| Eagora

In England, the idea of finding homes for half cast babies came towards 1962. The media had largely contributed in raising public awareness on the option of adopting Transracially. For instance, The Daily Mail, had issued an article on May 29, 1961 publicizing the adoption of a one year and a half coloured baby, Maria, by the Earl and countess of March. With the growing debate over transracial adoption, adoption agencies had to decide whether it was in the best interest of children from minority groups to be adopted in mainstream families. Research were carried out in order to find out whether Black children should be adopted or fostered only by black parents or not. It is undoubtedly in 1965 that transracial adoptions found a legal framework with the British Adoption Project, a small London-based experiment. Jointly sponsored by the International social service of Great Britain and the department of sociology at Bedford college, London, the project was set out to recruit adoptive homes for hard to place non-white babies. It successfully placed 53 children between April 1, 1965 and March 31, 1969. This paper intends to highlight the process in which the American experience in the transracial adoption of Native American children was adopted and adapted by the  British Adoption Agency, at a time when ethnicity and class were central issues. The British Adoption Project (1965) was drafted following the guidelines from the Indian Adoption Project, a contract which operated from February 1959 to 1967 in the USA. The IAP was officially adopted in order to lift the obstacles that prevented Native children from eligible adoption in white families.