1. INTRODUCTION

In 2003, John Eekelaar published a paper on ‘Contact and the Adoption Reform’. He was writing shortly after the passage of the Adoption and Children Act 2002, but several years before its adoption reforms came into force in 2005. Eekelaar considered it necessary to ‘examine the evidence relied on by government sources which advocated an increased role for adoption’. He argued that ‘the use of adoption raises some serious difficulties’, and that ‘these arise most visibly around the issue of contact between the child and its birth family’. He also considered it ‘perhaps unfortunate that legal outcomes in this area come in packages, for these distract attention from the reality of relationships towards legal incidents of the packages’. My chapter in this volume will examine legislation, case law, empirical research and policy that has emerged on adoption and contact since the 2002 Act’s implementation, assessing the extent to which Eekelaar’s fears have been realised, as well as the normative implications.

Space precludes a full response to Eekelaar’s work on adoption. This contribution, thus, focuses on two particular strands evident in his 2003 chapter. The first is the emphasis on prioritising adoption (involving a transfer of legal parenthood) as an alternative to foster care (which does not involve such a transfer), and the related topics of reducing delay, achieving targets and applications for preliminary placement orders. The second theme encompasses the implications (or often, in practice, the lack thereof) of adoption for older children, and the particular conundrum of contact with birth relatives. This chapter will highlight Eekelaar’s frequent prescience on how law and practice under the 2002 Act has panned out.

2. PRIORITISING ADOPTION: DELAY, TARGETS AND PLACEMENT ORDERS

2.1. ADOPTION, FOSTER CARE AND SPEED

John Eekelaar wrote that ‘in 2000 the overwhelming concern of policy regarding adoption was directed at children who were already in public care’, and he was concerned that ‘[t]he desirability of moving such children into adoption is no longer hedged by such expressions as’ where suitable ‘, but is promoted as an end in itself’.