How can I find out more information about my birth family?

You can find out a lot of information for yourself. You can contact the General Register Office for your birth certificate. If you don’t have enough information from them to find your birth certificate, you can apply to the adoption agency that arranged your adoption or the agency that now holds the files if they have been transferred. Also, the Local Authority where you were adopted may hold some information.

You can ask an Adoption Agency or an Adoption Support Agency to act as an Intermediary Agency for you. This could be the agency that placed you for adoption, your Local Authority or any other registered agency; if you were placed for adoption through CCS adoption you may choose CCS to provide this service for you.

01.04.22 Update

Unfortunately, we are currently unable to provide our regular tracing and intermediary service for adopted adults. However, what we can do at the moment is establish with you if we are the appropriate adoption agency for you and if we are to hold your details on file until we can allocate a social worker to work with you. If we are not the agency that you need, we may be able to signpost you elsewhere. We hope to resume our regular service as soon as we can.

The agency will establish who you are which involves completing an application form and proving your identity.

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The agency may contact your birth relatives and ask for their permission to give you information about them.

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The agency may share information about your birth relatives. This information alone may not be enough for you to find or contact your birth relatives but may include general information about their life around the time you were adopted and other information such as family medical histories etc.

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If you wish to make contact by sending letters or meeting face to face, your Intermediary Agency can sometimes arrange this, or if not, direct you to an agency working in your area that can. For this intermediary and reunion service, the agency will work with both you and your birth relatives if you agree to the contact.

You can find further information for adopted adults about the law around contact with birth relatives, intermediary agencies, the Adoption Contact Register and counselling here. And for further help with search and reunion, click here.

Contact

birthrecords@ccsadoption.org