Second Time Adoption - sharing personal data

[Notonyours]

Hi all! We're looking to adopt the biological sibling of our DS - who is also adopted. DS has been with us (adopted by us) for 5 years now. The adoption agency who are approving us as second time adopters for sibling are in a different council to the one we used the first time around and they have asked for copies of our DS's CPR and Later In Life Letter.

I'm fully open to the process, but I'm struggling to see how our DS's report and letter form part of us being approved as second time adopters? It just feels like this data is now his and the letter is addressed to him - after all he's also not a looked after child any more, he's ours.

Perhaps I'm just being too over protective and if it was the same Council as the first time, they could just view it anyway? Would love some thoughts, experience and perspective!

Thanks all! :-)

No experience to share but I agree with you, particularly the later life letter which belongs to your child.

I suppose if there are gaps in knowledge about the sibling they might be thinking there is relevant family information in the CPR?

So for example, my and a full sibling come from a county in the south (ish) where the family have a long history. Birth mum moved north and after a gap of 10 years had 2 more children in a county were there was no history. I can see its relevant to the overall picture for the second county to have certain information. I did have a couple of phone calls with the SWs to fill in some gaps and confirm some facts.

We had this, when I contacted our LA they said they would try to help as I wasn’t comfortable with his later in life letter being given. We were okay with the CPR, as while that is personal data, it isn’t something that belongs to him in tje same way. They were generally okay with that decision when they realised it was something we were not willing to budge on.

I would be deeply uncomfortable sharing a letter in life letter because that is something written for your child and not for any prior or subsequent siblings. Have you seen a copy of the CPR for the child you are hoping to adopt? If this already exists I would be questioning why they need your child's especially if all the background information is the same.

I'm assuming that the reason they can't access these things directly from the other LA is due to data protection legislation and that exists for a reason.

You need to think especially carefully about allowing your child's information to be on the sibling's file in the event that for some reason your application to adopt the sibling falls through for some reason.

Im not exactly sure what’s right and what’s wrong - however - I will say that I feel it’s only fair for all adopters of the same biological children to have access to the same information.

we have adopted the 2nd and 3rd children from a biological family, and regularly meet with the 1st and get on with the parents - it’s lovely.

when our 2nd child (the 3rd in the sequence) was adopted, we gained a whole load of additionally information about the birth family that we didn’t know. It was entitled as a report about our 2nd child. This was information specifically about the birth family history, which we’d never received when we adopted our first child.

I felt that I should share this information with the adopters of the first child, because our oldest and their older sibling are such good pals that I know when they’re older they will talk to each other about this, and I’d hate for them to find out that we had kept information from them.

a later in life letter for our children will essentially all be the same, with very little variation in details. I haven’t shared the later in life letters but I do know that the older children’s letters are virtually the same. We haven’t received one for our youngest, but I would just change the name at the top to be honest as frankly I don’t trust that I’ll ever recieve one. I would say that it’s important for the letters to have parity regardless of who has adopted them and it’s probably easier for the social workers to ask you for them as it’s a different agency.

however this doesn’t even need to be done until after the child is adopted, so equally, the child could be adopted and then this discussion could take place. And equally I respect the fact that you are protecting your child and believe that the agency should too.