Agency seeks leave to appeal adoption ruling

BY SIMON CALDWELL
THE LAST remaining Catholic adoption agency in England and Wales has applied for leave to appeal against a legal ruling it says would condemn it to closure.
Catholic Care, the agency of the Leeds, Hallam and Middlesbrough dioceses, was told by the Charity Tribunal in April that it could not use a legal loophole in the 2010 Equality Act to turn away same sex couples as potential adopters and foster parents.
The ruling meant that the charity, which each year finds new homes for about 10 children, many of whom are “difficult to place”, will either have to sever ties with the Church or end its adoption services.
Benjamin James of Bircham Dyson Bell solicitors has now lodged the application with the Charity Tribunal on behalf of the adoption agency. The Charity Tribunal must now decide whether to grant leave to appeal to judges of the Upper Tribunal.
If the application is successful it will represent the eighth stage in the case and the fourth time the charity has appealed.
But Mr James said he had identified a number of errors in law in the Charity Tribunal judgment and so Catholic Care felt it was right to mount a fresh challenge.
He told Civil Society Media that the charity’s trustees had given great consideration to the costs involved.
“They are very conscious of the charity’s money and of the work they do with children, but they have spoken to donors and realised they won’t have any money to do anything with children if they let this go,” he said.
Bishop Arthur Roche of Leeds has said that those who would suffer most as a result of the rulings against the adoption agency were “the most vulnerable children for whom Catholic Care has provided an excellent service for many years”.
The agency has previously mounted unsuccessful legal attempts to persuade the Charity Commission to allow it to change its statutes so it could use Section 193 ofAct to continue its policy of assessing married couples and single people only.
TheAct, which incorporates the Sexual Orientation Regulations of 2007, says that charities can discriminate if their actions represent a “proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim or for the purpose of preventing or compensating a disadvantage” linked to a charity’s characteristics. Catholic Care insisted that the clause meant it was legally able to both comply with the law and to operate according to the teaching of the Catholic Church that gay adoption is “gravely immoral”.