Care proceedings for babies surge 64% in two decades, raising forced adoption concerns

In England, the machinery of child protection has accelerated dramatically over the past twenty years. According to new research from Lancaster and Oxford universities, the number of babies caught in care proceedings before their first birthday has climbed 64% since the early 2000s. The figures, current through 2024-25, show that roughly one in every 118 infants now enters the system. The surge peaked during the pandemic, dipped slightly afterward, and has since settled at a persistently elevated level.

What happens to these babies matters enormously, because infants who enter care are far more likely to be adopted than older children. Government data shows 72% of adopted children in England went into care before turning one. Of those adoptions, more than 90% proceeded without the written consent of birth parents. In just under half those cases, courts overruled parental objections outright. The remainder were classified as "unopposed"—a category that often reflects parents being advised by their lawyers that fighting would be futile, not that they actually agreed.

Experts who study these cases say the picture is more complicated than the numbers alone suggest. Professor Karen Broadhurst of Lancaster University analyzed the nature of the proceedings themselves and found that between one-fifth and one-quarter involved what she calls "clear-cut" situations: children who had suffered serious harm or abuse, where removal was plainly necessary. But the majority fell into what she describes as "grey area" cases—situations involving neglect rooted in family poverty, substance abuse, housing instability, and other crises that might have been prevented or reversed with adequate support. The distinction matters because it points to a systemic question: how many of these separations were inevitable, and how many were the result of families being left without help?

The funding picture offers one answer. Over the past decade, spending on early intervention services—the preventive work that might keep families intact—has been cut by 44%. In the same period, the cost of caring for children already in the system has risen 50%. Social workers, who sit at the center of these decisions, describe the bind they face daily. One social worker, identified as Tracy, explained that her team must constantly weigh giving families time to navigate a crisis against the risk of failing to protect a child. She acknowledged that with better support available at the outset, many children might never have needed removal, and many might never have needed adoption.

The human weight of these separations emerges in individual stories. Jean, a birth mother, became pregnant while disabled and uncertain whether she could parent alone. She asked her local authority, Newham Council in east London, for help. She was told it was not available. Her daughter, Tye, was placed in foster care, and Jean saw her regularly at first. But over years of court proceedings and assessments, professionals advised the court that Tye needed a permanent, stable family—something Jean, they concluded, could not provide. Jean asked if she could maintain contact after adoption, similar to visitation rights in a divorce. She was told that expectation was unrealistic. At age two, Tye was adopted. Jean did not see her daughter again for 16 years. When Tye turned 18, she searched for her mother on social media, describing her adoption as having left her "completely alone" without a "whole chunk of heritage." Newham Council later told the BBC it had offered Jean extensive support, including 24-hour residential placement, and had arranged "letterbox contact"—the exchange of letters and emails between birth and adoptive parents—as a way for Jean to remain connected to her daughter.

The term "forced adoption" has begun circulating among campaigners and some experts, though it is politically charged. Broadhurst acknowledges the language is loaded and that modern practice differs sharply from the coercive removal of babies that occurred mainly between 1949 and 1976, for which the government recently apologized. Yet she argues the term describes what is actually happening: parents who do not consent, who want contact with their children, who find permanent separation "particularly brutal." With only about 10% of adoptions made with written parental consent, the scale of disagreement is substantial.

Some evidence suggests the trajectory could shift. In Salford, a project called Strengthening Families works with parents, many of whom have already had a child removed, offering intensive specialized support during early childhood. About three-quarters of families referred to the program have been able to stay together. Research from the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory consistently shows that early, intensive support to birth mothers—particularly those facing repeat proceedings—is critical to safely reducing entries into care. The government has committed £2.4 billion to transform children's social care, with an emphasis on earlier intervention and keeping families together where possible. Before the end of the year, new guidance for Family Court judges is expected to be announced, designed to reduce the number of urgent hearings held within days or even hours of a baby's birth. More than half of urgent care hearings in 2024-25 involved newborns, with mothers sometimes attending court before they had left the hospital. The new guidance will allow judges to refuse cases that do not genuinely meet criteria for urgency. But Broadhurst, who sat on the working group developing the guidance, notes that judges are only one part of a much larger system. If a case arrives on a Friday afternoon and no resources exist to support a family through the weekend, what choice do judges actually have? The question points to something larger: whether the system can be reformed at the margins, or whether it requires a fundamental reorientation toward prevention.