Who to inform

[CharlieSays13]

This is probably a daft question that I already know the answer to but I'm sleep deprived and that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Our Adoption Order is signed and we now have new Adoption Certificates. Who do we need to inform? I'm seeing school today which is urgent as even though our kids had to be "known as" our second name right from the start we always get letters in their original surname which has caused a fair bit of confusion and upset.

Am I right in thinking they will be allocated new NHS numbers? Do I just speak to our doctor's surgery to get the ball rolling on this?

Anyone else we should be notifying?

Many thanks

Child benefit etc?

following!

I was thinking doctors only but our ds is not school age... thanks for child benefit reminder...!

Child benefit! Of course, thank you.

New nhs number, speak to doctors surgery. And when they say they have no idea what to do, tell them to speak to Preston (apparently where nhs numbers are done). Passports need changing too.

Bank, savings account, Child Trust Fund, anything financial, (prevention of money laundering)

All the best with the school. Our LOs' first school did its best, but communication between them and other agencies was sometimes poor.

Things that apoear to be from school may in fact come from LA or council eg after-school sports club, cashless school dinners.

Trace letters back to their point of origin. Perhaps take all the mis-named and wrongly addressed letters with you to the school. Not in order to be confrontational, but to help them see where the problem lies.

School dental health checks, immunisation programs that take place at school. Anything health-related that doesn't involve a hospital or clinic.

Hope it all goes smoothly for you.

The NHS number is done automatically and we only found out it had been changed (months later) when we phoned the GP to make an appointment and they said they had no record of DS (as his name and number had been changed). Since then, we have been called in to the surgery for vaccinations that he didn’t need, we have been allocated a new health visitor etc., all because the systems don’t join up because an adopted child with a new NHS number appears as an entirely new patient and no-one realises its the same child. It also took quite a while for the old notes to be transferred to the new record and you might have to push for this to happen. It caused us a few problems as people couldn’t find the right notes.

I hope things go well for you.

Thanks everyone. So far so good, we received their new NHS numbers today and been assured by the surgery they have transferred their old notes to their new files, which I'm very impressed with.

Went into school yesterday with Adoption Certificates and got a call at 9.10 this morning to say they are now on the system under their new names, again very impressed.

They didn't come to us with bank accounts and we've waited till we had ACs to do this ourselves so that's another thing we can get on with. Same with passports. Feels good to be able to get these things done. 👍