Poll: Should e-cigarette users be stopped from adopting pre-school aged children?
Councils in the West Midlands do not want people to adopt pre-school children if they are using e-cigarettes, it has emerged.
Despite experts saying 'vaping' poses little or no threat to children in the home, authorities are reluctant to place under-fives with users.
In Wolverhampton, Dudley, Sandwell and Walsall, people who wish to adopt a pre-school age child are ideally expected to have given up any kind of smoking for at least six months.
The policy in Staffordshire is to not place a child within a family home if someone in the household has smoked tobacco in the past 12 months.
If after 12 months of using an e-cigarette instead, the person does not return to tobacco then they can adopt.
But it comes at a time when demand for care services is soaring and councils are being forced to heavily cut services in order to afford to look after vulnerable youngsters.
Wolverhampton City Council alone is currently looking after 800 vulnerable children and has the highest rate of care applications in the country – almost three times the national average.
On the website Adoption in the Black Country, funded by the four borough councils, a section on smoking reads: "We have a duty to consider the effects of smoking on children in their care and will not usually place pre-school children or those with a heart or chest/respiratory complaint such as asthma, with people who smoke or use electronic substitutes.
"Where prospective adopters wish to adopt children from the aforementioned groups, we ask that prospective adopters have given up smoking and have not smoked for a period of six months or longer before starting the adoption process."
Sandwell and Dudley Councils, however, say they have never turned down a request to foster children as a consequence of e-cigarettes.
A couple in Staffordshire, who have asked not to be identified, say they were barred by social workers because of vaping.
The couple approached Staffordshire County Council in December 2013 following £20,000 worth of failed IVF attempts.
At the time, however, the man was a light smoker of normal cigarettes.
The couple underwent medicals and interviews which took until the following September but when a social worker saw the man with an e-cigarette, they say things changed.
Councillor Mike Lawrence, cabinet member for children, said: "Our key priority is to find happy, secure, loving homes for every child that comes into our care.
"As a rule we do not place children under five in households where people smoke."
