Adoption with children’s rights at the centre: Safeguarding children’s welfare, identity and family relationships

This chapter explores the implications of adoption for securing children’s rights to protection from harm while also upholding their rights to identity and family relationships. It examines open adoption practice as means of reconciling these apparently competing rights.
This chapter reviews research and socio-legal commentary that helps social work navigate these rights tensions. It:
• Summarises the rights-based critiques of adoption.
• Outlines the outcomes of adoption that justify its use as the best placement for some children.
• Considers the potential of open adoption to integrate the range of rights by enabling dual identity and ongoing contact with families of origin.
• Explores the practice realities and challenges of open adoption, reviewing SW approaches to post-adoption contact.
• Considers the extent to which children’s views inform these issues.
There tends to be a sense of competing rights in adoption – children’s rights to protection pitted against adult-centric human right to respect for private and family life. Open adoption might provide balance and integration, but practice development and resourcing is required to effectively uphold the range of UNCRC rights through safe and sustained birth relationships.