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New powers to trace children
19 April 2004 Independent Parents win powers to trace children given up for adoption By Maxine Frith Social Affairs Correspondent Hundreds of thousands of parents who gave their children up for adoption are to be given new powers to trace them, under proposals published by the Government yesterday. An overhaul of the law will enable any blood relative of an adopted child to track them down and request contact. Charities and campaigners are expecting a flood of up to 30,000 applications from people desperate to be reunited with children they gave up for adoption. Parents who give their children up have no legal rights to trace or contact them. Adopted children have a legal right only to see their birth certificate, but have to track their natural families through the internet or private tracing agencies. The 2002 Adoption and Children Bill gave only increased rights of access to information for adoptions that take place after the law comes into effect from September, 2005. But after intense lobbying from children's charities and adoption campaigners, ministers published proposals yesterday to make the law retrospective and allow all adoption cases to be covered. Adoption Support Centres (ASCs) will be set upto help parents who gave up their children - and adults who were adopted - to trace their families. The agencies will act as intermediaries and will pass on contact information only with the consent of all those involved. The ASCs will be given access to social services records, adoption papers and other information to help reunite families. From the 18, any adopted person will also be able to use the service. Felicity Collier, chief executive of the British Association for Adoption and Fostering, said: "Thousands of birth parents have waited for many years to explain to the children they gave up for adoption why they made this decision, and to gain reassurance that their children are alive and well." More than 800,000 children have been adopted since 1926. Linda Cherry, from Margate, Kent, was forced to give her son up for adoption after she became pregnant at 15 in 1965. She went on to marry and have two other sons, but kept thinking about her firstborn. Finally, she employed a researcher to track him, and they were reunited in 1997. "We are taking it slowly and on his terms," she said. "These new rules will make a massive difference because they will give birth mothers support. |
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