Surname pre-adoption order

[WittyUsername123]

LO will be with us very soon and due to a range of medical and other factors, it’s important to register him at a doctor and school asap.
I am a little uncertain what to do regarding what surname to register for these places? Current legal surname is highly unusual and we have been advised that a breach in confidentiality could be very dangerous… but that is currently his legal surname!
Does anyone have any advice on this? I know I should trust these institutions not to make a mistake with confidentiality but… I kind of don’t? 😬
Sorry if this whole thing sounds silly!

Hi. I don’t think they will be able to register them with any other surname than their current legal surname? You may also be asked to provide their birth certificate and the matching certificate as proof of the surname. The adoption is not actually approved by the court yet, so I think they need to use their current surname. Once the adoption is approved then you can change it to their new surname. Assuming that you don’t live in the same area as the birth parents, I would say that the risk of the GP practice and the school breaching confidentiality is pretty low, especially if you also talk to them to express your concerns when registering the child.

I think you need support of a social worker especially regarding GPs- in my experience in spite of being told a million times to not say our child’s surname out loud, they do it every time. It’s not so much an issue for us as we are far from the birth family and it’s not an unusual name, but this may be an issue for you.

its especially difficult as the older child has a memory of an elephant but luckily they are now in school so any in person appointments I can do on my day off.

be very very cautious and if the receptionist is funny about it I would just continually mention safe guarding!! I don’t mean to worry you but they seem totally unbothered any time I mention it!!!

i am a teacher and our safe guarding training is always so severe but I’m not sure our receptionists at the doctors have the same ethos about it!

You can ask both the surgery and school to use a known as name. I complained when my LO's full name was shown at the surgery to be told by the manager this had to happen only to receive a phone call in apology when she followed it up because I said we'd been told in training that it could.

I'd be looking at both your and the child's social worker for support and consider contacting your local virtual head if you're in England.

My son had to be registered everywhere in his full legal name.

Apart from the GP and hospital everyone accepted him to be 'known as'. I did have to get permission from the SW to do this as apparently you arent strictly speaking allowed to do this. But SW'S can turn a blind eye!

Oh god the Doctors... they insisted on flashing my son's name on the board and calling it out. Made worse by the medical records having his middle name as part of his first name. Every blooming time we went in I had to tell them not to do that. Every time...

My experience differs, my children were registered at school, GP etc in their new surname on production of the matching certificate. From date of placement they were known by their new names.

My son had to be registered in his full birth name until the adoption order had been granted about 8 months later.

Everyone was really accommodating with regards to not using his full birth name though. Drs, pharmacy, dentist etc all just used the part of his first name he was known as though. We didn’t need permission from SW though.

Our GP has a designated person who deals with all adopted children and she was invaluable!

Thank you so much for your advice and experiences!
We shall be proceeding with caution and hopefully the GP will be okay (although the general attitude of the Receptionists doesn’t fill me with hope!)

Just seen this, yes son had to keep his birth name until adoption order. The biggest problem was we had to fly abroad for son’s wedding. We boarded the plane and found as he had a different surname he was sat in a different part of the plane, he was deafblind and cerebral palsy. I smiled sweetly and said to the steward would the person sitting next to him please tube feed him and change his pads. The steward was very helpful and rearranged the plane.