NHS things after adoption order

[estornudar]

Our adoption order was granted a couple of weeks ago! Now that the excitement has died down a little I'm starting to think about the practicalities a little more. The process for adoption certificates etc seems straightforward enough but what happens with NHS things?

I know LO will get a new NHS number but will this happen automatically? Will they write to us with it? Will the GP/dentist etc be automatically informed or do we need to tell them? Will we get a new red book?

Any answers and any advice for this exciting new phase would be most gratefully received!

Congratulations.

In theory my sons was supposed to be automatic, three years later we still have the odd issue with referrals as some departments still have his old NHS number. I obviously don’t know this until I realise I haven’t heard anything about a referral. We did have one incident of a medical report being sent to birth mum which had obviously old address, old nhs number, but it had my sons new name and my name. Not problematic for us, but could have been a huge problem for so others.

I got all of his letters out that I had and personally informed each department he was under, GP, dentist and optician, all were changed but one who asked for a letter of confirmation from the GP, instead I emailed a photocopy of my sons NHS card as I didn’t fancy paying £30 for a GP letter.

I didn’t get a new red book, but he only had one from 14 months anyway, so I’m not sure of the normal procedure.

At our adoption group lots of people have had problems with the NHS number be changing throughout all departments as many just aren’t linked, nevermind multiple trusts.

One thing to note is that in some departments waiting lists use your NHS number, so a change of NHS number means you have to be referred again and go to the back of the queue. Because of this we are waiting for an MRI that should have happed three years ago!

Congratulations on the order being granted 🥳🥳🥳
Ours was changed automatically with our GP but our DS is under 6 different hospitals and none of them got changed over! I had to take his new NHS number and his adoption order to all of his appointments so that they could update their systems.

Ours was changed automatically with no issues (or so we thought). About a year later we then got a letter to say DS was due a vaccine but not what he was due. According to our records he was up to date with everything. Anyway I booked an appointment, went in with his red book and sat down. The nurse looked me squarely in the eyes and said 'do you know the importance of your child being fully vaccinated' and before I could say anything she launched into this whole speech about childhood illness and how vaccines protect. When she finally paused for a breath i plonked his red book infront of her, open and said yes hes up to date, I'm not sure what we are here for today. She looked at it and became very apologetic. Turned out when they gave his new nhs number they didn't copy across his vaccine record so she had him as unvaccinated. She sorted it anyway but that was the only issue we had

NHS number changed automatically but as previous poster said we've still had letters (usually to do with vaccination) with our child's birth name and previous NHS number on. Our health visitor gave us stickers with new NHS number to cover the previous ones in the red book rather than a new red book.

Thanks for all the replies! Did you just get a letter in the post with the new NHS number?