Adoption orders

In order for an adoption to be made legal the adoptive parents need to apply for an adoption order through the family court. The application process usually begins with initial contact with an adoption agency and background checks before the court application. The child must have lived with you for at least 10 weeks before an application for an adoption order can be made. The adoptive parents need to complete an application form A58 to make the adoption legal and submit this to the court as part of the legal procedure, which wider adoption process often takes around 6 to 12 months to complete.

An adoption order is a final court order that transfers full parental responsibility to the approved adopters, and the adoption order transfers parental responsibility while permanently severing the legal relationship between the child and their birth parents. Once the order is made through the legal process, the adopters become the child’s legal parents for all purposes, including inheritance and decision‑making, and the child’s best interests are the court’s primary consideration when deciding whether to make the order.

Following the granting of an adoption order, an adoption certificate is issued for the child with their new name. This replaces the existing birth certificate of the adopted child. The child who has been adopted also receives the same rights they would have received if they were the birth child of the adoptive parents. These rights extend to inheritance and the estate of the adoptive parents.

It is important to note that once an adoption order is granted the court will send the adoption order to the General Register Office as well as the adoptive parents. If all details are accurate the General Register office will send a letter confirming the entry of the child has been made in the Adopted Children Register.

It is important to note that once an adoption order is granted the court will send the order to the General Register Office as well as to the adoptive parents. If all details are accurate, the General Register Office will send a letter confirming that the child has been entered in the Adopted Children Register, and the adoptive parent will then receive a new birth certificate with the updated details, which typically takes several weeks from the date the adoption order is processed.

Adoption is designed to be permanent. The birth parents will always remain the child’s biological parents, but once an adoption order is made they cease to be the legal parents. Their parental responsibility ends and they no longer have the right to make important decisions about the child’s upbringing, education, medical care or religion, nor to seek custody or ordinary contact as of right.

In some cases, the court can make or vary a contact order under section 51A of the Adoption and Children Act 2002, allowing carefully managed contact after adoption where this genuinely supports the child’s welfare. This might involve indirect “letter‑box” contact or, more rarely, limited direct contact. Any such order is always secondary to the child’s need for a secure, settled placement, and can be varied or brought to an end if it stops being in the child’s best interests.

In practice, this means that most birth parents will have very limited legal rights after an adoption order is granted, and any ongoing contact will either be informal, or governed by a specific contact order made by the court as part of, or after, the adoption process.

Adoption Orders and Contact

In some cases, the court can make or vary a contact order under section 51A of the Adoption and Children Act 2002, allowing for limited, structured contact after adoption where this is genuinely in the child’s best interests. However, adoption orders are still intended to create a new legal family unit, so courts are cautious about contact that might undermine the stability and security that adoption is meant to provide.

Under the law of England and Wales a child’s birth parents can change their mind and withdraw their consent to their child’s placement at any time until the prospective adopting parents apply for an adoption order. Therefore, birth parents can change their mind before an adoption order is granted.

Quite often biological parents place their child for adoption voluntarily as they may be able to look after child. In some circumstances the local authority or social workers may seek an adoption order for a child who is likely to suffer from harm should they remain with their parents. Once an adoption order is made by the family court it is normally permanent and irreversible.

However parents can appeal an adoption order within the time limits of the appeal. In order to appeal a parent will need to show that the decision to grant an adoption order was wrong or unjust based on a serious procedural or other irregularity in the proceedings. If you are a concerned parent who is considering appealing an adoption order then you must seek urgent legal advice to ensure your appeal is not delayed. Contact our specialists at Kabir Family Law urgently to see how we can assist you in your child matter.

How family courts approach adoption orders

Adoption orders are treated by the family courts as one of the most far‑reaching orders they can make because they permanently sever the legal relationship between a child and their birth family. Before making an adoption order, judges must be satisfied that the child’s welfare throughout their life requires this level of intervention and that no realistically available alternative can meet their need for safety and permanence.

