The most obvious feature of adoption is that the birth parents lose any rights
to see or have contact with their child. At one time, it seemed as though
adoption meant a complete change in identity, as though the child's past life
never happened. There are many adults now who can find out nothing about their
birth family, indeed did not know they had been adopted until told far too late:
sadly for some of them,the damage has been done and can never be put right.
Over the last twenty years there has been a growing awareness of the need to
provide adopted children with a complete picture of their birth family, often by
creation of a 'life story book' in which all this information is carefully
collected and provided immediately. The Adoption Contact Register provides
information about birth family to adopted children, to be made available at age
18.
Much more significant is the concept of 'open adoption' whereby parents and
other family members may still have some form of contact with the child after
adoption. It's a misleading term, because in most cases contact will be
restricted to 'letterbox' exchange of photographs and other information that
does not enable the children's placement to be identified. In some cases,
though, birth parents have been introduced to the adopters; occasional
face-to-face contact may take place (maybe with grandparents or siblings).
In practice, few adopters will contemplate regular face-to-face contact
because of the need to provide security and stability for the child. Although
courts have the power to order contact, they will almost invariably refuse to do
so, even where the adopters have made an informal commitment to allow contact.