43. Where a pregnant woman approaches the agency and indicates that her intention is to relinquish the child for adoption, the agency should provide her with pre-birth counselling. This counselling should include explaining the options for the child’s future care:

  • staying with the parent or parents, with close support where possible. Where the baby and mother are accommodated with foster carers, trained to care for the baby and support the mother, the intention is to help the mother overcome her anxiety and develop her parenting skills and confidence so that she is able to care for the child;
  • short-term foster care, with the aim of returning the child with support;
  • long-term placement within the child's wider family; or
  • placement for adoption.

44. The mother should be given an explanation of the procedures for both placing her child for adoption and the adoption, and the legal implications of adoption. This must include that her consent to her child’s adoption will not be effective until six weeks after the child’s birth. See paragraphs 88-92 for the consent procedures in such cases. The agency should ascertain and record her wishes and feelings. 

45. The agency should also provide pre-birth counselling and ascertain the wishes and feelings of the expected child’s father. Where the agency knows the father’s identity and is satisfied it is appropriate to do so, the agency should also counsel him and any other person the agency considers relevant to the child, and it should ascertain their wishes and feelings. AAR 14 should be followed, where it is reasonably practicable for the agency to do so.

46. The agency should consider the care options for the child, and where it considers that adoption is the preferred option, it should:

  • commence the CPR and the health report; and
  • arrange for the agency medical adviser and adoption panel to be ready to consider the case as soon as possible after the child is born; and
  • begin family finding so that the baby can be placed for adoption with prospective adopters once the decision-maker has decided that the child should be placed for adoption and placed with those specific prospective adopters.

47. When the child is born, the agency should counsel the mother, and where it is reasonably practicable and the agency considers it appropriate, the child’s father, to ascertain whether they still wish to relinquish the child for adoption. If they do, the agency should immediately complete the CPR needed for the adoption panel to consider whether the child should be placed for adoption and, where this is the case, whether the child should be placed with particular adopters. With enough preparation the adoption panel should be ready to consider the case within a day or so of the birth (see also chapter 4 paragraph 33).