In practice, this means the court will usually see a history of earlier children proceedings—care planning, foster placements, and sometimes attempts at rehabilitation with family—before a final plan for adoption orders is approved. The local authority’s evidence must demonstrate why long‑term fostering, kinship care or special guardianship would not offer the same stability and security as adoption in the particular child’s case.

Open adoption is quite rare in the UK. Open adoption is when contact remains between the birth family and the adoptive family. In open adoption there are three types of contact:

• Direct Contact – this could be face to face to telephone contact between the birth family and the adoptive family
• Indirect Contact – this is usually where there is an exchange of letters, cards and gifts between the adoptive and birth family
• Links – these covers situations where information by the adoptive or birth family is passed on through the adoption agency.

Adoptive parents sometimes feel that ongoing contact is no longer appropriate or is causing confusion or distress for the child. Where contact is based on informal agreements or agency “letters of understanding”, those arrangements are not usually legally enforceable in the same way as a court order. In practice, adoptive parents often have significant control over whether those informal arrangements continue.

However, where the court has made a formal section 51A contact order as part of the adoption, adoptive parents should not simply stop contact on their own. If circumstances change, they can ask the court to vary or end the order, and the judge will decide what is in the child’s best interests. Before making any changes to agreed or ordered contact, adoptive parents should take legal advice and, where possible, discuss concerns with the social worker or agency involved.

If you would like more information on child adoption and adoption orders then contact our family specialists today who can provide you with a FREE initial consultation.  Our family specialists below consider recent case law on adoption orders.

Can I adopt my partner’s child as a step‑parent?

Yes, step‑parents can apply to adopt a step child, but the court will look closely at the child’s relationship with each adult and whether adoption is better than alternatives such as a step‑parent parental responsibility agreement. Step-parent adoptions follow a different legal procedure from other adoption cases. In some cases a special guardianship order, residence order, or child arrangements order is more appropriate than full adoption

Is adoption always the “last resort”?

The higher courts have described adoption as a “last resort” and “the most extreme option”, to be used where “nothing else will do” for the child’s lifelong welfare. In practice, this means the court must consider and compare all realistic long‑term options—such as rehabilitation to a parent, kinship care with relatives, special guardianship or long‑term fostering—before deciding that adoption is necessary.

That does not mean adoption is rare or discouraged where it is genuinely the best option. When family placements are unsafe or unrealistic, and the evidence supports adoption as the child’s best chance of a secure, permanent home, the courts will still approve well‑prepared adoption plans. The key is that professionals and judges must clearly explain why adoption is better for this particular child than the other realistic options.

Can grandparents or relatives adopt?

Relatives can sometimes be assessed as adopters, but the court will also consider whether kinship care or special guardianship might be better, so the child’s legal relationship may be preserved with a natural parent in ways adoption does not, while the child maintains links with their birth family without completely severing legal ties

How do adoption orders fit into the care and placement process?

For children in care proceedings, the court will usually consider a care order and a placement order before any application for adoption orders is made. A placement order signals that adoption is the long‑term plan; the final adoption order is only made once the child is placed and the court is satisfied that the placement is working and adoption remains in the child’s best interests.

Can an adoption order be revoked if circumstances change?

Adoption orders are intended to be permanent. They are only set aside in exceptionally rare cases, usually where there has been a serious procedural defect, fundamental unfairness or some form of fraud that undermined the original proceedings. Even very positive changes in a birth parent’s circumstances after the order—such as overcoming addiction or securing stable housing—are not, on their own, a reason to revoke an adoption order.

Instead, the focus after adoption is on supporting and stabilising the adoptive placement. Where appropriate, professionals may look again at indirect contact or life‑story work to help the child understand their background. Applications to revoke adoption orders are highly specialist and almost always require urgent, expert legal advice.

Following the rulings of the cases of Re B and Re B-S in 2013 adoption has been on decline.

In the earlier case of Re B the judge stated: “care orders with a plan for adoption, placement orders and adoption orders are “the most extreme option”, a “last resort where all else fails” to be made “only in exceptional circumstances and where motivated by overriding requirements pertaining to the child’s welfare, in short, where nothing else will do”. The judge also indicated that all options must be considered before coming to a decision on adoption.

