Blog post by Rachel Schon of the Garden Court Chambers Family Law Team.
On 7 November 2024, the Public Law Working Group published its report, ‘Recommendations for Best Practice in Respect of Adoption’. The working group has been working on the report for four years, in the form of a sub-group chaired by Mrs Justice Judd.
The report focuses on five areas:
- International adoption;
- Consensual adoption;
- Access to adoption records;
- Processes and procedures in court; and
- Contact
The report contains detailed analysis and recommendations with implications for all those working in the family justice system.
In this article, I will focus on two out of these five areas, contact and consensual adoption.
Contact
In respect of contact, the report is clear that change is needed to ensure more children enjoy meaningful and safe post-adoption contact, including face-to-face contact, with their birth families.
The report notes that currently, such orders are possible but rarely made at the time of placement, often due to concerns that adoptive parents may not support such contact or may even be dissuaded from adopting a child in these circumstances. For this reason, most adopted children at present are given access only to ‘letterbox’ contact, which sadly fails to be sustained more than 50% of the time. However, the report cites academic research which demonstrates that ongoing contact post adoption is often the best option for children, helping them with their sense of identity, and minimising the risk that older children will seek to trace birth families and initiate contact on their own initiative without any safeguards or risk assessment in place.
For this reason, the report recommends not only that such orders should be made more frequently, but also that there needs to be workable mechanisms in place to consider and review post-adoption contact with birth families, including siblings and wider family members, for the duration of a child’s minority.
The report notes that apps have now been developed to assist families with facilitating safe indirect contact, specifically mentioning ArcBox and LetterSwap. It is hoped by professionals that adoptive parents will come to appreciate the value of such contact, if they are helped to understand why it is so important for the wellbeing of the children concerned, and that once this happens, any opposition is likely to be less significant.
Consensual adoption
In respect of consensual adoption, the report notes that such cases are now relatively uncommon, due to a variety of societal factors.
While this may be considered to be a good thing, the comparative rarity of these applications means that courts and professionals are not practised in handling these cases and there is less opportunity to share best practice.
The report examines recent case law in this area, particularly concerning the thorny issue of when fathers and other family members can or should be notified in the face of opposition from the mother concerned.
The report recommends that Regional Adoption Agencies and Cafcass develop a strategy for such cases, including training. The report also recommends that publicly funded legal advice be made available for parents who are considering giving up their children for adoption, both before and after the birth.
To read the report’s recommendations in full, please see here.
