ABSTRACT
In Applin v Race Relations Board,34 the House of Lords held that children who had been taken into the care of a local authority were a section of the public and that therefore the provision of fostering facilities was covered by the legislation. In consequence, there could be no discrimination in the way in which fostering arrangements were organised, making it impermissible for foster parents to specify the race of the child they wished to foster. Section 23(2) of the RRA 1976 reverses this position, removing from the ambit of the Act situations where someone ‘takes into his home, and treats as if they were members of his family, children, elderly persons, or persons requiring a special degree of care and attention’. The exception only covers acts of discrimination by the putative foster parents; it will thus only absolve actions by the local authority in so far as they respond to the declared wishes of potential fosterers. Accordingly, in Conwell v Newham LBC,35 the Employment Appeal Tribunal held that provision of care by the local authority came within s 20 of the RRA 1976, despite s 22(5) of the Children Act 1989.
