Secrecy in Adoption in England & Wales, by Robin Harritt
Bellow is an Adoption Order, every adoptive parent who has ever adopted a child in England or Wales since 1927 will have received a similar document to this with the original name of the child on it, some later versions did not have the birth mother's name included. The only exceptions to this are if the child was a foundling, or if it was a re-adoption. This document gives all the information an adoptee would need in order to obtain their original birth certificate and the details of their birth mother. It is difficult to see how any birth mother could possibly have been guaranteed confidentiality from her relinquished child despite the claims to that effect made by the Department of Health, the Office of National Statistics and Government ministers.
Side 2
Any one in the UK can buy a copy of their own or anyone else's birth certificate provided they know the name place and date of birth (most of that can be looked up). All that the S.51 Adoption Act 1976 did was to make that an absolute right. Adoptive parents could no longer hide original identity from adoptees in England and Wales.
Also well worth reading
Struggle for Identity: Issues Underlying the Enactment of the 1926 Adoption of Children Act
by Dr Jenny Keating
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/history/documents/3._keating_struggle_for_identity.pdf
Of general interest as it shows how the secrecy we have had recently in adoption in England has crept in gradually over the years in much the same way as in the US. I am at the moment trying to establish when the ubiquitous "promise" to birth mothers that the child would never be able to contact them, was supposedly made in England and Wales. Of course just as in the US, it never actually was. But the idea has stuck, and is given as the reason why an adoptee whose adoption was pre 12 Nov 75, must have counselling to obtain an OBC, whereas post 12 Nov 75 adoptees need not have counselling.
The above link includes the following comment from a civil servant when the 1926 Act came into force:
<<< It is not intended that the name of the proposed adopter should be concealed from the natural parent· It is essential... that before a legal adoption takes place, the natural parent should have sufficient knowledge with regard to the proposed adopter to give a real consent... and it would not be possible for the Rules made under the Act to prescribe that the natural parent might purport to consent to the adoption without knowing who the proposed adopter is.
Letter from A.E.A Napier to Mrs. Hubback,
National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship, 11/1/1927. >>>Echo of Dickensian England heard in Ontario courts, see:-
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0LVZ/is_12_17/ai_90108597
Also of interest
http:/robin.robin.org/policy_and_law
To contact Robin Harritt please call 020 7871 1835 or Fax 020 7691 9668