This is a website for anyone searching in the UK and was launched and hosted by the British Association for Adoption and Fostering (BAAF). The website is designed for those who wish to trace relatives and highlights national and local records holding institutions, legal guidelines, and agencies. The purpose is to dramatically streamline the search for natural families.

This website officially launched in May 2006 and has become a valuable resource for many. The website claims to receive over 1200 hits every day and is helping adoptees, adoptive parents, and natural families to access information about their rights, to find out where they can get help and support, and to locate the holders of their adoption records.

In addition, the website is helping practitioners to understand new legislation and provide help to the people they work with. This website truly is a comprehensive and thorough website. It is excellent and has so much information all in one place. It is user friendly and if you are not familiar with the internet it is easy to print the information that you may be seeking.

The Department of Education and Skills has published answers to Frequently Asked Questions for accessing information under the Adoption and Children Act of 2002. These have been produced as part of the training materials for the Department, and addresses issues such as consent, making contact, veto provisions, and providing intermediary services in relation to pr and post commencement adoptions as well as intercountry aspects.

An article was printed in The Independent on December 18,2005 and states that almost two million parents and children are legally separated and kept apart by bureaucracy. On average, some 5000 children are adopted in England and Wales every year the total number of adopted people believed to be between 50,000 and one millions. In the 1950’s and 1960’s alone an estimated one fifth of all children born illegitimate were adopted mostly as babies.

It is estimated that more than 400,000 people in the UK have not been reunited with their natural parents and about two thirds of them yet to try. It was only in 1975 that adopted people were granted the right of access to birth records.

The article can be found at http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article333858.ece