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More food for thought from 2003.. there were links in the original post and they do not work..
[url=http://groups.google.com/group/alt.adoption/msg/0aa7e93aa1fba76b]Changes of forename by parents/carers prior to adoption orlong-term fostercare. - alt.adoption | Google Groups[/url]
Newsgroups: alt.adoption
From: "Henry W. Moritz" <moc.ishcm@ztiromwh>
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 21:57:53 GMT
Local: Wed, Jul 23 2003 5:57 pm
Subject: Re: Changes of forename by parents/carers prior to adoption orlong-term fostercare.
"robinjh" <nos...@robinjh.co.uk> wrote in message
news:BB44A93A.1C204%nospam@robinjh.co.uk...
> I would be interested to know what rules (if any) on this are in other
> jurisdictions. And opinions generally on changing the forenames of older
> children that are to be adopted or to remain in long-term foster care. If
> you download the PDF of the judgement that prompted the announcement
below,
> you may feel that there were arguments for doing so as well as against in
> the cases that were being judged.
> Robin
> ******************************************************* *******
> From the United Kingdom Department of Health Adoption website
> Name changes of children looked after by local authorities, including
those
> placed for adoption - judgment by the President of the Family Division in
Re
> D,L and LA (Change of Forename)
> All staff working in Family Placement Services need to be aware of this
> judgment, which has implications for children placed under the Fostering
> Services Regulations 2002 and the Adoption Agency Regulations 1983. The
> judgment sets out that no carer for a child looked after by a local
> authority should unilaterally change the forename or surname of a child. A
> proposed change of name is a matter for careful consideration by the local
> authority, and the parents, who retain parental responsibility in all
> placements except after freeing for adoption, should be consulted and
> allowed to express their views.
> It should also be made clear to foster carers and prospective adoptive
> parents that the carers are not able to change the name of a looked after
> child in their care without the agreement of the local authority and any
> parents with parental responsibility.
> This case is reported in [2003] 1 FLR No. 3.
> Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss's judgment can be downloaded in PDF format
from
I'm in Iowa. Foster parents can not change a child's name. Since I adopted
out of foster care, I was bound by foster parenting rules, and I am not
familiar with practices in Iowa regarding propective adoptive situations.
On a personal level, I don't think foster parents should be able to change a
child's name and should address the child using the child's proper name or,
if permitted, the name used in the biological household. Regarding
prospective adoptive parents, I think that once a child has been placed in a
prospective adoptive parents custody that, on a practical level, the PAPs
should probably be free to *informally* address they child as they wish.
The example in the case that was cited demonstrates the practical situation
pretty clearly. That is, there doesn't appear to be any practical way to
prevent the practice without actually disrupting the adoption and removing
the child. And, if the intention really was to have the child adopted, then
it seems strange that there should be a lot of concern regarding the name of
a child that is going to have their name changed anyway.
That said, as an adoptive parent I personally didn't feel a lot of need to
substantially change the names of the kids I adopted, although we did make
some changes, including changing all of our kids' surnames to "Moritz". Our
oldest didn't have a middle name, so we retained her first name and set her
middle name to her former surname. No one used the first name of our middle
child -- he had been addressed by his middle name all of his life and his
bmom hated the name. So we dumped the first name, made his middle name his
first name, and changed his middle name to his former surname. Finally, for
our youngest, we simply left her first and middle names as they were, since
her middle name was also the middle name of her birth mother, which we
thought was an important link back to her biological past.