A child's right to access deceased adoptive parent's birth information

[Bigpondza]

The Adoption and Children Act does not recognise descendants as ?birth relatives?. Therefore children of deceased adoptees are denied access to information about their parent?s birth, if that parent dies without asking to see his or her own original birth records. Adoption agencies and social services want to help, but cannot act outside of the law.

Questions about the rights of descendants have been asked in Parliament, but the government maintains its position of ?no plans to introduce a change?. A simple amendment to the Act is all that is required to give descendants equal rights with other birth relatives and the Descendants of Deceased Adopted Persons (DAP) Group can see no good reason for government?s opposition to change. Why won?t government process this simple amendment? We cannot believe there is any potential harm to other parts of the birth family long since deceased.

We are petitioning Ed Timpson, the Children's Minister at the Dept for Education, to persuade him to back our proposed change to the Act. If you are affected by this legislation please help by writing to your MP and asking him to write to Ed Timpson - we can advise on content ask [email protected] and put DAP in the subject line. Every letter helps to keep the matter alive.

There is unlikely to be a better opportunity for a change for some years.

[Bigpondza]

I also raised this topic on Gransnet and the response has been good. I think Grans have more time to think about genaology. Why not join out discussion there.