 |
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
 |
Adoption Support Services - Adopted Adults.
Adopters are given full information about a child's background at the time that a placement is agreed. As the child grows older, adoptive parents will need to talk to a child about their adopted status and to share information about their birth family in an age appropriate way.
When a child reaches the age of 18, they will be entitled to gain information from their files from the local authority. In practice, if the local authority has given the adopters sufficient information at the start, and if this information has been shared with the child as they grow up, the need for further information is unlikely to be very strong. However, an adopted adult may decide that they would like to make some sort of contact with their birth parents or relatives - perhaps in order to gain a fuller picture of their identity. Adoptive parents should not see this as a threat or as a comment on the relationship that they have with their child. Adopted adults vary enormously in their attitudes to tracing birth relatives, and it is often simply a matter of individual personalities.
Birth parents do not have the right to gain information from Social Services files about their adopted children. However, they can ask the Local Authority to contact their child's adoptive parents once the child has reached the age of 18, with the message that they would welcome information or some contact from their child.
