Adoption

A guide for adopted people

When adopted people reach their late teens (18 in England and Wales) they can obtain a copy of their original birth certificate. The first step if you were adopted in England and Wales, is to write for an application form to the General Register Office at the Office of National Statistics (ONS). If you were adopted in Scotland or Northern Ireland you should write to the relevant General Register Office of that country (please see below).

If you were adopted before 17 November 1975 arrangements will be made for you to see a counsellor. If you were adopted after this date you can choose not to see a counsellor but only to receive your birth certificate. The counsellor will help you get as copy of your birth certificate and find out the name of the agency, which arranged your adoption.

If you would like to see your adoption file we will arrange for an adoption worker/counsellor to go through the papers with you to help prevent any 'surprises' and to try to avoid any unnecessary hurt to any of the people involved.

The counselling interview

The counsellor has many functions, and he/she can meet you several times for advice or support if that is what you wish. Adopted adults come to use with a variety of aims and feelings. Some only wish to obtain more information from their birth records whereas others hope to eventually trace their birth relatives. There is no 'right' or 'wrong' about this.

The counsellor's role is to give you the opportunity to share your feelings and help you in your decision making. We do advise every adoptee to take matters at their own pace and to think things through before each stage of the process.

The counsellor is also required by law to ensure that information is not given to an adopted person who is suffering from a significant emotional or mental disorder that may endanger a birth relative, should the adoptee decide to trace.

Adoption records

Although there is no legislation in this area, it is customary for adoption agencies to make information available from their files to adopted adults. Adoption agencies usually insist on sending such information to the counsellor rather than directly to the adoptee. This is because the records at the time would have been considered confidential and also may produce surprise and strong emotions in the adoptee.

It is therefore considered important that a counsellor is present to answer any questions or advise you further. It is not our policy to give the adoptee the file or a photocopy of the file to read. This is because the file will contain information about your adoptive parents, and will have been written as a Social Service record, and not as a counselling tool for the adoptee.

However, we can be flexible about this, and we can sometimes agree to photocopying specific documents or handing you items of particular value in their original form such as a letter written by your birth mother. However, it is our policy to give you all the details on your birth family from the file in a written account compiled by the counsellor. The counsellor's role is to present the facts, not censor them.

There are of course adoption records from some adoption agencies, which are not always available, having perhaps been lost or destroyed over time. If this is the case we may be able to get some information from direct from court records if such records still exist.

Further action

An adopted person may decide at this stage that they wish to try to make contact with their birth relatives. The counsellor can give you advice and written material on how to go about this, but we cannot undertake the tracing on your behalf.

If you are able to locate a birth relative, we would urge you to use a neutral 'go between' to make the first approach. The counsellor would be happy to undertake this role.