The removal of an adopted child because the mother was in a new relationship with a violent criminal accused of child-sex offending has focused attention on the need for comprehensive and trustworthy background checks. Tom Wright, senior associate in the family team at Birketts LLP, says the issues raised by M (A Child: Adoption: Duty of Disclosure)will damage public trust.
Background checks are a fundamental part of the adoption process, with their primary purpose being to safeguard children, ensuring that any placement promotes the child’s long‑term welfare, safety and stability.
Most children placed for adoption have already experienced early trauma, abuse, neglect or loss, making them particularly vulnerable. T (the two-year-old boy at the centre of this case) never lived with his birth parents, but this only highlights the level of risk he might have been likely to experience had that happened.
Comprehensive background checks help identify any known risks posed by prospective adopters or household members, including past criminal conduct, safeguarding concerns or patterns of harmful behaviour. Adoption agencies are required to ensure that children are not placed with adults who may expose them to further risk.
Harm
In T’s case there are valid questions about whether the local authority should have known about the issues within the adoptive parents’ relationship, which then led to the child being placed solely with the adoptive mother, who entered into a relationship with a prisoner. This relationship then placed T at further risk of harm.
Background checks allow social workers, adoption panels and ultimately the agency decision‑maker to make informed, balanced judgments about suitability. They provide objective information that complements interviews, home visits and observations.
If these checks had picked up about the difficulties in the adoptive parent’s relationship, a different decision may have been made with regard to placing T with them and avoided him being exposed to further risk.
Assumption
Having said this, it is also important that background checks protect prospective adopters by ensuring that decisions are based on verified information, rather than assumption or bias. Information obtained through checks must be considered fairly, proportionately and in context, alongside all other aspects of the assessment.
It is possible in T’s case that the outcome of the adoption assessment accurately reflected the state of the adoptive parent’s relationship at that time, and the issues only started to occur after T was placed with them.
Adoption operates on public trust. Robust background checks help maintain confidence that adoption agencies place children safely and responsibly, prioritising child welfare above all else. Cases like T’s will no doubt damage the public’s confidence in the adoption process.
Upheaval
Adoption is intended to be permanent. Thorough background checks help assess not only risks, but also resilience, patterns of behaviour, and life stability. By identifying concerns early, agencies can avoid placements that might later break down, which can be profoundly damaging for adopted children. This is the situation that T now finds himself in. He will now go back through the family courts, and it is even more important that the correct decision is made for him this time round.
He has endured considerable upheaval in his short life, and it is incredibly important that the number of children that have similar experiences is kept to an absolute minimum, which in turn ensures public confidence in the process is maintained.
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About the author
Tom Wright is a senior associate in the family team at Birketts. He trained and worked at well-regarded Legal 500 family law specialist firms based in central London, which allowed him to build up experience across a wide range of areas in family law. Tom specialises in children matters and regularly represents clients in court as a solicitor advocate. This includes complex private children cases, often where there have been allegations of serious domestic abuse, substance misuse and parental alienation, as well as relocation cases. Tom has a growing modern families practice, including adoption, surrogacy and fertility law matters.
