Legal Update: In a Nutshell - Revised statutory guidance on adoptions

The last 12 months have already seen several initiatives enshrined in legislation, guidance and regulations to reduce the amount of time children wait for adoptive placements. These include the speeding up of the adoption approval process to a two-stage time-limited process and an expedited process to approve existing adopters as foster carers.

In the Children and Families Act 2014, a further raft of provisions have been laid out by parliament, which will all become law by July. Revised statutory guidance will be published alongside the new law.

Adoption and Children Act Register

Under Section 7 of the new act, prospective adopters will be allowed to search and inspect the Adoption and Children Act register and see the names of children waiting to be adopted. Regulations to be brought in later this year will prescribe the circumstances in which the register can be viewed with prospective adopters being asked to sign an agreement to ensure the safety of the information.

Post-adoption contact

Section 51A of the act allows family courts to make orders either allowing or prohibiting post-adoption contact between a child and a person named in the order. The named person can include a birth relative, a previous guardian, anyone who previously held parental responsibility for the child or someone with whom the child had previously lived for a year. The court must consider any disruption of the child's life, the named person's connection with the child and the representations of the child or prospective adopters.

Placement of children with prospective adopters

The act places a duty on local authorities to consider placing a child for whom they are considering adoption, with local authority foster carers who are also approved as prospective adopters should there be no appropriate friends or family care for the child - so called fostering-for-adoption placements. The new provision aims to speed up family finding for vulnerable children and allow early family finding.

Duty to provide information on adoption support services

Under the new legislation, a local authority will now have a duty to inform any prospective adopter or adoptive parent about their entitlement to and an assessment for adoption support services by the local authority.

Repeal to give due consideration to ethnicity of a child

The new act repeals Section 1(5) of the Adoption and Children Act 2002, which currently places a duty on a local authority to consider the religious persuasion, racial origin and cultural and linguistic background of a child when matching them with prospective adopters. The government has stated that it does not want undue emphasis or prominence placed on these factors resulting in potential placements not being explored or an otherwise appropriate adoption placement not going ahead.