The rise and fall of adoption
In 1968 there were 25,000 adoptions, reflecting a society where illegitimacy was still stigmatised and there were many babies available with mothers who offered reluctant consent, having no other way of providing for their children. The rates plummeted due to increased access to contraception, legalised abortion and a sea change in society’s attituded to having children outside marriage. However, the number of children ‘looked after’ by local authorities continued to rise.
In 2000 the government introduced a national target to increase the number of ‘looked after’ children adopted, given concern over the number of children who remained in care for long periods of time without a permanent home. This led to the Adoption and Children Act 2002 but by 2006 the national targets had ceased.
The year ending March 2015 saw 5,360 adoptions in England out of about 70K looked after children. This figure had risen sharply from about 3K in 2011, driven by those government policy pushes for permanence via adoption.
By 2025 only 3,040 children were adopted in the year ending March 31st – a slight increase of 20 children from the year before. So we are back to 2011 levels but now with about 80K looked after children.
But even with a drop back to about 3K per year, the UK remains a very obvious outlier when compared to European countries. Germany has a similar number but about half are stepchild adoptions, not adoption from care. The UK does appear to still have a unique emphasis on adoption as the most favoured permanence option; other European countries favouring kinship care or long term fostering.
So adoption appears to be on the decline in the UK. I wonder if a forthcoming decision in the UK Supreme Court may herald its end.
This site was started in 2014 in an attempt to counter the narratives around ‘forced adoption’ – that social workers were paid a bonus of £30K to target babies etc. This post about ‘forced adoption’ was one of the first I wrote, and despite starting with a quote from Lord Wilson in 2014 I am not now confident, looking back, that I fully appreciated the impact of his words
I am a passionate believer in the value of adoption in appropriate circumstances… But I fear that, in making all those orders, I never gave much attention to the emotional repercussions of them. In particular I fear that I failed fully to appreciate that an adoption order is not just a necessary arrangement for the upbringing of some children… the order is an act of surgery which cuts deep into the hearts and minds of at least four people and will effect them, to a greater or lesser extent, every day of their lives…
There are a variety of factors at play. One may be the influence of the ‘nothing else will do’ line of court authorities from 2013 which emphasised that adoption was to be seen as a last resort. Local authority decisions to pursue adoption were reported to fall by 46% by 2014 and the number of placement orders halved.
But the more important factors I suspect are these, which all make up an attack on the continued legal fiction that adoption rubs out the birth family and creates a new one.
- the increase in post adoptive direct contact, now provided for by law but also made far more obtainable for children via the internet and social media
- the lack of support for adopted children and parents, particularly given the likelihood that adopted children, even those who are very young, will have suffered significant trauma and loss before being placed for adoption.
The Adoption Barometer 2025 sets out some concerning statistics. It gathered responses from 3,591 including 380 adoptees aged over 16. Those families who had adopted children before 2023, 42% described their family as ‘facing severe challenges or at crisis point’. 72% of those who accessed CAMHS support did not agree it made a positive difference. This experience is echoed by support groups for parents such as Parents of Traumatised Adopted Teens Organisation.
The BBC File on Four released ‘Adoption the Blame Game’ in December 2025. The journalists made freedom of information requests of every local authority. Not all responded but those that did revealed 1,000 adopted children in the UK had been returned to care over 5 years. The true figure is likely to be much higher as only one third of local authorities collect this data.
It is also interesting to note that adoption appears to have collapsed in Australia, and I wonder if this is for similar reasons. From adoption data collected by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, there were just 207 adoptions in 2023-24, down from 9,798 in 1971-72, a 98% decline and against Australia’s population more than doubling since 1972. Adoptions now represent less than half of one percent of the number of Australian children in out-of-home care.
International adoptions in American have fallen from 22, 991 in 2004 to just 1,275 in 2023. I assume this reflects a decrease in the number of available babies as birth rates fall and many countries prohibit international adoption, plus of course the booming surrogacy industry. People want babies not traumatised toddlers.
Revoking adoption orders – now before the Supreme Court
It is possible for the court to revoke an adoption order – i.e. discharge/end that order – using its ‘inherent jurisdiction’ but this is an exceptional and rare step for the court to take because an adoption order is supposed to be an ‘order for life’.
