Your adoption records

What records might exist?

Your original birth certificate

Your original birth certificate and your adoption certificate are different documents.

If you were adopted in England or Wales and are 18 or over, you can obtain the information needed to access your original birth record. The route depends partly on when the adoption order was made.

Your original birth registration remains a historical record. Adoption changes legal parentage; it does not mean the original birth entry disappeared.

Your adoption file

The agency or local authority file is often the most detailed source for understanding how the adoption happened.

For adoptions made before 30 December 2005, agencies historically had broad discretion over disclosure. Guidance has long encouraged agencies to share as much information as possible with adopted adults, while protecting information that should not be disclosed.

For adoptions made on or after 30 December 2005, there is a more structured legal framework. The adoption agency is the main gateway for information. An adopted adult has a right to certain information on request, including prescribed information that was given to the adopters. Other protected information may depend on an agency decision.

If you disagree with a qualifying decision to disclose or withhold protected information in an adoption made on or after 30 December 2005, the Independent Review Mechanism may be available.

Could I also have care records?

Possibly. Some adoptees were looked after by a local authority before the adoption order, including some who spent only a short period under local authority responsibility.

Care records are separate from the adoption agency file. If they still exist, you can ask the organisation that holds them for access to your personal information. Historic retention periods mean that some older care records may no longer survive.

Do not assume that a missing adoption file means care records are also missing, or vice versa.

What can be redacted?

You should not assume either that you are entitled to every word in a file or that everything mentioning another person can automatically be blacked out.

Some information about other people can be withheld. But where information about somebody else also forms part of your own history, the record holder should consider the position rather than simply applying a blanket rule.

If substantial information has been removed, you can ask:

• what type of information was withheld;
• why it was withheld;
• which disclosure process was used;
• whether the decision can be reviewed;
• whether enough context can still be given for the remaining record to make sense.

What if my file cannot be found?

Ask the organisation to be precise. These are different outcomes:

If the file was transferred, ask where and when. If it was destroyed, ask whether there is a destruction record, index, register or other surviving information.

If a file is recorded as not found rather than destroyed, it can be worth making a fresh request in a few years, particularly if a transfer or successor record holder is identified later. If your adoption file has been destroyed, you may wish to pursue the court record route.

Court records

The court that made the adoption order may hold a separate record. As an adoptee aged 18 or over, the current court rules allow you to ask for listed adoption documents. This does not create a general right to receive the whole court file, and protected information may be removed.

The date of your adoption matters when thinking about what the court file may contain. Older adoption cases were not created using the same reports and procedures as modern cases. The current disclosure route tells you what categories you can ask the court for now; it does not mean every historic file contains the same documents or that modern report names should be applied to older adoptions.

The application form itself can be requested, but the current rules expressly exclude documents attached to that application. A document is not automatically available simply because it is mentioned in a report.

Court files are often much thinner than agency files, but they can become especially important where:

• the main agency file has been destroyed;
• the agency file cannot be found;
• the adoption was privately arranged;
• you are trying to establish what material was before the court.

What if the adoption agency closed?

Closure does not necessarily mean the files disappeared. Records from former voluntary adoption agencies may have passed to another organisation or local authority. Historic names can also be confusing because agencies merged or changed names.

CoramBAAF is the organisation behind the Adoption Search Reunion website, which contains the Locating Adoption Records database. It is a particularly useful tool for identifying the current location, where known, of historic adoption records from mother and baby homes, adoption societies and adoption agencies that have closed, relocated or merged. The existing Adoption Search Reunion website is old and cannot be updated, but the database remains available.

CoramBAAF and the Archives and Records Association began work in March 2026 on a new free online resource combining and updating existing datasets to make adoption and care records easier to locate. Following the UK Government's formal apology for historic forced adoption practices on 2 July 2026, the Government committed funding to the development of a national online resource creating a single access point for locating adoption records. Development of the CoramBAAF and Archives and Records Association resource is continuing through 2026.

If you know the historic agency name, keep it when making enquiries even if the organisation no longer exists.

I’ve got my records, now what?

Getting information about your adoption, identifying relatives and contacting somebody are three separate activities. You can want one without wanting the others.

Obtaining your records does not commit you to tracing or contact.