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BACKGROUND
The Adoption and Children (Scotland) Act 2007 ('the 2007 Act') introduced a range of reforms into the law relating to adoption of, and permanent care for, children who cannot remain with their birth families.
Once the new legislation is commenced, the existing legislation - the Adoption (Scotland) Act 1978 ('the 1978 Act') - will be repealed, except to the extent necessary to maintain the legality of those adoptions that have already been made under it. One consequence of this is that existing Regulations made under the 1978 Act will no longer be valid. For that reason new Regulations require to be put in place to restate, and amend, extend and improve, existing Regulations. In doing this account will be taken of the report from the Adoption Policy Review Group ( APRG) Adoption: Better Choices for Our Children, which has already shaped the 2007 Act itself.
The present consultation paper deals with the draft Adoption Information (Scotland) Regulations and the draft Adoption (Disclosure of Information)(Scotland) Regulations. Due to these regulations being subject to different Parliamentary procedures the regulations will remain separate from each other. However this does not prejudge any views on whether the draft Adoption Information (Scotland) Regulations should be separate or combined with other Regulations following up the 2007 Act, such as the Adoption Agencies Regulations. Each draft set of regulations will be dealt with separately in the following commentary. The draft Regulations are at Annexes A and B.
Regulations are intended to supplement primary legislation - in this case the 2007 Act - so they do not generally repeat provision already there. To aid full consideration, therefore, the most relevant provisions in the 2007 Act are reproduced for ease of reference at Annex C.
The full text of the 2007 Act may be found at: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/legislation/scotland/acts2007/asp_20070004_en_1
The APRG Report Adoption: Better Choices for Our Children may be found at: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/06/27140607/06107
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