The White Paper,Adoption: A New Approach : A ‘Curate's Egg’?

The Government published its proposals for the partial reform of adoption law in the White Paper, Adoption: A new approach in December 2000. In this article Caroline Ball provides a critique of the proposals in the context of the needs of the adoptive population at the beginning of the 21st Century and the wide-ranging though as yet unrealised reform process of the past decade. The article acknowledges the extent to which the Government's proposals recognise and partially address identified problems in childcare and court procedures for children in the public care who cannot return to their birth families and for whom adoption is the preferred outcome. It also identifies the extent to which the proposals are fundamentally flawed by significant omissions in regard to the identification of problems and the consequential range of necessary reforms.