Post-Adoption Contact: Evolving Legal and Welfare Perspectives

Post-adoption contact remains one of the most jurisprudentially delicate issues within contemporary family law. It occupies a space shaped by two powerful and sometimes competing principles: the legal finality and psychological security long associated with adoption orders, and the child’s lifelong welfare interests, which include identity, continuity of relationships, and an understanding of personal history.

Despite repeated calls to modernise our approach to adoption as a profession, the historical concept of adoption as a clean break from one’s birth family continues to exert an influence. Anecdotal evidence indicates that post placement or post adoption contact orders remain vanishingly rare, with a judicial preference for a recital the main result of recent jurisprudence.   

Traditionally, adoption implied not merely the transfer of parental responsibility but the severance of ties with the birth family. The modern approach calls for a sea change.  Courts and practitioners now recognise that identity formation is a fundamental and that safe, structured forms of continuing connection may support the stability of a placement, rather than undermine it. We also understand much more about the fundamental importance of sibling relationships, perhaps the only relationship we have that lasts throughout our lives. 

The statutory anchor for this analysis remains section 1 of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 (“ACA 2002”), which establishes that the child’s welfare “throughout his life” is the paramount consideration.¹ Pre-placement planning must account for consequences extending well beyond minority. Identity, heritage, sibling relationships, and the psychological integration of past and present experiences fall squarely within this evaluative framework.

Section 26 ACA 2002 governs contact arrangements following authorization to place and prior to the making of an adoption order.² It provides a self‑contained regime, with the court now exhorted to set the template for contact moving forward as old child arrangements necessarily fall away. Section 51A ACA 2002, inserted by the Children and Families Act 2014, introduced an express statutory mechanism empowering the court to order post‑adoption contact.³

Judicial interpretation has historically emphasised restraint. In Re B (A Child: Post‑Adoption Contact) [2019] EWCA Civ 29, the Court of Appeal reaffirmed that orders imposing contact upon unwilling adopters remain “extremely unusual”.⁴ This approach reflected legitimate concerns regarding placement stability and the autonomy of the adoptive family. However, none of the case law relieves the court of its obligation to conduct a full welfare evaluation of contact arrangements.

In fact, in Re R and C (Adoption or Fostering) [2024] EWCA Civ 1302, Baker LJ underscored that it is the court’s responsibility to “set the template for contact going forward”.⁵  The judgment rejected the proposition that the speculative possibility of adopters later declining to facilitate contact should dictate refusal of a placement order.

Re S (Placement Order Contact) [2025] EWCA Civ 823 now stands as the leading authority on s 26 contact orders.⁶ The Court of Appeal stressed that although a s 26 order is temporally limited, the welfare analysis underpinning it must adopt the statutory lifelong perspective. The court warned against formulaic reasoning and emphasised that contact arrangements must remain bespoke and flexible. 

Any plan will require careful consideration of many relevant factors, but taking McFarlane P’s examples from his Mayflower lecture, they will include the factors set out herein and need to be analysed without delay as part of the parallel plan: 

• Age of the child at removal from the parents.
• Age of the child at placement with approved adopters.
• The impact of genetic factors on the child’s development.
• The impact of risks to the child in the womb – Foetal Alcohol Syndrome, or drug use by the mother.
• The lived experience of the child – domestic abuse, poor feeding and hygiene, comfort, sensitivity, playfulness and relationships
• Tracking the child’s health – weight, growth, sight, hearing.
• A range of health factors which impact on the child such as a named developmental condition.
• Parental neglect when evidenced by a significant failure to exercise parental responsibility as set out in law.
• Significant risk and harm that fall within the experience of abuse – the direct actions of the parents that directly harm the child – physical violence and assaults, sexual abuse.

Recent authority collectively reinforces a central proposition: contact decisions demand a sophisticated assessment of relational, developmental, and practical considerations. The significance of sibling relationships has received particular emphasis.

Policy developments further illuminate this trajectory. The Public Law Working Group Report (2024) advocates a cultural recalibration in which direct contact is not treated as exceptional by default.⁸ This is required reading! 

For practitioners, the implications are immediate: care plans, placement applications, and support plans must contain an explicit and reasoned analysis of future contact. Early strategic consideration is essential.

The question is whether any of this judicial and policy guidance is leading to change on the ground?  The onus is now on us to ensure that contact is looked at holistically.  Siblings, for example are crucial, but what about other family members who have played a role that goes far beyond their title of “neighbour” or “auntie”? It is for each of us now to ensure that the following takes place in each of our cases:

• Identify important relationships early (eco-map/genogram).

• Define the purpose of contact for this child (identity, continuity, reassurance, narrative).

• Identify necessary contact 

• Draft a plan

• Ensure support mechanics have been considered and are in place (who, where, supervision, review ect).

• Consider whether to seek:

  • s.26 order or

  • recital recording the contact plan

• Ensure the evidence addresses s.1(4)(c) and s.1(4)(f)(i) explicitly.

• Avoid formulaic frequencies; justify the plan.

The aim is to leave the outmoded concept of letterbox contact behind (when did you last write a letter? And if you must: explore digital platforms that might properly facilitate this form of contact) and provide adopted children with solid workable realistic plans for future contact built around their own individual needs. 

Footnotes

1. Adoption and Children Act 2002, s 1.

2. Adoption and Children Act 2002, s 26.

3. Adoption and Children Act 2002, s 51A (inserted by Children and Families Act 2014).

4. Re B (A Child: Post‑Adoption Contact) [2019] EWCA Civ 29; [2019] 1 FLR 605.

5. Re R and C (Adoption or Fostering) [2024] EWCA Civ 1302; [2025] 2 FLR 68.

6. Re S (Placement Order Contact) [2025] EWCA Civ ___.

7. Re P (Placement Orders: Parental Consent) [2008] EWCA Civ 535; [2008] 2 FLR 625.

8. Public Law Working Group, Recommendations for Best Practice in Respect of Adoption (2024).