If you are adopted and live now in Thurrock, Havering or Southend, wherever your adoption took place, you can contact Partners in Adoption on 0800 652 1271 for further discussion or information. Alternatively complete the request form and send it to us, we will send out an information pack. 

Many adopted people want to find out more about their family history and early life before they make up their mind whether to go ahead with trying to contact birth relatives. If you were adopted before 30 December 2005 and are 18 or over, you may:

• Apply to the Registrar General for the information you need to get a copy of your original birth certificate. If you were adopted before 12 November 1975, you have to be interviewed by an adoption social worker in your local authority (because of differences in the law before this date).before you can do this. If you were adopted after that date, the counselling interview is optional but recommended, as it contains a lot of information about tracing and adoption that you will find helpful, if not essential.)
• Apply to the adoption agency that arranged your adoption (or the agency that now holds the adoption files, if different) – either a local authority or a voluntary adoption agency-, for access to your adoption records. The adoption agency has the discretion to disclose information to you from the file..
• See whether the local authority in the area where you were adopted has any details. Even if they didn’t arrange the adoption, they may hold some information about adoptions that took place in their area.
• Ask the court that made your adoption order to disclose any records that they have.

Once you have considered all the information about your adoption contained in these records with the assistance of your social workert you may decide that you want to go ahead and contact your birth relative. You can then choose to try to trace the relative yourself through public records, or apply to the adoption agency or another post adoption provider for for an intermediary service, whereby you pay them to locate your relative.  Although we believe that private detective agencies advertise this service it is advisable to ask your social worker for the names of the non-commercial registered inter-mediary adoption services, as they are regulated.

The Commission for Social Care Inspection has a list of all ASAs registered to provide intermediary services.