that good people are prevented from adopting not because of who they are but because of what they think. The thought control aspect is terrifying to behold. In order to be approved, applicants need to agree - or at least to pretend to agree - to an entire lexicon voiced by the social workers. All the pieties must be observed. Would they be pleased if the child they adopted grows up to be gay? Would they discourage "gender specific" activity - girls playing with dolls, boys playing with toy soldiers? Would they ever smack a child? If your reply is: "I always say, spare the rod, spoil the child," then go to the back of the queue.

Do the applicants "recognise" the benefits of counselling? Often people trying to adopt have experienced a miscarriage. If their response is that they prefer to come to terms with their own grief privately rather than with the benefit of strangers, should this view not be accepted? Apparently not. It doesn't tick the box.

Are they "positive" about the adopted child having "contact" with the birth parents? (Such contact might be a good thing but it can also be disastrous.) If they already have a child of their own, is the motivation in wanting to adopt to provide a sibling for their child? ("Yes" is the wrong answer.) "If the child you adopted scratched your car with a coin what would you do about it?" is a standard question to applicants in another authority. Careful how you answer.