Young Lawyers - Kate Gomery: Losing touch

I love watching genealogy shows on television - the likes of “Who Do You Think You Are” and “Long Lost Family”. Both those shows highlight the natural curiosity many people have to understand where they come from. Quite often the central theme of these shows is adoption more particularly the attempt to trace the birth family after an adoption has taken place. It seems there is often two purposes of such a search one for an understanding of "roots" and “identity" and the other to find out the reasons why the adoption happened in the first place and whether the family still think of them.

In recent years thanks to legislation introduced under the Adoption and Children Act 2002 it has become easier for those who have been adopted once they have reached the age of 18   to obtain their birth records. But what about maintaining links with the birth family before that? The ACA...

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