The case law so far suggests there are only two categories of case where you might be successful
- procedural irregularities that have led to a breach of natural justice
- a mistake in finding that the threshold criteria had been reached in care proceedings
The case of PK v Mr and Mrs K [2015] EWCH 2316 considered the law about revoking adoption orders, and is a rare example of where the court agreed to do it given the wholly exceptional nature of the case. A four year old child was adopted but only two years later she was sent to live in Ghana with extended family members where she alleged suffering serious abuse. She was later reunited with her biological mother. The adoptive parents initially attended court but then disengaged completely.
An adoption order was revoked in the case of Re J (Adoption: Appeal) [2018] EWFC 8 but again, the circumstances of this were unusual; the child had been adopted by his stepfather and his mother had lied about the father’s whereabouts. When the father found out he applied for the adoption order to be revoked and the court agreed – but it made no difference to the child’s day to day life as he remained living with his mother.
In AX v BX & Ors (Revocation of Adoption Order) (Rev 1) [2021] EWHC 1121 (Fam) the court did agree to set aside an adoption order after the placement broke down as its continuance was upsetting for everyone.
But the court declined to follow this decision in in X and another [2024] EWHC 1059 (Fam) and held it was not possible to revoke an adoption order due to a change in circumstances after the order was made – here the two adopted children had returned to their birth mother and did not want the adoption order to remain.
The court found that although it was established that the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court included a power to revoke an adoption order made under the Adoption and Children Act 2002 in a case where there had been a fundamental procedural irregularity, the inherent jurisdiction did not include a power to revoke such an order on welfare grounds since such a power would cut across or be incompatible with the scheme of the 2002 Act , which in section 55 expressly dealt with revocation of adoption orders, but only in a very limited category of case, that of legitimation.
The power in section 31F(6) of the Matrimonial and Family Proceedings Act 1984 to rescind an order of the family court was never intended to apply to the revocation of adoption orders under the 2002 Act , since such a broad and unfettered power would be obviously contrary to the public policy considerations in respect of the finality of adoption orders; and that, accordingly, there was no power to revoke an adoption order made under the 2002 Act on the grounds of the child’s welfare (post, paras 73–93).
This decision was affirmed by the Court of Appeal in January 2025 who said the remedy would be to apply for leave to appeal out of time, when the welfare of the child could be considered RE X and Y (CHILDREN: ADOPTION ORDER: SETTING ASIDE)
The Court of Appeal held
Adoption orders are transformative, have a peculiar finality and are intended to be irreversible, lasting throughout life, as if the child had been born to the adopter. That high degree of permanence, from which the benefits to the child of long-term security and stability should flow, is the unique feature that marks adoption out from all other orders made for children; it is, at its core, what adoption is all about. We agree with the SoS that it would gravely damage the lifelong commitment of adopters to their adoptive children if there were a possibility of the finality of the adoption order being challenged on welfare grounds.”
The Court of Appeal also commented that in cases that do not involve adoption, there is no legal mechanism by which natural parents or children can extinguish the parental bond between them, however much they may wish to do so.
But it has now gone to the Supreme Court – X and Y (Children: Adoption Order: Setting Aside) UKSC/2025/0039 – who considered these arguments on 4 February 2026.
I will very interested to know the outcome. I am not confident that in 2026 assertions about shoring up the legal fiction of adoption can continue to have weight. Adoptions do not seem to be faltering because families are worried about a challenge to the adoption order, but rather that they cannot cope with traumatised children without significant support, which is not often available. I am not confident that the continued ‘public policy’ justifications for a legal fiction could or should survive the very clearly stated wishes and feelings of children who do not wish to be adopted.
As I commented in discussions about this case on LinkedIn, a system that expects to shore up a legal fiction on traumatised children, without providing considerable and consistent support, is one that cannot survive.
I think adoption is finished. It could only survive as a model that denied the existence of the birth family. Once it was accepted that this was unhealthy and unworkable, and direct contact post adoption was promoted, the notion of adoption as creating an unshakeable legal fiction is unsustainable.
I think adoption has faltered as it was offered as a ‘solution’ to infertility. But the children available for adoption are unlikely to be little babies with clean slates – they will often have experienced huge loss and trauma and it seems the true rate of adoption breakdown – children returning to care via section 20 – is much higher than research suggests. Egg donor IVF may have more ‘success’ rates as child presumably not exposed to trauma in the womb, but I remain uneasy about any process involving children which has as its primary focus making adults feel better.