Cambridge Family Law Practice

Adoption law is in urgent need of reform, a report published at the end pf last year insists.

The Public Law Working Group was established by Sir Andrew McFarlane, President of the Family Division of the High Court and the most senior family law judge in the country. One committee within the Working Group focused on an in-depth review of adoption law, chaired by Mrs Justice Judd and featuring a range of professionals working within the adoption sector. After four years of research and consultation, the group has now published a report entitled Recommendations for best practice in respect of adoption.

The report includes detailed reviews of five aspects of adoption in England and Wales: contact concerns, access to adoption records, consensual adoption, international adoption, and court procedures, making a significant number of recommendations within each field. In particular the report recommends greater use of modern digital technology, and an overall reorientation towards the nature of adoption in the 21st Century. In previous decades adoption was often motivated by poverty, illegitimacy or the youth of the birth parents, but the majority of adoptions now take place within the care system. In addition, the overall number of adoptions per year has fallen by over 700 per cent since the 1960s, from approximately 25,000 to less than 3,000.

Key recommendations include:

• New national procedures for accessing adoption records by adopted children in adulthood.
• A comprehensive strategy for adoption by consent – i.e. when one family reaches a direct agreement with parents to adopt their child. The strategy would include access to legal advice before the birth, along with dedicated training.
• Clearer procedures for face-to-face contact between birth parents and adopted children, with special support, training and counselling available.
• New guidance for, and significant simplification of, the legal procedures surrounding international adoption. These should be contained within a single Act of Parliament, the report suggests.

Family law committee chair Mrs Justice Judd said:

“This report highlights the need for significant change so that adopted children have more opportunity to keep in touch with their birth families unless it is not safe, and better access to their records. It also calls for changes to process and clearer guidance for international adoptions, and recognises the lasting effect of adoption orders on birth and adoptive families.”

Sir Andrew McFarlane welcomed publication of the report and its many recommendations for change, adding:

“The recommendations concerning contact with a child’s birth family are especially important, but the particular arrangements in each case much be determined by the needs of the individual child.”

The report is available here.

Jeremy Ford, one of the partners here at Cambridge Family Law Practice, frequently advises clients in respect of international adoptions and notes: “like many areas of family law, the relevant legislation has been outgrown by changes in society. Adoptions can be highly complex for all parties. I hope that any change the report triggers will ease some of that complexity, with the child in question at its focus”.