Adoption is the process whereby a child becomes a member of a new family. It creates a permanent, legal relationship between the adoptive parents and the child.

In recent years, adoptions in Ireland have become increasingly rare and many prospective parents now look abroad to adopt a child. This process is called Inter-country adoption.

If you want to adopt a child, whether in Ireland or abroad, the first step is to contact your local HSE Adoption Service.

If you are eligible, have completed a detailed assessment of your suitability to adopt and have a child successfully placed with you, an application for an Adoption Order will be made to the Adoption Authority of Ireland, an independent statutory body, and the Adoption Authority will process the adoption application and make an adoption order in due course. If you are adopting from abroad, the process is a lengthier one. The legislation governing adoption is the Adoption Act 2010.

As adoption is a complex legal process, it is helpful to be aware of the basics of adoption law.

The HSE is the competent authority, under the Adoption Act 2010, for the processing of domestic adoptions. Accredited bodies will work with the HSE in all areas of adoption, undertaking those activities for which they are accredited.
An Adoption Order secures in law the position of the child in the adoptive family. The child is regarded in law as the child of the adoptive parents as if he/she were born to them. Legal adoption is permanent.
All applications for Adoption Orders are made to the Adoption Authority.
The law allows the adoption of orphans and children born outside marriage (including, in certain circumstances, children whose natural parents subsequently marry each other). In exceptional cases, the High Court can authorise the adoption of children whose parents have failed in their duty of care towards them (this can include children born within marriage).
Who Can Adopt?
In Ireland, in order to adopt a child, you must be at least 21 years of age and resident in the State. Where the child is being adopted by a married couple and one of them is the mother or father or a relative of the child, only one of them must have attained the age of 21 years.

The following persons are eligible to adopt:

A married couple living together,
A married person alone. The other spouse's consent to adopt must be obtained unless the couple is living apart and separated under a court decree or a deed of separation, or the other spouse has deserted the prospective adoptive parent or the other spouse's conduct has resulted in the prospective adoptive parent, with just cause, leaving the other spouse.
The mother, father or relative of the child (relative meaning a grandparent, brother, sister, uncle or aunt of the child and/or the spouse of any such person, the relationship to the child being traced through the mother or the father);
A widow or widower
A sole applicant who is not in one of the categories listed above may only adopt where the Adoption Authority is satisfied that, in the particular circumstances of the case, it is desirable. It is not possible for two unmarried persons to adopt jointly.
There are no legal upper age limits for adopting parents, but most adoption agencies apply their own.

Step-parent adoption
A step-parent adoption occurs when a child is adopted by a married couple, one of whom is the natural parent of the child (usually the mother) while the other is not. Both the natural parent and the step-parent must adopt the child in order to avoid the natural parent losing his/her rights and responsibilities to the child. If a child was born within a previous marriage, where the natural parent has now remarried following a divorce or the death of his/her spouse, the child is not eligible for adoption. There is more information on step-parent adoption on the Adoption Authority's website.

Consent
The consent of the parent/guardian of the child to the adoption is a legal requirement. If the child is born outside marriage, and the father has no guardianship rights, only the mother's consent is needed. Under the adoption legislation , however, birth fathers are now being consulted (if possible) about the adoption of their children. In situations where the parents are not married and the father does not have guardianship rights, his consent is not necessary for adoption. However, the consent of the father is required if he marries the mother after the birth of the child or he is appointed guardian or is granted custody of the child by court order.

The mother, father (where he is guardian) or other legal guardian must give an initial consent or agreement to the placing of a child for adoption by an approved adoption service. He/she must then give his/her consent to the making of an Adoption Order. This consent may be withdrawn any time before the making of the Adoption Order.

If the mother either refuses consent or withdraws consent already given, the adopting parents may apply to the High Court for an order. If the court is satisfied that it is in the best interests of the child, it will make an order giving custody of the child to the adopting parents for a specified period and authorising the Adoption Authority to dispense with the mother's consent to the making of the Adoption Order.

If a mother changes her mind about adoption before the making of the Adoption Order, but the adopting parents refuse to give up the child, she may then institute legal proceedings to have custody of her child returned to her.

When an Adoption Order is made, a new birth certificate can be obtained for the child. Although it is not an actual birth certificate, it has the status of one for legal purposes. It gives the date of the Adoption Order and the names and addresses of the adoptive parents and is similar in all aspects to a birth certificate.

The procedure involved in adopting a child is thorough and takes time, at least a year. When you have contacted your local HSE Adoption Service, you will be invited to attend an information session along with other interested couples, to learn what is involved in the adoption process. If you want to proceed, you ask for the relevant forms to be sent out.

