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Legislation
The key pieces of domestic English and Welsh legislation addressing this topic are the Human Rights Act 1998, the Children Act 1989, the Adoption and Children Act 2002, and the Children and Families Act 2014. As with all legislation, we recommend that you avoid legislation.gov.uk, and instead refer to a subscription database such a Lexis or Westlaw. This will ensure that you are working with an up-to-date version.
You may have access to a resource called Box of Broadcasts via your college or university. This is provided by the British Universities and Colleges Film and Video Council and gives on demand access to many television and radio programmes going back years, for educational purposes. Some programmes also include transcripts. There are many documentaries about adoption available. These include:
The Truth about Adoption (BBC1, 2011)
Find Me a Family (Channel 4, 2009)
Finding Mum and Dad (Channel 4, 2014)
15,000 Kids and Counting (Channel 4, 2014)
Children Looked After in England including Adoption (2020-2021)
This provides statistical information on looked-after children at Local Authority level and nationally in England.
Adoption, Fostering and Surrogacy
This government website brings together advice and policy on a range of care arrangements including fostering of children and adoption.
House of Lords Select Committee on adoption legislation (2013)
Collection of reports by, and evidence given to this Select Committee, addressing the pre- and post-legislative scrutiny.
Department of Health, Adoption – A New Approach (Cmd 5017, 2000)
Government White Paper which led to the Adoption and Children Act 2002.
Department of Education, Action Plan for Adoption (2012)
This outlines plans to speed up adoptions and led to the Children and Families Act 2014.
Claire Fenton-Glynn, Adoption without Consent (European Parliament, 2015); Update (2016)
These reports for the European Parliament ‘examine[s] the law and practice in England in relation to adoption without parental consent, in comparison to other jurisdictions within the European Union’. They are a very useful summary of the law and a good starting point for research.
First report: available here
Update: available here
Department of Education, Statutory Guidance on Adoption (Department for Education, 2013)
This guidance is used by local authorities, voluntary adoption agencies, and adoption support agencies, and covers everything from considering adoption for a child, through matching, placement, contact, support services, and inter-country adoption.
Re B (A Child) (Care Order) [2013] UKSC 33 and Re B-S [2013] EWCA Civ 1146
Re B is an important case involving the making of a care order where the local authority’s plan was for the little girl to be adopted. The case established the high degree of justification required to make an order where adoption was the plan.
It was subsequently followed by the Court of Appeal case Re B-S, which explained Re B and addressed concerns about poor reasoning by lower courts, social workers, and Cafcass.
Lord Justice Andrew McFarlane, ‘Nothing Else Will Do’ speech
Keynote address to the Family law Bar Association National Conference, 22 October 2016. In this speech, McFarlane LJ considers Re B, Re B-S, and subsequent case law. A very clear and useful source.
Department for Education, Special Guardianship Review (2015)
This report analysed the use of special guardianship orders and considered whether too many orders were made without adequate assessment of and support for special guardians.
Webster v Norfolk County Council [2009] EWCA Civ 59
Mr and Mrs Webster’s children were taken into care and adopted after a finding of non-accidental harm by the parents. Subsequently, new medical evidence came to light which may mean that the injuries to the children were the result of a medical condition, scurvy. However, the Websters were not able to re-open the adoption application because several years had passed and there were policy reasons against overturning adoptions. In the Daily Mail they talk about what it is like to know their children are out there somewhere.
Daily Mail interview with the Websters
Blog by Andrew Pack, a local authority lawyer. He writes about care and adoption cases with humour and pop culture references. His posts have been used for judicial training and mentioned in judgments, including this particular funny but accurate post about adoption law: