VIII. Who Can Adopt?, Page 4
If You Have a Criminal Record
Previous criminal convictions do not necessarily rule you out, although there is a bar against anyone with a conviction for offences against children being allowed to adopt. This includes convictions for physical injury as well as anything sexual. There is one exception to this bar. An offence of assault causing actual bodily harm, committed when the offender was under 18, may under exceptional circumstances, be disregarded by the adoption agency. This is a new provision only available since 31 October 1999 under Department of Health circular LAC (99) 35, as an amendment to the Children (Protection from Offenders) Regulations 1997. The agency will check thoroughly for any police record, so it pays to be honest and up-front.
The agency has considerable discretion in how to interpret a criminal record. They will not be interested in the occasional traffic violation, but their eyebrows go up and up with the frequency and seriousness of offences. While a conviction for common assault on an adult 20 years ago, with nothing else on your record, might well be discounted, multiple convictions for assault in the past 10 years probably rule you out. If you have a recent conviction for any kind of violent or sexual crime you can forget about adopting. A spell of housebreaking or joyriding in your late teens might be forgiven, but forget adoption if you are a career thief.
Criminal convictions are never “spent” in terms of an adoption application. If an agency rejects your application because of a conviction or caution for a crime against children there is no appeal as there is for other reasons for rejection, unless you can show that the alleged caution or conviction never happened, i.e., there is an error in the records. You cannot appeal on the grounds that the conviction was minor or a long time ago or that you have mended your ways.
Who Lives with You? Your Household
Anyone person over 16 in your household is subject to the same scrutiny as the prospective adopters. Basically that means that if you have anyone living with you who has convictions for offences which would rule him out as an adopter, you will not be allowed to adopt. And a close relationship (friend or family: “close” means in terms of contact and association, not in terms of legal relationship) with anyone who has a history of offences against children — even if he is not living with you but would nevertheless be in a position of intimacy with or influence over your child — will probably rule out adoption for you.
Other things, such as the health of other members of the family living with you, will be inquired into, but more in terms of the stresses they place on relationships, the demands they make on your time, etc. The social workers are interested in the child’s safety and health and in the amount of time and energy you have to give to the child, and any potential problems will have to be seriously considered. This certainly doesn’t mean that you will have to put Granny in a home in order to adopt a child; she may well turn out to be a positive asset from the social worker’s point of view! It does mean that if dear old “Uncle” Fred the lodger has a history of molesting children, he will have to go and go for good. It also means that if you have a birth child aged 16 or over living at home who is a known offender or bully in school or the neighbourhood, you will very likely not be able to adopt.
Do You Already Have Children?
There is nothing to stop people who already have children, grown up or not, from adopting. You will have extra experience and may be encouraged to think about adopting children with special needs, where that experience can be made use of. The social worker will want to interview children in the family, because she will need to get some idea of the likely impact a new arrival will have on them. Children can be a positive asset, if they mean extra help and they can be mentors and companions to the new child, but a child who resents a newcomer will make life very difficult. For children from troubled backgrounds, the presence of helpful older children in the family will often be a big plus factor.
Most social workers prefer to place children for adoption in families where they will be the youngest, often by a number of years. This helps avoid the older children feeling displaced, and they can act as quasi extra parents if they are mature enough. But there is nothing legally to stop you getting a child who is older than all your current children, in the middle of the run, or even a sibling group which sandwiches your existing children in the middle. Like so much else in adoption, “it all depends ...”
© Roger Ridley Fenton