Assessment
People wishing to adopt should apply to one of the pproved Adoption Societies (see contact information below) or their local HSE Adoption Service. While there is a statutory entitlement to an assessment for inter-country adoption, there is no such entitlement to be assessed for domestic adoption. Applicants being considered by an adoption agency will undergo a detailed assessment. This assessment takes place over a period of time, ranging from 9 to 15 months, sometimes longer. The purpose of this assessment is to establish applicants' suitability as prospective adoptive parents. The assessment is carried out by one of the agency's social workers. It includes a number of interviews and home visits. Where the application is in respect of a married couple, there will be both individual and joint interviews. The social worker will discuss such areas as previous and/or current relationships, motives for adopting, expectations of the child and the ability to help a child to develop his/her knowledge and understanding of his/her natural background. All applicants are required to undergo a medical examination.

If you are planning to adopt abroad, the assessment will also take in issues of the child's cultural background and possible special needs.

Report
The social worker then prepares a report, which goes before the agency committee or (HSE) Area committee and a decision is made.

If you are adopting in Ireland, you will not be entitled to see the report.

If you are adopting abroad, your social worker will share the report's contents with you and you are free to raise any issues you wish. If the social worker agrees, the report can be amended. If the social worker does not agree, after mediation, you can attach a written comment on the disputed matter, which will be submitted to the committee. You have the right to appeal any recommendation/decision made.

Adopting In Ireland
If your application is approved, you will most likely wait a long time before a baby is offered. When a baby is offered, an application must be made to the Adoption Authority, along with your medical records, personal details and three references. The Adoption Authority has statutory responsibility for authorising placements and regulating agencies. A social worker from the Authority will visit you twice before an Adoption Order is made. It normally takes between six to twelve months to process a domestic adoption application to a stage where the Adoption Authority is satisfied to make an Adoption Order.

When the Adoption Order is finally made, you will come before the Adoption Authority and give sworn evidence as to your identity and eligibility. You will also be given information on how to go about getting a new birth certificate for the child. The new birth certificate will normally be available through the Registrar General's Office within four weeks.

How to apply

If you have an enquiry about adoption in Ireland, contact your Health Service Executive (HSE) Local Health Office.

A certified copy of an entry in the Adopted Children Register, which can be used for legal and administrative purposes, costs €10. You can download an application form for a certified copy here.

Where to apply

Adoption Authority of Ireland
Shelbourne House
Shelbourne Road
Ballsbridge
Dublin 4
Ireland

Intercountry Adoptions

GRUELLING ASSESSMENTS, long waiting lists, exasperating bureaucracy and considerable expense are some of the most discussed challenges facing prospective adoptive parents in Ireland.
But there’s a presumption that the day these parents finally take a child into their arms is the first day of the “happily ever after” for both sides. What we don’t hear so much about is the huge challenge it can be to parent a child when the first months, running into years, of that child’s life have been spent in an institution with multiple carers.
There is a common notion that if you pluck children out of an orphanage and put them in a nice family, they will thrive and develop, says Alan Burnell of the UK-based Family Futures, which specialises in providing therapeutic services for children who have experienced early trauma. Unfortunately, love doesn’t always conquer all.
So-called “attachment issues” is the number one problem for adopted children and the older they are when placed in a family, the deeper the problem is likely to be.
With the Adoption Act of 2010 having changed the landscape of international adoption in Ireland, the days of baby adoptions are basically over as the average age of children being adopted into this country is likely to rise significantly.
The Adoption Authority of Ireland now only authorises adoptions from countries approved under the Hague Convention, part of which stipulates that efforts must be made to place a child with a family in his or her native country before looking for adoptive parents abroad.
“Two years in an orphanage is a quantum leap from a baby adoption,” says Burnell, manager of Family Futures, which will be running a one-day training course for adoptive parents in Ireland next month. However good an orphanage may be, the child is deprived of the vital mother-baby bond.
Thanks to advances in neuroscience, we now know that 80 per cent of the brain is wired up in the first two years of life – and that becomes the foundation for all subsequent development.
Children who receive poor early parenting have every aspect of their development impaired or impacted to varying degrees by that traumatic early experience, explains Burnell. It has been shown that their brains develop differently from those in babies who are encouraged to develop a secure, loving attachment to a principal carer – usually their mother.
“It is not just that they find it difficult to form secure attachment to their parents, they also have problems with problem-solving and cognitive processing and also with sensory motor development.”
Unless adoptive parents know about the issues, and receive appropriate professional help where necessary, they are parenting on “faulty foundations”, says Burnell.
We are not talking simply about initial problems when an adopted child is settling into a family, but a long-term issue that can re-emerge at various life stages, such as adolescence.
Most parents draw on their own experiences of being parented when raising a family. But adopted children may need different forms of parenting to help with feelings that biological children of their age would not have.
No matter how old newly adopted children are, parents are advised to “think toddler” because that is often how they behave.
“They need a parent to help them make that transition from babyhood to autonomous child of middle childhood. If they haven’t been helped to make that transition by a good parent, they need to go back and do that,” says Burnell.
Children with attachment issues can become overly self-assured and pseudo-independent or they become frustrated and intolerant, often quite aggressive, or they are very compliant and quiet. None of these coping strategies that the child has developed works in the long run and “re-parenting” is needed to make up for what that child has missed.
Neuroscience shows how plastic and changeable the human brain and nervous system is, so it is possible to effect change, he explains.
“You have to go back to go forward. To grow and develop, these children need to go back to the early stages of development with the parent, in order to have a secure foundation for more sophisticated, middle childhood growth and development before reaching adolescence.”
For example, most children by the time they go to pre-school have an internal image of their biological parents and don’t believe that when they leave them they will never see them again. Not so the traumatised adopted child.
That sense of abandonment and separation, which is inherent in these children, can be overcome very simply by putting a photograph of their parent in their lunchbox and telling the pre-school staff that if the child begins to get upset and distressed, they can show them the photograph and “talk them down”, he says.

