Adoption provides a new permanent family for children whose birth families are not able to bring them up.  This gives those children who may have had difficulties in their early lives an important new sense of safety and belonging.  Being able to help a child have a happier more secure childhood and a greater chance at being able to adjust to living a healthy, happy life as an adult is one of the most life enhancing choices others can make. There is no greater joy than unconditional love that is given to you by children.

Sometimes when couples remarry they want to formalise the relationship between the stepparent and the children of the family.  This can be because the biological parent no longer involved with the children and it is in the best interests of the children for this to happen.

There can occasionally be a need for adoption because the child was born with the assistance of modern fertility technology.  For further information on this complicated area we would suggest you view the web sites links below.

Welcome to the National Gamete Donation Trust: www.ngdt.co.uk

Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority: www.hfea.gov.uk 

HenleyLaw can assist you in any situation where adoption is something you may be considering including foreign adoptions.

 

What is Adoption?
In essence ‘adoption’ is the process by which a child becomes regarded in law as the child of the adopter and of no one else.  The child is then regarded as if he or she had been born to the adopter.  This remains the case not just for the remainder of the child’s childhood, but for life. 

A local authority, or adoption agency, may not place a child for adoption with prospective adopters unless they either have the consent of each parent with parental responsibility to do so, or they have obtained a ‘placement order’ from the court. 

An adoption order may only be made if each parent with parental responsibility for the child has either agreed to the child being adopted or has had their agreement to adoption dispensed with.  The only grounds for dispensing with consent are either that the parent is incapable of consenting or cannot be found or that the child’s welfare requires that consent to be dispensed with. 

The child’s welfare is the court’s paramount consideration and a specially tailored adoption ‘welfare checklist’ must be applied.

The classic image of adopters is of a mixed gender couple who are selected by an adoption agency to be substitute parents to a child often one who is in care with a local authority.  Many adoptions, however, involve members of the child’s family, with the most obvious example being adoption by a step-parent in order to regularise relationships within a step-family.  The pool of potential adopters has also been widened so that children may be adopted by ‘couples’ who may be of the same or different genders.  A ‘couple’ will be a married couple, or civil partners or two people who are partners in an enduring family relationship, an adoption order may also be made in favour of a single person.