Contact
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.