The Wardman Wire

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Both the Telegraph and the Daily Mail reported earlier this week about an evangelical Christian who’s been taken off the fostering register by her local authority after a sixteen-year-old girl, brought up as a Muslim, converted to Christianity and was baptised while in her care. It seems at first glance a pity that this row has led to the loss of a foster carer when there is a national shortage of them, and when the girl is, after all, likely to be Gillick-competent to make up her own mind about religion. But fostering is not a right. The council’s decision that it no longer has confidence in this foster carer may well be entirely justified once the full facts are known.

The real story behind all this is the growing, media-savvy campaign against secularism in the public realm that’s being led by organisations like the Christian Institute.

From the Daily Mail this morning, a report of a Foster Carer “struck off” for “allowing a Muslim girl in her care to convert to Christianity.” This is the nub of it:

A foster mother has been struck off the register for allowing a Muslim girl in her care to convert to Christianity.

The woman, who has looked after more than 80 children in the past ten years, is considering suing the council over the decision.

Although she is a practising Anglican, she said she had put no pressure on the girl who was baptised last year at the age of 16.

She said social workers had also raised no objections to her own attendance at church.

But officials insist she failed in her duty to preserve the girl’s religion and should have tried to stop the baptism.

The foster mother’s removal from the register followed in November.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has launched a legal challenge to the decision with funding from the Christian Institute.

I don’t usually take the Daily Mail as a single source, but this seems to be a sober report. My comments are based on an assumption that the report is accurate. If this has been “Daily Mail”-ed I’ll correct and update.

There’s a lot that could be said about this, but there is one point that I find fascinating: it is established that childen under 18 have a right to self-determination of children where sexuality, marriage or deciding what to do with a baby are concerned, but the denial of that right when it comes to choosing a religion. That does not look consistent.