Keith Griffith’s comprehensive investigation into the history, legality and reality of adoption records can be found here.

Accessing your records

Mothers and adopted people have shared their experiences of communicating with social workers, both historically and in contemporary times. Some people report feeling supported by their social worker, yet sadly some report feeling dismissed or patronised.

Government officials and social workers were, and are, a gateway to information, particularly for adopted people. Social workers have a role to administer the Adoption Act 1955, the Adult Adoption Information Act 1985, the Inter-country Adoption Act 1997, and they play a part in surrogacy and international adoptions.

Oranga Tamariki issue social workers with instructions on implementing these Acts. These instructions can be viewed on Oranga Tamariki’s Practice Centre by inputting ‘adoption’ into the search box.

Social workers’ implementing the Adoption Act 1955 must adhere to their Code of Conduct. However, the Code of Conduct is not compatible with the Act. The Act does not place the child’s need as paramount, rather it is adult focused legislation that renders a child ‘as if born to’ the adopting parents and strips a child of their rights to know their family, culture, and identity. This places the social workers with a conundrum that can only be remedied through adoption law reform.

The Adoption Act 1955 requires the sealing of the child’s family identity records, thereby not accommodating any contact between the child and the child’s parents and family. The Act gave effect to the misguided belief that a child is a blank slate and suffers no trauma when separated from its mother, that a mother can forget her child taken from her through adoption, and that the adopting parent(s’) love will heal any impacts of the separation that both mother and child carry.

What it does however, is legally give the adopting parents the power in the relationship between them and the child’s parent(s) and their family, and hides the truth of the relationship between a child and their family origins.

There is neither provision nor prohibition of open adoption under the 1955 Act. The practice of open adoption has been used to justify that there is no need for adoption law reform, with no recognition that the law discriminates against the child’s right to know their parents and culture, which is left to the benevolence (or otherwise) of the adopting parents.

How can social workers overcome the discrepancies noted above? Were they to refuse to administer adoptions under the current law they wold maintain their integrity as social workers under their Code of Conduct. And to what degree, if at all, does the Act uphold Aoteraoa New Zealand’s obligations under te Tiriti o Waitangi and the articles in the United Nations Convention the Rights of the Child that Aotearoa New Zealand ratified in 1993?

It is clear that by continuing to administer the Adoption Act 1955 social workers, their managers and the Chief Social Worker of Oranga Tamiriki are breaching these requirements.

If you want to share your experiences, email us at adoption@xtra.co.nz . We will not share your experiences in any form without your permission.

Accessing your Court records

The Family Court will hold the following records that:

• applicants’ affidavits

• consent documents from the birthparents

• legal identity documents

• more information about the application if required by the Court

• a court report or an interim update on progress a week prior to any case review date set by the court registrar.

Who can access adoption records?

Currently, under the Adoption Act 1955 and the Adult Adoption Information Act 1985, only adopted people and their parents are able to gain access to details relating to the adoption pertaining to them under certain circumstances.

There is no provision for siblings, children, grandparents, grandchildren, cousins, partners or anyone else, to be able to access records of an adoption.

This is an unconscionable situation as it keeps families apart and perpetuates the shame, isolation and pain of an adoption. Nor does the current Acts give people impacted by adoption the same rights as people not impacted by adoption. There is no defensible reason for this to be the case.