Adoptive records for late Nana

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Hello, I think I already know the answer to this 😩 But is there any way that I could find my Nana’s adoption records? She was born in 1935 and passed away 20 years ago. My mum would love to find out more about her origins, but I’m pretty sure she doesn’t even have her birth certificate or death certificate! I’m guessing it’s not possible but wondered if anyone had any ideas?

‘Prescribed Relatives’ such as children and grandchildren are able to request to access Adoption Records, so definitely possible. I would start off by researching Adoption Intermediary services & contacting your Local Authority’s Post Adoption team who will be able to advise you about what support they can offer.

The General Register Office would also be a good place to ask for advice about getting copies of Adoption Certificates and Birth Certificates (Birth Information Before Adoption).

I don't think you can get hold of adoption records for family history research, if I remember rightly. However, you might be able to begin figure out who her parents were by your mum doing an Ancestry DNA test (or similar).

Any luck OP? You're in a similar situation to me - my late father was adopted and never wanted to research his background. I think the law was changed quite recently to enable close kin to access these records, as pp mentions above. But it may just be for medical reasons. Not sure.

Your mum could do an Ancestry test as this splits DNA by parent which is what you really need. Afaik, as long as you know a bit about your dad's family and can pinpoint just one of his relations on Ancestry, you can label that side 'Paternal'. Ancestry will separate your matches by parent, and you will hopefully then have a decent number of 'Maternal' matches to investigate. I did the wrong one (MyHeritage) which has confused me even more as I've got my mum's unknown third and fourth cousins mixed in with my dad's unknown relatives and have to disentangle them! But even that has given me a lot of interesting leads.

I've tested and am waiting on Ancestry results too, to try to bring me a bit more clarity.

As it’s a post 1926 adoption there should be records, and I think your Mum could request them as next of kin. I’d contact the GRO via email directly and explain the situation, I did this about accessing a stillbirth record from the 1930’s once and they were incredibly helpful - the website made it sound like absolutely no one could access it under any circumstances, but actually they said my aunt (the next of kin) would be able to with relevant certificates proving the parents and siblings were deceased and of course her own connection. I definitely think it would be worth enquiring about who could access the records in that situation.

DNA would be another good option, especially if your Mum would test!