Placing your child for adoption

If you're an expectant parent considering placing your child for adoption, we can discuss your options with you so that you can decide what is best for you and your child.

Both parents who are guardians need to be involved in the adoption decision:

• the mother is always a guardian and
• the father is a guardian if he has lived with the mother at any time during the pregnancy and/or his name is on the birth registration.

Please read below for more about placing your child for adoption or contact a social worker directly at your nearest Adoption Services office. 

An adoptions social worker can talk with you about your situation, the supports available to you for all your options, as well as their possible effects.  You can expect her or him to respect your opinions and be ready to listen without judgement.

You will be encouraged to take as much time as you need to explore all of the options open to you, your family and your child. The social worker will be willing to meet with any of your family who are interested in this decision, but support you in your free choice about the future of your child.

You will be offered a wide variety of adoptive families to choose from and you will have time after the child is born to consider again all your options.

Adoptive applicants will have been to our adoption education and preparation programme, and will have been assessed for safety and sensitivity to be parents of a child not born to them. They will have made profiles about themselves and their lifestyles - with plenty of photos.

You can take your time to look carefully for a family that feels like the best fit for your child, where he or she may be able to grow up with the beliefs and the activities that are important to you.  You may read as many profiles as you need to. We encourage you to involve your family and trusted friends in all aspects of decision-making.  There's no rush to choose; take as much time as you need and talk to as many people as is helpful to you.

When you have selected a profile we encourage you to think about the things you would like to talk about with the adoptive parents, but to wait to meet them until after your child is born. Giving birth can be an overwhelming experience. You are likely to need time and emotional space to be sure that adoption is still your decision.

Most current adoptions in New Zealand are 'open adoptions'. This means that both sets of parents are known to one another by name. They usually meet together before consent and make a contact agreement to have some kind of on-going relationship. 

Openness allows adoptive parents to ask you directly if they have any questions about family health, for instance, and for you to know how your child is progressing.

Contact isn't enforced by law. The individual contact agreement may change over time, especially as the child gets older and has more to say about the arrangement.

Open adoption aims to make sure that the child, while growing up in one family, knows about the other. People who experience it say that being open about adoption can help reduce certain stresses, but it can create others.

If you know someone personally that you would like to adopt your child, please get in touch with us at an early stage. An adoption social worker can prepare and assess the prospective adoptive parents and support you in considering all the options for your child. Any arrangements you make are not legally binding until consent has been signed.

Consent to adoption is required from both parents who are guardians of the child. A birth mother may not sign consent until her baby is at least 12 days old. Birthfathers are not included in this 12 day rule. Many birthparents take longer than 12 days to come to a decision. Once the consent form has been signed, it's almost impossible to have the decision reversed. 

However carefully the decision is made, most birth parents who place their child for adoption have feelings of grief and loss.  These feelings usually lessen over time, but don't go away completely.

Your adoption social worker can give you advice, support and provide you with useful books or information.  It may also help to visit your local adoption support group to talk to people who've been there.