Well done Coronation Street, for putting adoption firmly on to the agenda for public debate through having 14-year-old Sarah-Lou consider it as a serious possibility for the child she's expecting.

Adoption was also in the real-life headlines the other day, after Department of Health figures revealed that 2,100 infants under a year old are now being cared for by local authorities - nearly a third more than five years ago.

Meanwhile, at least 1,300 couples who have been approved for adoption are waiting to be matched with a child. Only 200 adoptions went through last year.

Why the delay? Apparently in some areas social workers are still dragging their heels when it comes to finding adoptive homes for the infants in local authority.

That, quite rightly, has been criticised by the Adoption Forum pressure group, whose director, Liv O'Hanlon, was quoted this week as saying "The adoption of children is best done as quickly and early as possible. It is a scandal if babies are being kept in the care system and being allowed to grow older and more difficult to place because social workers are not acting quickly enough."

It is indeed a nonsense that babies are being kept for so long in the limbo-land of foster care. However good that care might be, it can't match the permanent bonding that only a "forever family" can provide - the sort of loving security that children need if they are to stand their best chance of developing into well-balanced adults.

But not only are there delays in matching children to adoptive parents. There is also apparently a tendency among social workers and GPs not to put forward adoption as an option.

A spokesman for a group called Adoption Support in Society said the other day that people having to make difficult decisions about unwanted pregnancies were having to do so based on a choice between abortion and keeping the baby. Adoption was not being put to them as a possibility.

Well, perhaps the Sarah-Lou case will change all that - although the horrified reaction from her parents to her suggestion will have done little to improve the image of adoption. They couldn't have been more aghast if she'd said she wanted it to be raised by the wolves in Chester Zoo.

Let's hope that as the storyline proceeds, it's allowed to become clear that adoption is by far the best option for Sarah-Lou, her forthcoming baby, and everyone else concerned.

Here is a 14-year-old girl who has made one mistake, desperately wishes she hadn't, and would much prefer to become a 14-year-old girl again rather than have to face the huge responsibilities of motherhood.

She can hardly expect a lot in the way of grandparental support, coming as she does from such a dysfunctional family.

Father Martin is deeply involved in an affair with a colleague and is bound to be caught out sooner or later. Mother Gail, being the most intensely judgmental person in the whole of Weatherfield, is not the sort to forgive him lightly. And great-gran Audrey Roberts is as daft as a brush.

Who would want to condemn any infant to be raised among that lot? Far better, surely, for it to be adopted by a sensible couple who are in a stable, loving relationship.

The real-life Sarah-Lous of this world need to be reassured that if they decide to have their baby adopted, they are not "giving the baby away", as Gail described it. They are actually giving it a better chance.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.