Access to Adoption Papers
Adoption and Children Act 2002

This section is for legal references / news items, which are of importance to adoption and post-adoption.

Amendments to the Adoption and Children Bill concerning Access to information and Intermediary services will benefit thousands of adults affected by adoption particularly older birth relatives, who will gain rights of access to information. The amendment provides for new rights of access to records held by the courts and the General Registry office, adoption agency and local authority. This information will be used as a basis for providing intermediary services through registered adoption support agencies of which we hope SWAN will become one.

No one should be excluded from the provision of the service, and local authorities will need to decide whether they provide their service directly themselves or enable an adoption support service to do so. Regulations should be in place by the end of the year and we are anticipating [that] the action date of the legislation will be in 2004.

Hopefully, this will make it a very attractive option for non-subscribing authorities to join SWAN: and this is undoubtedly the easiest way of providing a uniformly high standard of service throughout the region.

There remain issues as to how the service will be funded, as the government anticipates that it will be self-funded, but:

• From our experience many birth relatives do not have the funds to pursue expensive searches, although they can contribute in some cases
  
  
• It is our experience
that to provide the skills and necessary infrastructure to provide high quality intermediaries nationwide will need Local Authorities to continue to subscribe to regional agencies such as SWAN


• The underlying financing by local authorities can thus secure the future development of these services, and hopefully we will be in a position to supplement local authority funding with voluntary fundraising.

What We Think It Means And How It Will Work:

1. There will be a national list of Adoption Support Agencies (ASA) who provide intermediary services. Adults will be able to request services from the ASA, i.e. SWAN
   
   
2. SWAN will appoint a sessional worker, who will apply to the Registrar General for information, and will then receive details of the court who made the adoption order.
   
   
3. The court will tell us of the local authority of the adoption agency involved, or authorise access to the adoption certificate directly form the Registrar General.
   
   
4. SWAN will contact the Local Authority or adoption agency to request an intermediary service or support to offer that service directly. We will have specific protocols with our subscribing agencies.
   
   
5. SWAN will then try and locate the adopted person an seek views on disclosing information to the birth relative.
   
   
6. With the consent of the adopted person, SWAN will act as an intermediary in passing on the information and enabling contact where it is wanted.

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• National Minimum
  Standards for voluntary adoption agencies and
  Local Authorities,
  published 4th March
  
  
• Change to the
  implementation timetable
  for Adoption
  Support Services

The following passage is summarised from the Department of Health website on adoption, click here to link to their full transcript.