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ADOPTION POLICY REVIEW GROUP: CHOICES FOR CHILDREN IN FOSTERING AND ADOPTION
ABBREVIATIONS, TERMINOLOGY AND REFERENCES
There are frequent references in the Paper to Acts, regulations, etc.. In order to avoid lengthy repetition of their titles, appropriate abbreviations have been used. A list of these is found at the end in Appendix I, pg. 117. All the legislation applies to Scotland only unless otherwise specified in the list.
There are a few other abbreviations used throughout the text:
- s. is used for specific sections;
- reg. is used for specific regulations;
- r. is used for specific rules of court;
- PRO is used for a parental responsibilities order under s.86 of the 1995 Act.
Fostering is the general term for arrangements made for children to live away from home on a non-permanent basis. This Paper is concerned with public fostering, where care arrangements are made by local authorities and children are 'looked after'; and with private fostering, where families make their own arrangements for care with people who are not close relatives, and local authorities then have 'inspectorial' duties.
Adoption is a legal process, which replaces a child's birth parents with new adoptive parents, by the granting of an adoption order. Freeing is an earlier, optional court process which can only be sought by a local authority adoption agency and removes all parental responsibilities and rights from the birth parents, giving them to the agency.
The 1978 Act provides for 2 types of adoption: agency adoptions and relative adoptions. An agency adoption is one where an adoption agency places a child for adoption. The child is usually, although not always, a 'looked after' child. A relative adoption is one where the child is adopted by a relative, which is defined as a grandparent, sibling, uncle or aunt, including those of the half blood. Strictly speaking, no adoption should be arranged unless either the child is placed by an agency or it is a relative adoption. However, courts can and do grant adoption orders when that is not the case, e.g. where foster carers seek to adopt a child placed with them on a fostering basis; or an intercountry adoption. References to adoptions as 'non-agency' ones mean any adoption which is not an agency one.
The terms 'local authority', 'adoption agency', 'voluntary agency' and similar expressions are used in the Paper. The first is given its usual meaning and is the body charged in their area with responsibility for services to children and families, including services under the 1978 and 1995 Acts. An 'adoption agency' is a separate body from a local authority. There are two types of adoption agencies:
- Local authority adoption agencies. Every local authority must have an agency, and through their agency, have a duty to provide an adoption service for their area.
- Registered adoption services. These are voluntary agencies currently approved by the Scottish Executive under the 1978 Act, to provide adoption services.
'Adoption agencies' means all agencies, as distinguished from 'local authority agencies' and 'voluntary agencies'. In due course, both types of adoption agencies will require to be registered with and inspected by the Scottish Commission for the Regulation of Care, in terms of the 2001 Act.
A child is 'looked after' by a local authority under the 1995 Act if s/he:
(1) is accommodated under s.25, by agreement and without any order;
(2) is subject to a supervision requirement from the hearing system, under s.70;
(3) is subject to a short term warrant, order or authorisation from a hearing or the court under Part II of the Act;
(4) is subject to a PRO under s.86;
(5) is subject to an order made elsewhere in the U.K. when a Scottish authority has had responsibility transferred to them.
If a child 'looked after' and permanence is being considered, the 'looked after' arrangement is most likely to be under (1), (2) or (4) above.
Where a child is 'looked after', there is a system of internal local authority reviews, under the LA Regs, usually called 'looked after' reviews. When a local authority decides to seek permanence away from home for a child, they start the planning process by making that decision at a 'looked after' review. Birth parents and older children are invited to reviews in terms of the LA Regs.
There are frequent references to 'parental responsibilities and rights' and to 'parental responsibility'. These phrases mean respectively the responsibilities and rights given in Scotland and referred to in the Children (Scotland) Act 1995 and those given in England and Wales and referred to in the Children Act 1989. They are more or less the same in the different jurisdictions, but the terminology is slightly different.
There are references to various publications in the text, and these are listed in Appendix II, pg. 119 References and Further Reading.
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