Adoption and After Care

The Adoption and After Care Team works with adopted adults, adoptive parents and birth families who are seeking help and advice in relation to adoption. The team also offers services and support to those formerly in our care, and their families, using the sensitivity, skills and knowledge of the workers, and the records the Society holds. Our most recent OFSTED inspection described the service as “outstanding”, OFSTED’s highest accolade. 

Since 1948 we have placed over 6,000 children for adoption, and since the mid 19th century we have had children in our care. The service helps adults adopted as children and former residents of our children’s homes to achieve a greater understanding of their origins and reasons for separation.

Please note that the Society is no longer recruiting and assessing prospective adoptive parents. For information about adoption services in your area please see the British Association for Adoption & Fostering website.

It is much more commonplace now for people to be interested in family history. Media attention and TV programmes have fostered people’s interest in their origins. However, for those who have been separated from their birth families, through adoption or being in care, there is an additional layer. They may have been raised with the history of their adoptive families but with incomplete, or no history of their birth families.

The search for information for such people goes beyond genealogical enquiry and involves a good deal of courage. Facing an unknown past can raise all sorts of fears and fantasies, which our staff can help to resolve. The team encounter a wide range of situations: adopted adults or former care adults who find that their birth parents subsequently married each other and had more children, so the adopted persons discover they have a number of full birth siblings; situations where the birth parent, or adopted person, may have died or have a serious health problem, or where one or other party feels unable to re-establish contact.  

The Adoption and After Care Service is based at 73 St Charles Square, London W10 6EJ. Telephone 020 8969 5305. Please click here to see a map. For help planning a visit by public transport, we recommend using the Transport for London journey planner at www.tfl.gov.uk/journeyplanner.

How can we help?

We offer a range of services to people who were adopted; birth relatives of adopted adults; those who grew up in one of our children’s homes and to descendants of now deceased former residents or child migrants. Please see the downloadable forms listed below.  

If you are grew up in one of our children’s homes and want access to care records, please click here to download an application for information for people who grew up in one of our children’s homes.

If you are a descendant of a now deceased former resident or child migrant and are searching for information, please click here to download the application for information concerning a former resident of a children’s home.

If you are a birth relative seeking news of an adopted adult, click here to download the application for information for birth relatives seeking news of an adopted adult.

If you were adopted and are seeking information or wish to trace birth relatives, please click here to download the application for people who were adopted and are seeking information or wish to trace birth relatives.

Get in touch with the Adoption and After Care Service