Fertility Road Issue 03

FERTILITY ROAD
GUIDES/LAW
Helping you plan for every stage of your journey...
HAVING A
FAMILY BY
ADOPTION
by Naomi Angell of
Osbornes solicitors
Adoption can offer an opportunity
for parenthood to families who might
otherwise be childless. At the same
time it can give a child who faces
growing up in care without their own
family a loving and permanent family.
Adoption in the 21st Century
With the availability of abortion, contraception and society’s
acceptance of single motherhood, young babies are now rarely
relinquished for adoption particularly as compared to the situation
50 years ago. The traditional adoptive family has also changed as
reforms in adoption law mean that not only married couples but
also single people, unmarried and same sex couples can adopt.
There are also many children within the care system in need of
adoptive families. For many of these children in care, the promise
of a fulfilled and successful life reduces the longer they remain in
care. But adoption has been proved to give them what every child
needs to grow up successfully into adulthood.
Before the new Adoption and Children Act 2002 came into
force, even after a child had been placed for adoption with a family,
there was no certainty that either the family or the child would
have a smooth passage through the court system to the making of
an adoption order. Birth parents were able to withdraw consent
to the adoption right up to the Court room door or contest the
adoption despite the fact that the Court had already decided,
months or even years earlier, that the parents would not be able
to care for their child. It was consequently always a worrying and
very stressful process.
The Adoption and Children Act 2002 brought in a much higher
degree of certainty so that once a child has been placed with
a prospective adoptive family, an adoption order will almost
definitely be made. The birth parents now have very limited ability
to intervene, as their opportunity to do so is much earlier on in
the process, when the child was first taken into care.
With virtually all the uncertainty removed, the adoptive family
can now devote themselves to getting to know the new member of
their family and giving the child the secure and loving permanent
family that has until then been denied to them.
First Steps to Adopting
A family interested in adoption is likely to start their journey by
contacting their local authority adoption unit or by responding to
a local authority advert seeking adoptive families for the children
in their care or for a specific child available for adoption.
Many of the children will be sibling groups, children with
special needs or children with troubled early childhoods. The
young babies available for adoption may well have been removed
from parents with drug or alcohol problems.
This might sound a daunting prospect. However thorough
adoption preparation and social work support means that many
families who originally might have doubted their ability to parent
other than a very young child to whom they are biologically
related, find that they have untapped skills and enthusiasm for
this different type of parenting.
What is important is that an adoptive family is able to meet
the needs of the individual child and consequently, prospective
adopters must be assessed by an adoption agency as to whether
they are suitable to adopt the children available for adoption.
The assessment or home study process is a thorough investigation
by a social worker which includes looking at the family’s
background, values, aspirations for their adopted child and their
ability to meet the needs of children who are within the care system.
The home study report will be considered by the adoption agency’s
adoption panel, which the family are encouraged to attend to
answer any outstanding questions.
Again, families can feel daunted by the prospect and feel it
unfair that they must undertake this process for adoption when, if
they were able to have their own children, no outside body would
be involved in deciding whether they would be suitable parents.
This alone can dissuade families from considering adoption.
However, families who have been through the assessment
process frequently report how interesting and constructive they
have found it, giving them many skills for bringing up their future
children and an understanding of parenthood, which would be
helpful for any family and not just for adopters.
Once assessed as suitable adopters, the adoption agency will
then help the family find the right child for them.
48 fertility road | november - december