When was adoption legalised in the uk

However, adoption, the permanent removal of a child into another family, had no legal basis in the United Kingdom until the 20th century and was done on an informal basis. The First World War saw an increase in organized adoption through adoption societies and child rescue organizations, and pressure grew for adoption to be given legal status.

In the first legislation relating to adoption was passed for England and Wales, and broadly similar legislation rapidly followed for Northern Ireland and Scotland.

Since then almost every decade has seen new laws introduced that increasingly regulate the process of adoption in the United Kingdom, and although legislation for each of the three areas remains similar, there are some differences. The peak number of adoptions was in , since when there has been an enormous decline in adoption in the United Kingdom.

Since the s, social, cultural, economic, and legal changes have meant that neither of these are now major factors. Those children who are now adopted are mainly from local authority care because their birth family situation placed them at risk; a few are adopted from overseas but the figures for this remain low.

Heywood , a history of the development of child welfare services in the United Kingdom, is also useful background reading. Until quite recently most historical material on adoption appeared as chapters in social work or legal books or in histories concentrating on other areas, such as child abuse or the position of single women. Kornitzer , a book on adoption practice, includes a chapter on the history of adoption, as did McWhinnie in a study of the outcomes of people adopted as children in Scotland.

More recently, Montgomery is an overview of adoption in the United Kingdom. The first of these provides a useful introduction to the main issues in adoption from a social, cultural, and historical perspective, with a wide selection of references dealing with adoption across the world. The second deals with adoption from a social work viewpoint and discusses contemporary adoption, sometimes with a historical slant; it concentrates mainly on the United States, but many issues are common to most countries involved with adoption.

The third and fourth entries look at the history of social work in the United Kingdom, and many of the references are relevant to adoption, which social workers dealt with to some degree even before the Second World War.

Since the s there has been growing interest in the history of adoption and more has been written on specific periods and issues, which will be described throughout this article.

In , the Children Act marked the shift in emphasis; and at the end of the twentieth century about half of all adoptions were of children who had been in local authority care. Government policy focussed on increasing the use of adoption for children in care in a determined attempt to reduce the number of children cared for in institutions or by possibly short-term foster parents; and in February Prime Minister Blair personally headed a review to ensure the best use of adoption to meet the needs of children in care.

The reader may well find these changes of emphasis difficult to understand; and it has to be admitted that there has traditionally been some difference between lawyers and lay people about the essence of adoption.

For the lawyer, it is concerned above all with the legal rights of the birth and adoptive parents on the one hand and the adopted child on the other. Because the legal effect of adoption—in effect, an irrevocable transfer of a child from one family to another—is so dramatic lawyers have tended to regard it as a process necessarily different in p.

Social workers tend to be less impressed by these legal matters. Whatever the facts of the relationship between adoptive parent and adopted child they remained legally strangers, and in particular there was no effective machinery 9 to prevent the natural parents exercising the common law right to remove the child—sometimes when the child became capable of earning a wage. In the Coalition Government yielded to these expressions of demand and appointed a committee chaired by Sir Alfred Hopkinson KC 14 to consider the desirability of making legal provision for the adoption of children and, if so, the form which such legislation should take.

This governed the substantive 31 law of adoption until What should be the effect of the transfer from birth to adoptive parent? The Tomlin Committee had no difficulty in recommending that adoption should effectively transfer the right to what can perhaps be described as the guardianship of the child to the adopters, and the Act provided for such a transfer in resounding language. The Act did not satisfy many of those professionally involved in arranging adoptions. Would she not wish to know something about the home in which her child was to be brought up?

For these reasons the Adoption Rules 49 provided that not only the name but also the address of the adoptive parents should be inserted on the form prescribed for the giving of parental consent. But the Act laid the foundation upon which progress could be made; and its significance in the development of English family law cannot be questioned. Over the years ahead, adoption was to evolve from being essentially a private transaction dependent on contractual principle into a process, largely administered by State welfare agencies, 58 from which contractual elements almost disappeared.

The Act itself left adoption almost entirely uncontrolled by the State; and—as we have seen—the requirement that a court look into applications for adoption orders in an attempt to ensure that the making of an order would be beneficial for the child could be evaded by taking possession of a child placed for adoption, concealing its whereabouts, and refraining from applying for the de facto adoption to be legalised.

The fact that the adoption process was so little regulated meant that newspaper advertisements at best tasteless 59 could freely offer children for adoption; and there were suggestions that adoption agencies took inadequate precautions in deciding whether to place children 60 often the children of unmarried mothers whose chief anxiety might be to get rid of the child ; 61 there were fears that British children were being exported to countries p.

The Horsburgh Committee reported a large growth in the number of adoption societies: it believed that more than 1, children each year were placed with adopters by bodies describing themselves as such. The Committee accepted that generally adoption societies and other adoption agencies were performing a useful function but it found many instances of unsatisfactory practice; and it therefore recommended that no organisation should be allowed to make any arrangements for the adoption of a child unless it was registered with the local authority.

Chapter five examines the first years of legal adoption in England, and the issues this presented to the courts and those organisations such as the National Association for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and the London County Council, as well as the NCAA and NCUMC which dealt with the adopted children and their families.

While the majority of adopters were married couples, there were also a small number of unmarried parents who adopted their own illegitimate child in order to legitimise them, and until the policy on this changed shortly after the Second World War, a number of single childless men and women also adopted children.

Chapter six explores the increasing regulation of adoption societies in the wake of the Act. Even the most respectable and successful of these organisations, such as the NCAA and NAS, had been occasionally suspected of conducting lax checks on potential adopters or being out of step with the best practice in child welfare.

In response to these concerns, the Departmental Committee on Adoption Agencies was appointed in , headed by Florence Horsbrugh, the Member of Parliament for Dundee. Crucially, this covered not only legalised child adoption and the societies which arranged this, but also investigated the informal adoptions which fell outside the Act. The recommendations of the Horsbrugh Committee formed the basis of the Adoption of Children Regulation Act, which required a local authority to be notified of any informal adoption by anyone of any child under nine years old.

Perhaps most significantly, the Act finally made illegal both the advertising of children for adoption or adoption for financial reward save by a local authority. During the Second World War, child adoption remained an issue of concern on the Home Front, and the continuities and changes resulting from this period are examined in chapter seven.

Just as in the First World War, the issues of war orphans and a rise in rates of illegitimacy prompted a reassessment of adoption policy and practice. In part, this was spurred on by the fact that the outbreak of war meant that the implementation of the Act was delayed. As a result, the Act was finally introduced in June Councils could — and did — withhold registration from adoption societies which did not meet with their approval until they felt that the guidelines for child adoption were properly complied with.

The years to , as Keating demonstrates, saw profound and dramatic changes in the discourse and practice of child adoption in England.

When did adoption become legal? In England and Wales adoption first became legal in , while in Northern Ireland it was and in Scotland it was Before the introduction of legislation adoptions were arranged informally by organisations, or directly between the birth mother and adopting parents, and in some cases agreements may have been drawn up by lawyers. Permanent placements may also have been made by Guardians of the Poor or Public Assistance bodies and county record offices are now the main holders of this information.

No, not all adoptions were arranged through a local authority or voluntary adoption agency. Until private adoptions were legal. These were placements arranged through private individuals, often doctors, nurses, lawyers, local vicar etc.