London, UK - A foster mother has been struck off the register for allowing a Muslim girl in her care to convert to Christianity.
The woman, who has looked after more than 80 children in the past ten years, is considering suing the council over the decision.
Although she is a practising Anglican, she said she had put no pressure on the girl who was baptised last year at the age of 16.
She said social workers had also raised no objections to her own attendance at church.
But officials insist she failed in her duty to preserve the girl's religion and should have tried to stop the baptism.
Last April, they ruled that the girl, now 17, should stay away from church for six months.
The foster mother's removal from the register followed in November.
The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has launched a legal challenge to the decision with funding from the Christian Institute.
Mike Judge, a spokesman for the institute, said: 'All people should be free to change or modify their religious beliefs.
'That surely must be a core human right in any free society.
'I cannot imagine that an atheist foster carer would be struck off if a Christian child in her care stopped believing in God. This is the sort of double standard which Christians are facing in modern Britain.
'In recent months we have seen a nurse, adoption agencies, firemen, registrars, elderly care homes - and now a foster carer - being punished because of the Christian beliefs they hold. It has to stop.'
The carer is a single mother of two in her 50s who has worked with young children for much of her life. She has had an unblemished record since becoming a foster parent in the North of England in 1999.
Of the Christian convert, she said: 'I did initially try to discourage her. I offered her alternatives.
'I offered to find places for her to practise her own religion. I offered to take her to friends and family.
'But she said to me from the word go, 'I am interested and I want to come.' She sort of burst in.'
The woman said it had never occurred to her that she would be axed from the register.
The move has stripped her of her sole source of income, forcing her to downsize to a one-bedroom flat.
She is being represented by Huddersfield-based Nigel Priestley, a lawyer who specialises in carer disputes.
He said: 'There is no doubt that the event that provoked the council was the decision by the girl to be baptised.
'This girl was 16 and has the right to make this choice, so for the council to react in this way is totally disproportionate.
'She has worked to help challenging teenagers for many years and she has always received high praise for her work.'
The case follows controversy over the suspension of community nurse Caroline Petrie, 45, for offering to pray for an elderly woman patient.
She has since been reinstated.