Section 9 - Six months residence required for certain intercountry adoptions
32.Section 9inserts a new paragraph in Article 13 of the 1987 Order (child to live with adopters before order is made). It provides that where a child habitually resident outside the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man is to be adopted in Northern Ireland by an adoption order or a Convention adoption order, the child is required to have had his home with the prospective adopters for a period of at least six months before an adoption order may be made. The period of six months is only to apply to those cases where the placement of the child was made by an adoption agency.
33.In those cases where a child has been brought to the United Kingdom for the purposes of adoption and the arrangements for adoption were not made by an adoption agency, the current provisions of the 1987 Order, concerning the period before an adoption order may be made, will remain at 12 months. The effect of this amendment is therefore to reduce the period of residence from 12 to six months in cases dealt with by adoption agencies.
