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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