Hard as it is to imagine, there are some parents whose behaviour towards their own children is so vile and egregious that, for their protection, the state feels constrained to take them away from their parents and arrange for other people to look after them.

In theory, the state does its best to find an ordinary, loving couple to raise the child as their own, starting as foster carers and then graduating into adoptive parents. It is not a perfect solution to the problems of the children, but it is often quite good. The kids never forget they had real parents who were wicked or mad or abused or rejected them in some way or another and that always leaves a deep scar.

But, if the foster parents are particularly good, the children gradually build up that warm, confident feeling that there are two adults in the world who really love them and care about them. They come to feel they are part of a proper family and their lives can be good and constructive.

The truth remains, though, that many of the children who are taken into care by the state have been so damaged by the experiences their natural parents inflicted on them that they find it exceptionally difficult to adjust to a new family and behave so badly that no foster family wants to keep them.

These poor children live in a sort of nether world of what are called "children's homes". Of course, they are not homes at all. The better of them are not much more than warehouses where children are kept out of the way by supervisors who stay for their shift and then, whatever the emotional state of the children they are supposedly raising, go home and leave the mess to fester.

The worst of them are no better than abuse factories, as Commissions of Inquiry have repeatedly found.

To give a flavour of the underlying reality, a boy being cast out of a children's home as he reaches 18 will typically spend part of his future life in prison or part as a compulsory patient in a mental institution. That is the typical result of being raised in a children's home rather than in foster care or adoption.

Now hear this. The social services department of the London Borough of Redbridge has decided that, if it finds an otherwise perfect foster family for a particularly difficult child and if the only alternative to placing that child with that family is to consign him to the miseries of a children's home then, if there is a smoker in that family, it is in the best interests of the child to go to the children's home.

The cruelty and control freakery of the state knows no bounds.