Information for children under 18
If you would like to meet other adopted children and young people, or if you would like to talk individually about being adopted, Support After Adoption (SAA) may be able to help you.
SAA and the Youth Service run activity days for younger children and for teenagers where you can have fun in the company of other young people who have shared some of your experiences.
If you would like to talk to a social worker who understands about adoption, just get in touch using the contact details above.
A group of adopted teenagers also meets regularly to plan activity days, events and to offer consultation and feedback to the adoption service. If you would like to be involved in these groups please get in touch.
You may also find the Talk Adoption website: www.afteradoption.org.uk useful. It features a free helpline, bulletin board and information for young people affected by adoption.
Information for people over 18
Support After Adoption will be able to offer you advice if you want to look at your adoption records, if you want to explore tracing your birth relatives, if you would like to talk to other adopted people, or if you just feel you would benefit from talking to someone about being adopted.
SAA also sometimes acts as a link between an adopted person and their birth family and offers support after a reunion. We have lots of information on other specialist adoption agencies too.
Support After Adoption understands the concerns and worries that adoptive people may have. We can talk to you if you are worried about upsetting your adoptive parents; if you were adopted from overseas; if you are a black person adopted into a white family; if you feel overwhelmed by your feelings and need emotional support, and many other issues.
We have leaflets available on all the services we offer and we have created a handy tracing pack for people looking to find their birth families.
Accessing your adoption records
If you want to know how to access your adoption records and you have an adoption connection with Nottinghamshire, the Support After Adoption (SAA) service may be able to help you.
If you have been adopted and would like information from your adoption records, SAA can offer you advice and support. However, to access your records, you must be 18 or over.
A social worker from SAA will meet with you to talk over your request once it's been established that Nottinghamshire County Council holds your file.
If your file is held by a different agency or you don’t know which agency holds your file, we will advise you on what to do. We have a leaflet ‘Services for adopted adults’ which you might find useful.
There is also a leaflet called ‘If you are adopted’, available from the British Association for Adoption and Fostering website: www.baaf.org.uk/bookshop/advicenotes_iya.
To get started, contact us using the details at the top of this page.
