A well-to-do, British-born Sikh couple, wanted to adopt a child and not care about their race, but the council allegedly couldn’t look past the couple’s race. Sandeep and Reena Mander are suing the council for denying them to adopt a white child because they are Asian.
The couple was told that they would be better off adopting "from India or Pakistan" based on their ethnic roots. The couple launched a discrimination case against Royal Berkshire of Windsor and Maidenhead Adoption Service.
The council has fought back saying that the couple requested for a ‘white or a Hispanic’ child so that they would look like the couple.
Katherine Foster, defending, told Oxford country court: "In your application, you stated you wanted a child who was white or Hispanic. You wanted a child who looked more like you."
To which Mrs Mander replied: "I do not look white and I do not look Hispanic. We were advised not to tick every box, we did not mind what ethnicity the child was, we were willing to offer any child a loving home. All the correspondence felt like it was the colour of my skin which was why we were rejected.”
The Adoption Berkshire's "gatekeeper" Ms Loades apparently rejected the Mander’s application immediately because the application stated that they wanted a young under-three years old, simple needs child".
Ms Loades claimed that they had a lot of vulnerable children that needed placing for adoption, and therefore, she told the Maders to "come back another time."
The Manders have claimed direct discrimination on grounds of race, in breach of Section 13 of the Equality Act 2010 and the European Convention on Human Rights.
