Christian charity opens new adoption service in ‘celebration of faith’

Supporting Christian parents in their faith through the adoption and fostering process is a joy, founders of a Christian charity have said.

In an interview with The Christian Institute, Cornerstone UK’s founders Trevor and Pam Birtle spoke about the charity’s new adoption service in England, and its expansion of its fostering service into Scotland. Previously, the charity was only registered for fostering in England.

Cornerstone UK, which was founded in 1999, received the Institute’s legal help when Ofsted tried to force the charity to work with non-evangelical Christian carers.

Families

Mrs Birtle explained that they were inspired to set up an agency that would support Christians, after their own faith had been treated as a problem, rather than a blessing.

Mr Birtle said: “Many Christians feel as though their faith is a barrier to them becoming foster carers and adopters to form new families”, but explained that this shouldn’t be the case.

He added that part of their motivation at Cornerstone is about “wanting to celebrate our faith in the way in which we care within our families, and having the freedom to be able to pray with our children, to support our children, and to be the best that we can be and to honour God within our families.”

In the future, the charity aims to expand into Northern Ireland and have a cluster of families in each region of the UK.

Prayer

Elspeth Hulse, who with her husband has been a foster carer with Cornerstone for over three years, said she was initially “amazed that the team actually pray every morning for our families”, in addition to praying with her social worker each month.

Reflecting on prayer, she noted the impact on children being brought into homes where the Holy Spirit is working “behind the scenes”.

One night, one of her foster children prayed “dear God I forgive Mam”, and she was “blown away by that it was so powerful”.

Ofsted

In 2019, Ofsted accused Cornerstone of unlawful discrimination for only recruiting evangelical Christian carers and requiring them to abide by its code of conduct on living consistently with the charity’s Christian beliefs about marriage between a man and a woman.

But in 2021, the Court of Appeal confirmed that an evangelical foster agency can work exclusively with evangelical carers. It also agreed that Cornerstone had suffered a significant interference with its right to manifest its religious beliefs.

However, the Court sided with Ofsted in its attempt to impose its own definition of “evangelical” on Cornerstone. The Supreme Court later refused permission to appeal earlier court judgments.