Baby Care Proceedings Surge Sparks Fears of Unnecessary Adoptions, Experts Warn

The number of infants entering care proceedings before their first birthday has remained stubbornly high across England, according to newly published figures that have reignited concerns about whether some of the country's youngest children are being permanently separated from their birth families when better support might have kept them at home.

Research carried out by academics at the universities of Lancaster and Oxford shows that care proceedings involving babies have climbed by 64% over the past two decades. The data, which runs up to the 2024-25 period, indicates that one in every 118 infants is now affected by such proceedings. The figures peaked during the Covid pandemic before falling slightly and then levelling off at what experts describe as a persistently high plateau.

The findings were shared with BBC File on 4 Investigates, which examined the pressures driving the numbers and the consequences for families. While there are undoubtedly cases in which continuing contact between a parent and child would be unsafe, the experts who spoke to the programme argued that many babies might never have needed to enter care at all if the right support had been available to their families at an earlier stage.

The stakes are heightened by the fact that very young children who enter the care system are far more likely to be adopted than older children. This means the trend carries a particular risk of permanent separation. Government figures show that 72% of adopted children in England were taken into care before their first birthday, underlining how central infancy is to the adoption pathway.

Compounding those concerns, adoption sector body CoramBAAF reports that more than 90% of adoptions in England proceed without the written consent of the birth parents. In just under half of those cases, courts overruled the parents' wishes. The remainder were classified as "unopposed," a situation in which many parents are advised against contesting the adoption because their chances of success are considered very low.

Campaigners and some experts argue that this combination of factors amounts to a modern form of "forced adoption." The description is a contentious one, but it captures the unease felt by critics who say the system too often severs the legal tie between a child and their birth family permanently, even when parents have not agreed to the arrangement.

Adoption organisations and the government alike acknowledge that adoption should only ever be pursued as a last resort. It can offer stability and permanence, but it also terminates the child's legal relationship with their birth family for life, a consequence that cannot be undone. The question raised by the new figures is how often that drastic step is genuinely necessary.

Professor Karen Broadhurst of Lancaster University, whose work underpins the analysis of care proceedings, estimates that only between a fifth and a quarter of cases are "clear-cut," involving serious harm or abuse. The majority, she says, fall into a "grey area" of neglect linked to complex family needs, including drug and alcohol problems and housing difficulties, which might have improved had adequate support been in place.

That distinction matters enormously for how the system is judged. In clear-cut cases, removing a child is a matter of protection. In grey-area cases, the decision depends on predicting future risk, a task that inevitably involves uncertainty and difficult judgement calls. The experts' fear is that resource constraints and delays push more of these borderline cases toward permanent removal than the evidence justifies.

Those responsible for making the calls are social workers, who must weigh giving families time to recover from a crisis against the danger of leaving a child in harm's way for too long. One social worker, referred to by the programme as Tracy, described the daily dilemmas of the job, including the detailed assessments of parents and the judgement of whether past and present evidence points to a future risk of harm.

Tracy told the programme that some families are "riddled with abuse and neglect," with no one able to bring up a child safely. But the British Association of Social Workers said its members are doing their best amid rising caseloads and shrinking resources, a combination that can make the difference between a family receiving help and a family losing a child.

The consequences of error in either direction are severe. High-profile cases such as Baby P in north London and Sara Sharif in Woking, Surrey, serve as stark reminders of what can happen when professionals fail to intervene in time. Those tragedies shape public and political attitudes and inevitably influence the climate in which decisions about removal are made.

The BBC understands that new guidance for Family Court judges is expected to be announced before the end of the year, aimed at significantly reducing the number of short-notice care hearings held within hours or days of a baby's birth. Such hearings have drawn criticism for leaving parents with almost no time to prepare or seek legal advice before decisions are taken about their newborn.

The proposed guidance could prove significant if it slows the process down and forces more thorough consideration of alternatives. But the underlying concerns remain: how to ensure infants are protected when they are genuinely at risk, while guaranteeing that families are not permanently broken apart simply because support was unavailable, delayed, or inadequate.

For parents like Jean, who told the programme she never wanted to give up her daughter Tye for adoption and described the process as "forced," the debate is deeply personal. Her local council said it followed a lawful process. Professor Broadhurst acknowledges the phrase "forced adoption" is politically loaded and that the modern system differs greatly from the coercive practices seen mainly between 1949 and 1976, for which the government recently apologised. Yet she maintains the term reflects what is happening, because parents do not agree to it.

"They want to continue to be in contact with a child," she said, adding that even parents who recognise they could not look after a child at that moment find it "particularly brutal" to face no contact, or very little contact, until the child turns 18. The new figures, and the guidance expected later this year, may determine how many families continue to face that outcome.