The Campaign

Adoptee Rights UK

Truth, Identity and Justice.

What happens to your rights after the state intervenes and grants an adoption order? Adoptee Rights UK is SAAM's campaign to answer that question — and to change the answer.

What are Adoptee Rights?

Recognised as rights-bearing adults

Since 1976, adopted people have had a legal right to request information about their birth, adoption and identity — but that right only came after years of silence, and it remains far from simple to use. Accessing records is still complicated by confusing systems, inconsistent responses, and a legal framework that was never designed with adoptees' needs at its heart.

Adoptee Rights are about ensuring that people who, as children, had their legal identity permanently altered by the state are fully recognised as rights-bearing adults. This isn't about erasing families, rewriting history, or arguing against the value of adoption itself — it's about examining law, policy, and state responsibility for what happens next.

"Sometimes adoption has to happen. It does not make it right. It makes it different. SAAM works to have that difference respected — not hidden, silenced, shamed or disrespected." — SAAM

Our three rights

Truth, Identity and Justice

Adoptees across the UK face lifelong barriers to truth, autonomy and recognition. Our Three Rights Framework defines what every adopted person deserves — and what UK law must change.

The Right to Know — Truth

Every adoptee has the right to know they are adopted, and to access the truth of their origins, family history and legal identity — including full, unredacted records and a clear explanation of the legal processes carried out in their name.

The Right to Autonomy — Identity

Adoptees deserve control over their legal identity: access to original records, the ability to make their status public or hold dual identity, and a genuine adult pathway to review or challenge an adoption order in adulthood.

The Right to Be Known — Justice

Adoptees must be recognised in law and protected from discrimination. We call for the integration of the UNCRC into adoption law, and for adoptee equality to be treated as a protected characteristic across UK human rights law.

These rights align with international human rights standards — but UK law falls dangerously short. SAAM's work has identified up to 21 human rights considerations arising over the course of an adoptee's life. Adoptee Rights UK's mission is to bring these to public and parliamentary attention.

Where this began

Our story

22 Mar 2023

The Apology — the Scottish Government delivered a formal apology for historical forced adoption practices. It marks the moment SAAM's campaign began.

On the morning of the Scottish Government's official apology for historical adoption practices in 2023, SAAM's core team stood in peaceful protest. We held a banner that read: "Adoptee Rights Are Human Rights." For the first time, adoptees were visibly present, and our voices were heard.

Sadly, adoptees had once again been left off the invitation list — thought of as disruptive to an apology intended for mothers, rather than as people with their own stake in it. For many of us, this was not a first. It was the last straw. Adoptees have historically been excluded from reform, apologies and inquiries, and continue campaigning for the inclusion of historic child abuse in adoption placements within the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry, for legal remedy, and for the correction of falsified documents.

Adoptees are not disruptive. We are dispensed of from care and withdrawn from rights, protections and provisions in relation to our own adoption — symbolic only when it comes to matters about us. Our campaign is built on lived experience, collective knowledge, and the belief that every adopted person has the right to truth, dignity and choice throughout their life.

"We watched as reports were written, inquiries launched, and dramas produced — yet our voices remained absent. Still, we are here. And we are not finished." — Adoptee Rights UK

Watch and read

Entering 2026

Recognition without restoration

Across the UK, adoption and historical family separation have been acknowledged in different ways — but every response stops short of reforming adoption's permanent legal effects.

Scotland — apology given, powers limited

A formal apology and commitments through UNCRC incorporation and The Promise, but a Supreme Court ruling has confirmed limits on devolved competence — leaving adoption's permanent legal consequences unreformed.

Wales — apology and funding, but constrained

A formal apology in April 2023 and funding for counselling and specialist support, alongside recognition that key aspects of adoption law remain constrained by UK-wide legislation.

Northern Ireland — truth without legal resolution

A Truth Recovery process examining Mother and Baby Institutions and related adoption practices, which has not yet translated into adoption law reform or enforceable post-adoption rights.

England & Westminster — no apology, no reform

No formal apology for historic adoption practices. Current scrutiny focuses on children's rights while in care, with no extension to adults whose legal identity was permanently altered through adoption.

This is not a failure of recognition. It is a failure of legal will at Westminster — where adoption law, being reserved, sits beyond the reach of devolved reform.

Read the case in full

The Supporting Document

The Adoptee Rights UK Supporting Document sets out the legal, human rights and policy foundations of this campaign in full. It explains why adoptee rights are needed, what gaps exist in current law and practice, and how permanent legal decisions made in childhood continue to affect adopted people throughout adulthood — often without equivalent adult rights, remedies, or autonomy.

Adoptee Rights UK — Supporting Document

Published 2026 File size 17 MB

Covers the history of human rights and children's rights, the Three Key Adoptee Rights, the structural gaps in UK adoption law, current positions across all four nations, a media summary, and answers to common questions raised about the campaign. This is a rights-based analysis of law, policy and state responsibility — not a commentary on individual families or personal morality.

Download the PDF

Take action

Begin 2026 by engaging with your local MP.

We invite everyone who cares about human and children's rights — adoptees, care-experienced people, families, professionals and allies — to take part in shaping what comes next. Ask your MP to listen. Ask them to act. Ask them to recognise that adoption is a lifelong legal status, and that lifelong decisions must come with lifelong rights.

1 The meaningful integration of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into UK law, applied to adoption across the lifespan.
2 Recognition of adoptees and people with a history of care within the Equality Act.
3 Respect for adoptee rights, identity and autonomy in law, policy and practice.

Change does not begin in silence. It begins when people speak — together.

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