Nigerian children find a home with the Arnetts in Fremington

Mr and Mrs Arnett foster Nigerian children at their home in Fremington. This enables the birth parents to work or study. The Arnetts discuss the realities of government underfunding and lack of local authority aid for foster carers in Devon.

The British Association for Adoption and Fostering (BAAF) created a research-based British Adoption Project that ran between 1965 and 1969. In all, 53 children of Black Caribbean, African, Asian or mixed heritage were placed into 51 adoptive or fostering families around the UK and the BAAF conducted follow-up interviews with the families between 1974 and 1981. The BAAF also offer adopted adults who were involved in this project a means of contacting birth relatives. In the 1950s and 1960s it was not unusual for West Africans to use private foster carers while they worked or studied because they had no family support network.