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Adoption
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of Lowe’s contract/services model of adoption? Can this model of adoption be reconciled with the traditional legal understanding of adoption as enshrined in ss 46 and 67 of the ACA 2002?
- Should adoptive families be entitled to receive post-adoption support and services if needed?
- Would you have set aside the adoption order in Re B (Adoption: Jurisdiction to Set Aside) [1995] Fam 239?
- Does s 1(4)(f) of the welfare checklist do enough to meet concerns about the rights and interests of the birth parents in adoption? Would it be a fair criticism of the ACA 2002 and subsequent case law interpreting the legislation that the rights and interests of birth parents have now been marginalised to such an extent in adoption proceedings that they are largely an irrelevance? Does the decision of the Supreme Court in Re B (Care proceedings: Appeal) [2013] UKSC 33 address the concerns?
- Should s 1(5) of the ACA 2002 have been repealed? What weight should be placed on a child’s ethnic, cultural and/or religious background in decisions about adoption?
- What do you take to be the correct approach to dispensing with parental consent under s 52 of the ACA 2002 from the judgment of Wall LJ in Re P (a child) [2008] EWCA Civ 535?
- Do you think it is a relevant consideration in disputes over post-adoption contact that the birth parents have become legal strangers to the child?
- The courts have no hesitation in imposing contact orders against hostile resident parents in contact disputes between parents. Can the courts’ strong reluctance to impose a contact order against hostile adoptive parents in a contact dispute with the natural family be justified?