In the case of Re B-S the judge stated with regards to adoption: “This sloppy practice must stop” and emphasised the need for a “global, holistic and multi-faceted evaluation of the child’s welfare which takes into account all the negatives and the positives, all the pros and cons, of each option”.

Prior to these cases the UK had seen an increase in the number of adoption orders. According to the Independent there had been a record 5000 adoptions in the UK. However the ruling of the cases in November 2013 meant that the number of adoptions fell to 4690 in 2016 which was reported by the Adoption Leadership Board Reports.

Instead they raised the standard of analysis expected from local authorities and courts when explaining why adoption is preferred over other long‑term options.

In later guidance and appeal decisions, the courts made clear that “nothing else will do” does not mean social workers and judges must exhaust every theoretical option before considering adoption orders. Instead, they must carry out a realistic, evidence‑based comparison of the main options for the child (for example, rehabilitation, kinship care, long‑term fostering and adoption) and explain clearly why an adoption order best meets the child’s lifelong welfare needs.

The Adoption Leadership board developed a guidance to social workers and local authorities who have been discouraged to make applications in respect to adoption orders. The guidance stated: It is clear from my discussions with social workers and managers in local authorities and in voluntary adoption agencies, that there is a belief that the law has been fundamentally changed by a number of court judgements”.

The guidance confirms that the law on adoption orders has not been changed. In fact the guidance concluded that “Adoption is not right for every child but where it is, we owe it to them to pursue this option relentlessly.”

In a subsequent case of Re R (A child) the courts clarified its position on adoption orders. The judge in this case stated: “in cases where adoption is in a child’s best interests, local authorities must not shy away from seeking care orders with a plan for adoption and courts should not be wary of making such orders”. Furthermore, it is essential that a child’s safety and wellbeing is not put at risk by the insistence that they stay with their birth parents.

Re R reassured social workers that they should still issue care and placement applications where adoption is genuinely in a child’s best interests, and that courts should not be overly cautious about making adoption orders in those cases.

Re R (A Child) confirmed that the law on adoption orders had not changed, and that where adoption is genuinely in a child’s best interests local authorities should not shy away from seeking care and placement orders leading to adoption. The emphasis is on careful analysis and proper recording of reasons—not on avoiding adoption in borderline cases.

Adoption orders have been relatively stable since 2014. Since the initial slump approximately 4000 placement orders were being granted a year. The Adoption Leadership Board Report confirmed that in 2016-2017 4370 adoption orders were made. These numbers confirm that the use of adoption still remains comparatively higher than it has been in the last two decades.

Data from the Adoption Leadership Board published by the Department for Education shows that the number of approved adopters has declined. The new report revealed that the number of adopter approvals has dropped to around 700 each quarter, as opposed to over 1,000 in 2014-15 Meanwhile, the number of Adoption Placement Orders have remained relatively stable with approximately 1,000 orders being granted each quarter which amounts to around 4,000 a year. This reinforces the importance of increasing adopter recruitment and support, especially for harder to place children.

Interestingly a recent article from the BBC has also confirmed that more than twice as many children in England are waiting to be adopted as there are families willing to adopt. There are 4,140 children who have been recommended for adoption. By comparison, there are about 1,700 families approved to adopt and waiting to be matched with children.

The government says it is focusing on finding adopters from all communities. Many adoption agencies are looking to recruit adopters from all background to provide children with the stable family life they need and deserve. Amongst many of these agencies is Coram who have urged prospective adopters to come forward by providing free adoption information events for prospective adopters  to find out more on the Big Adoption day on 5^th June 2019.

It is important to note that the welfare and wellbeing of children is the most important factor for courts to consider and where they consider adoption is the best option then they will grant adoption orders. Despite a slump in adoption orders these are now stable however the records have illustrated the need for prospective adopters to support the number of children who require adoption and a stable family life.