Foster carers of children wanted to adopt them without the parents knowing their identity, using the confidential serial number approach. The parents had been led to believe that the children had been placed with a different family for adoption and wanted to continue to have contact with the children. The irony was that their preference had been for the children to stay with the original foster family. The judge decided that the parents should not be told the adopters’ identity. The Court of Appeal considered the difficulties which this would give their representatives, who were aware of the true position and decided that the judge could not be said to be plainly wrong. Passing criticism was made of the local authority in not seeking orders giving them permission to refuse contact and free the children for adoption and for deceiving the parents in the first place. The Court of Appeal could only hope that some compromise could be reached by the time the adoption application came on for hearing.
Judges:
President, Buxton LJ, Hale LJ
Citations:
[2002] EWCA Civ 828, [2002] 2 FLR 476, [2002] 3 FCR 648
Links:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Children, Adoption
Updated: 03 November 2022; Ref: scu.175472