Background and Policy Objectives
3.The need for adoption legislative reform in Northern Ireland was highlighted in the consultation of the Department of Health’s draft strategy document, Adopting the Future, in 2006. The development of the strategy was driven principally by significant changes to the wider legislative and social contexts which govern the delivery of children’s services. The strategy set out a number of proposals linked to the reform of adoption and children’s legislation in Northern Ireland. The Act is principally (although not exclusively) the outworking of the Department’s commitment to legislative reform in adoption as set out in Adopting the Future and many of the provisions that were consulted on are contained within the Act. In the period following the Adopting the Future consultation, there has been further change to Children’s, Family and Adoption law in Great Britain, and these were considered in the development of the Act.
4.The purpose of this Act is to reform adoption law in Northern Ireland, to implement the proposals in the Adopting the Future strategy that require primary legislation, and to make amendments to the Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995 (“the Children Order”) to improve outcomes for looked after children and young people and young people who have left care.
5.In summary, the Act:
	aligns adoption law with the relevant provisions of the Children Order to ensure that the child's welfare is the paramount consideration in decisions relating to adoption;
	places a duty on adoption authorities to maintain an adoption service, which must include arrangements for the adoption of children and for the provision of adoption support services (including financial support);
	provides a new right for adopted children and adoptive parents to request an assessment of their needs for adoption support services;
	places a duty on adoption authorities to provide adoption support services which have been assessed as needed;
	enables the Department of Health to establish an independent review mechanism in relation to the assessment of prospective adopters;
	makes provision for the process of adoption and the conditions for the making of adoption orders, including new measures for placement for adoption with consent and placement orders to replace the existing provisions in the Adoption (Northern Ireland) Order 1987 for freeing orders;
	introduces a new legal framework for disclosure of information and establishing contact;
	incorporates the Adoption (Intercountry Aspects) Act (Northern Ireland) 2001, other than sections 1 and 2 and Schedule 1;
	provides additional restrictions on bringing a child into the United Kingdom in connection with adoption, aimed at ensuring that British residents follow the appropriate procedures where they adopt a child overseas or bring a child into the United Kingdom for the purposes of adoption;
	provides for restrictions on arranging adoptions and advertising children for adoption (through traditional media and electronically) other than through adoption agencies, and prohibits certain payments in connection with adoption;
	makes provision enabling the Department to establish a Northern Ireland Adoption and Children Act Register to suggest matches between children waiting to be adopted and approved prospective adopters;
	makes provision obliging courts to draw up timetables for resolving adoption cases without delay.
6.The Act will also extend and strengthen provision in the Children Order to enhance the services provided to children, their parents and carers and to improve outcomes for looked after children. The Act will amend the Children Order to:
	reduce the time period a child is required to have lived with a foster carer, from three years to one year, before a foster carer is permitted to seek an order under Article 8 (a Residence Order stipulating the person with whom a child should live);
	provide that Residence Orders made in respect of looked after children will be automatically granted to age 18 or extended to age 18 unless a court determines otherwise;
	require an authority to ascertain the wishes and feelings of a child in need in relation to suitable services which they are under a duty to provide, or investigations that they are required to carry out for child protection purposes, and to give those wishes and feelings due consideration;
	place the existing system of care planning on a statutory basis by requiring the preparation and submission of a care plan by an authority prior to a care order being made by the court;
	introduce a special guardianship order, a new legal order intended to provide greater permanence for children who cannot return to their birth families and for whom adoption is not appropriate;
	introduce a power to make regulations to require Trusts to impose time limits on the making of representations (including complaints) about services provided under the Children Order. The complaints procedure which already applies to services provided under Part 4 (Support for children and their families) of the Children Order will also be extended to include the care, supervision and protection of children, and also to adoption and special guardianship services;
	introduce statutory advocacy services for looked after children, former looked after children, special guardianship children or adopted children who wish to make representations (including complaints) about the discharge of any of an authorities functions to children under the Children Order or in connection with adoption functions;
	change the name of the Guardian ad Litem to Children’s Court Guardian (CCG);
	enable Children’s Court Guardians to be directly employed (rather than admitted to a panel, as is currently the case) and appointed by the courts to represent children in family law proceedings;
	extend the proceedings in which a Children’s Court Guardian will be required to be appointed, to include applications for the making or revocation of an adoption placement order; and applications for the making of a special guardianship order with respect to a child who is the subject of a care order;
	introduce a power for authorities to provide accommodation to a disabled child, for the purposes of providing short-term breaks outside the looked after children system. The new provision also contains a power for the Department to prescribe, by way of regulations, other categories of children to whom such accommodation may be provided, again, outside of the looked after children system;
	remove the restriction on the making of cash payments to children and families in need in exceptional circumstances only;
	introduce a new requirement for authorities, as part of the duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of a looked after child, to promote, facilitate and support the child’s learning and development, and achievement in relation to education or training. They will also be required, in providing a child with accommodation, to secure, so far as is reasonably practicable and consistent with the child’s welfare, that the child’s education or training is not disrupted;
	introduce a framework of corporate parenting principles that overlay the existing responsibilities of authorities towards looked after children and those leaving care to make clear what it means for an authority as a whole to act as a good parent;
	introduce a legal duty on an authority to consider the placement of a child with dually approved carers (i.e. approved foster parents who are also approved prospective adopters) when it is considering adoption, or where the decision has been made that the child ought to be placed for adoption;
	provide that fostering panels will be placed on a statutory basis and their constitution, membership, functions etc. will be prescribed in regulations;
	introduce a power for the Department to establish a procedure for independent reviews of fostering decisions about whether a person should be approved to foster or whether a person should continue to be approved to foster. The mechanism will be comparable to the independent review mechanism for adoption decision-making;
	extend the age limit for support provided to specified care leavers who are still engaged in education and training from 24 to 25. New provision will also: provide for further assistance to specified care leavers aged between 21 and 25 to pursue a new course of education or training; create a new duty for authorities, on request, to provide specified care leavers aged between 21 and 25 with advice and support which has been assessed as appropriate; and require an authority to publish information about the services they offer to care leavers (the Local Offer);
	place the Going the Extra Mile (GEM) scheme on a statutory footing to enable care leavers to continue living with their foster parents up to age 21;
	provide that current duties on authorities relating to children who are privately fostered will be extended to include children who are proposed to be privately fostered;
	further amend the meaning of “impairment of health or development” within the definition of “Harm” in the Children Order so that it includes, for example, impairment suffered as a result of the ill-treatment of another or behaviour directed at another that falls within section 2 of the Domestic Abuse and Civil Proceedings Act (Northern Ireland) 2021 (what amounts to abusive behaviour) whether or not the child who has suffered the impairment saw or heard, or was present during that ill-treatment or behaviour;
	include Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) Protection Orders in the list of Family Proceedings in the Children Order, with the effect that a court, when dealing with an application for an FGM Protection Order, can make other orders under the Children Order regarding the welfare of the child.