Afamily judge has ruled it is too soon for a four-year-old adopted girl to have direct contact with her birth mother. In BM v AM & Ors, His Honour Judge Marin said agreeing to the mother’s application for contact once or twice a year could present an ‘almost guaranteed risk’ of harm to the child.
The ruling comes amid increasing calls – albeit little in the way of case law – for a new approach to allowing direct contact between birth families and adopted children.
In November, the Public Law Working Group recommended a ‘greater focus’ on the issue as long as it was safe and advocated a ‘sea change in the approach to the question of fact-to-face contact between the adopted child and the birth family’.
