Adoption of a child is a very important legal process: it wipes out all
previous family ties and obligations, and creates wholly new relationships with
the child's new adoptive family. Although known to Roman Law, the concept of
adoption is comparatively new to us, and the present law, passed in 1976, is
bound to be overhauled soon.
In fact, for various reasons, the number of children adopted has dropped
sharply over the last few years. The Government has indicated they wish to make
it more easily available and to speed up the court process. True, there are many
unnecessary delays, but the importance of adoption, to both child and both
families involved, means that a rigorous investigation process is still needed.
A fraught area of the law is step-parent adoptions. These were supposedly
outlawed by the Children Act 1975, but some still crept through. The advantages
of by-passing the Child Support Agency has made them immensely popular to many
families who would prefer to relieve the natural father of a financial
obligation while maintaining contact on their own terms. Although such adoptions
are in many ways purely private affairs, the legal significance of adoption
requires a full investigation by Social Services : which may or may not actually
take place.
For the child, adoption may be the best thing possible to secure a safe and
stable permanent home : but adopters are not immune to family breakdown, and so
they are put under a rigorous examination which some find unduly intrusive.
Meanwhile there has been a greater recognition of the child's rights to
information, too late still for some, but the realisation that children need
information about their past life now is reflected by the work put into
'life-story books', letterbox contact and the Adoption Contact Register.