Likewise some children are “petrified” going to bed – it might have been a time when they felt particularly isolated or insecure, or they were with other children who were crying a lot. It is recommended that they are given something that smells of the mother at bedtime.
“Basically it is a lot of the things you would do with younger children,” says Burnell. Even at bath time it is about helping the older child bath themselves “so everything becomes a pleasurable interpersonal interaction – that’s the aim”.
Human-to-human touch releases oxytocin, a feel-good hormone, and it is a process that happens all the time between biological parents and babies. Children who have never experienced loving touch may be fearful of it.
“Helping children to learn to touch and be touched sounds very basic but it is something they have never learnt,” says Burnell. Without that they may not understand the pleasure of relating to other people.
Adoptive parents can be slow to look for help because they may not want to admit they are having difficulties. The average age of a child being brought to Family Futures for the first time is eight or nine, yet the average age of placement in the UK is four.
“Other people can be quite disparaging about what they’re doing and why they’re doing it,” comments Burnell.
Faced with a child who won’t stop crying or tantruming, adoptive parents can feel a huge sense of shame.
“If you don’t have the visceral confidence that ‘this is my child and I know I can do this’, it can be quite harrowing.”
Burnell says they see about half a dozen cases a year from Ireland. “I think that is the tip of the iceberg and it is a problem that needs addressing.”
A not-for-profit organisation, Family Futures is looking for a base in Dublin to run, perhaps, a monthly clinic, to save families the time and expense involved in travelling to London.
Irish adoptive parents who use its services are highly committed and very determined to help their children, says Burnell.
The behaviours they are dealing with in their children include extreme mood swings, aggression, poor performance at school, low self-esteem and sometimes stealing and self-harming behaviour.
“Not all the children have all of them but most of them have some of them.”
Prospective adoptive parents need to know it is not going to be easy. However, it is possible, he stresses, to turn the children’s behaviour around and the sooner the attachment issues are addressed the better.
“We know much more than we did 10 years ago [about] how to make these things work. But it doesn’t just happen overnight and it doesn’t happen by magic.”
For their part, these children are very receptive to professional help and parental guidance – despite appearances to the contrary sometimes.
“At root they desperately want to be loved by these parents,” he explains. Their problem is that the early template on how to live in a family has not been given to them.
“We don’t have a problem with engaging children in therapeutic work because they want to know how to change. A girl said to me recently ‘I want to know how not to be angry all the time’. They are in effect asking for help.”
Health services are geared to working with biological families and often if a child is unhappy or disruptive or difficult, it is seen as symptomatic of poor parenting or a poor couple relationship. In the case of adopted children, it is the reverse, says Burnell.
“Children come into new families with pathologised ways of relating and they pathologise the new family.
It is recognised in psychological literature as the reverse transmission of risk. It is not the parents who are a risk factor, it is the child who is the risk factor.”
Burnell believes it is “morally irresponsible” for agencies to place older children for adoption and not provide the necessary support to the families taking them.
“They are endangering the marriage, they are endangering the mental health of the parent and they are not utilising the potential the child could have from that family to the full,” he adds.
“So it becomes a high-risk undertaking that it shouldn’t be.”

The Hague Convention sets out the process for submitting an application for an Intercountry Adoption to another State.

Article 15 of the Convention states “If the Central Authority of the receiving State is satisfied that the applicants are eligible and suited to adopt, it shall prepare a report including information about their identity, eligibility and suitability to adopt, background, family and medical history, social environment, reasons for adoption, ability to undertake an intercountry adoption, as well as the characteristics of the children for whom they would be qualified to care.”

Furthermore under Article 15 it is mandatory for the Central Authority to transmit this report to the Central Authority in the Country of Origin. This means that for approved Irish applicants the Adoption Authority of Ireland (AAI) is responsible for sending the Article 15 report (essentially the applicant’s Home Study) to the Central Authority of the Receiving State.

Article 15 Reports (the Homestudy) must be transmitted either through the AAI, or if this function is delegated, through an approved, accredited agency, such as Arc Adoption.

In practical terms, this means that Arc will transmit the applicants dossier – containing the Article 15 Report – to the appropriate accredited body or Central Authority in-Country. All supporting documentation required by the Country of origin, will therefore be attached to, and delivered with the Article 15 Report.