Access To Records and Intermediary Services

If you were adopted through Nugent in the past, we can provide information, counselling and support for you to access your adoption records. We also offer support and intermediary services to adopted adults who wish to trace and contact birth relatives.

If you would like to access your adoption records but live outside of our geographical area, you are able to ask for an Intermediary Service from your Local Authority Adoption Service, we will then provide the information to that agency who will, in turn, share it with you.

We do not provide entire adoption files as they contain third-party information; however, we are able to provide a detailed file summary and often some original documents from the adoption records.

We offer advice, support and intermediary services to birth relatives of adopted people whose adoptions Nugent arranged or was involved in.

Are you an adopted person, an adoptive parent or a birth relative?

If so the following information may be relevant to you:

Section 98 of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 came into force on December 30th, 2005. This introduced a new statutory requirement for all Adoption Agencies to offer a service to birth relatives who wish to have news of, or establish contact with, a child they placed for adoption. This legislation requires us to make this service available once the adopted person has reached the age of 18. No identifying information can be given to the birth relative, and any contact with the adopted person would be made via Adoption Social Workers from Nugent Adoption.

The Intermediary Service for adopted adults remains the same, in that any adoptee over the age of 18 can receive support in tracing their birth family from the adoption agency, having first had access to their adoption records.

This legislation also introduces the facility for adoptees and birth relatives to register a Wish for Contact, or to place a Veto against any contact being made.