This week is national adoption week and the theme is #YouCanAdopt. The campaign aims to eliminate myths around who can adopt and explore the adoption process. Here, specialist Andrew Perrigo gives his take on the process:
Adoption can be a very divisive topic. For one family it is the blessing that they have always hoped for, completing them as a unit. For another it is a large gaping hole that can take a lifetime to fill. There are of course tensions in its effects.
On the one part you have a government who is looking for loving homes for the younger children placed in the care system and this can cover a wide range of ages. On the other many adopters are looking for babies to be placed with their family to make them their own.
Adoption has evolved over the years in its approach. Under the Adoption Act 1976 it was very much seen as a permanent transplanting into a new family and extinguishing the child’s previous legal status. The research that followed the 1976 Act supported the lifting of the veil of secrecy surrounding adoption.
Historically some adoptees were only discovering of their adoption in adulthood with the obvious significant emotional impact that came with receiving that information. Learning of a whole other life unlived can be a real challenge to make sense of and the search for the long lost family can bring great rewards or great heartache.
These days under the Adoption and Children Act 2002 there is a better understanding of a child needing to know their adoption journey from a young age so there are no secrets to discover as an adult. A child is provided their life story book telling them all about their birth family with a later life letter to aid the child in understanding why they were adopted.
The issue of contact once again has arguments either side of the divide. The birth family understandably want to have contact after adoption. It takes a special kind of adopter to promote direct contact following placement and such arrangements are extremely rare. The law is clear it should be in exceptional circumstances for contact to be imposed upon adopters against their will. Many adoptions conclude with letter box contact. An exchange of information, very often annually, to an ever distant memory.