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October 15th, 2002.
Women who gave up their children for adoption are to be given the right to contact them.
In the original proposed Adoption and Children Bill this right was only in relation to adoptions made after that law came into force.
For background information see
news article (03/04/2002) that supported this change.
Many parent/s of infants that were handed over to adoption agencies in the post-war years, when having a baby out of wedlock was socially unaceptable, have tried to
make contact with their offspring. Usually with little success.
Currently these parents can be given asistance in finding and making contact with their children but many agencies lack the resources to help. Many are also not persuaded that this
would be in the best interests of the adopted adults.
Without even the adopted name of the child to go on birth parents have little real prospect of ever making contact with
their birth children. The National Adoption Contact Register has been available to them, but with so little done to make the existence of the register widely known, the success rates
of matching an adopted adult with a birth family member is very small.
The new proposals will ask adoption agencies to provide an intermediary service and where these fail to find an adopted child the birth parent/s will be given details from the registry
regarding the adoption. They may even have their later searches for the child paid for.
See
Guardian Article on new proposals.
"Lost and Found" - A mothers account of being re-united with her adopted child.
"I'm so glad she found me" - An adopted adult (20yrs) account of being re-united with her birth mother.
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