Adoption decision: child's BI

Question 1

What must be in the child’s BI

Answer 1

S 1(6) ACA creates an obligation that the court must consider the whole range of powers available under the ACA and the CA, and not make an order unless the court is satisfied that making an order would be better for the child than not making one.

Question 2

What must be in the child’s BI for adoption

Answer 2

Although it may be accepted that a child should live with someone would it actually be in that child’s BI interest to be adopted by them?

Question 3

What is adoption seen as

Answer 3

A last resort, only permissible when nothing else will do Re B-S (CA), not enough to show the child would benefit from being brought up somewhere else

Question 4

What does the child’s BI include

Answer 4

being brought up by their parents, unless the demands of their welfare make this impossible Re B-S (CA); Re W (CA)

Question 5

Re W (CA)

Answer 5

Appeal granted against a SGO which would have removed a two-year-old girl from prospective adopters with whom she had spent the last 17 months, to grandparents whom she had never met

Question 6

Issue of distorting family relationships

Answer 6

Would a child be cut off from birth family- would anything else do S 1(6), would it distort family relationships? Surrey v Ali Hilli: SGO rather than adoption to aunt and uncle to maintain family links and retain indignity as the children of parents who were murdered

Question 7

If competing applications what will happen

Answer 7

They will be heard together G V G

Question 8

Considerations to race

Answer 8

S 1(5) ACA: In placing the child for adoption, the adoption agency must give due consideration to the child’s religious persuasion, racial origin and cultural and linguistic background.

Question 9

What does research show about transracial adoption

Answer 9

Research does not demonstrate that children do less well in transracial placements. But supporters of racial matching argue it helps promote ethnic identity and parents can help them deal with any issues including racism.
Adoption agencies who peruse racial matching find statistical problems which is that while 1/5 are black and minority ethnic, 90% of potential adopters are white. So, black children may have to wait much longer for an appropriate match. Concern about delay was a central feature of the coalition government reform campaign.

Question 10

Re A (CA)

Answer 10

Adoption placements approved for two Ghanian brothers with white British foster-parents who had cared for them for seven years:
The reality was that the boys had a number of needs, not limited to important considerations related to nationality, culture and race, and there was no perfect way in which to satisfy all of those needs. The judge correctly examined each of them and evaluated the whole picture.

Question 11

Issue with step-parent adoption

Answer 11

The risk is that the new relationship may not last. The biological parent may die or the couple may separate. Second marriages are less stable than first marriages, and cohabitation less so. The child remains cut off from one of his biological parents and that parent’s family while losing the advantage of the new family unit.

Question 12

Adoption my grandparents issue

Answer 12

Need to assess age, health, Where the grandparents were already well-established as the parent-figures in the child’s life so that the adoption order would simply bring the legal relationships into line with the social relationship, would a relative serve the childish interests better than a less radical option

Question 13

Best interests where there is a disability

Answer 13

if a child has a disability which requires a legal relationship after the child has turned 18 and the parents are not willing to give up their claim, would adoption offer better secutiyb

Question 14

Chance of rebhavitation

Answer 14

Re S (CA)