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Table 5 - Age of children who were the subjects of Adoption or
Freeing Order Proceedings during the period 1 April 2000 -
31 March 2001 (excluding Family and Intercountry adoptions)
Age of Children Number
Under 1 yr 10 (7.6%)
1 yr - under 5 yrs 70 (53.4%)
5 yrs - under 10 yrs 32 (24.4%)
10 yrs - under 15 yrs 11 (8.4%)
16 yrs and 17 yrs 8 (6.1%)
TOTAL 131 (100%)
Thus, from a service that was dominated from the inception of the
welfare state and well into the 1980s by placements of illegitimate
babies, the pre-eminent concern now is to find adoptive homes for
older children in the care system. Research has shown that the
younger the child is at the time of placement, then the greater the
chances of a successful adoption outcome, Department of Health
(DoH, 1999). In contested proceedings, however, the tension between
the Children Order principle of the 'paramountcy' of the welfare of
the child and the 'tests' that the Adoption Order imposes on the
courts in respect of dispensing with parental consent, presents
difficulties that, in turn, can have a negative impact on planning for
children. One of the major challenges facing adoption services and
the courts today is how to identify children early and enable them to
be placed quickly with an adoptive family without compromising the
quality of professional considerations about the potential of the birth
family to provide their own child with a loving, safe and permanently
secure home, or the due process of the legal system.
The role of birth families has assumed even greater significance in
modern day adoption practice. When parents place a new born child
for adoption, it is in the knowledge that the child may one day wish
to meet with them and perhaps establish a relationship. As recently
as the early 1980s, such an event was unthinkable for parents who
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