For a period of eighteen years, the Provisional Adoption Order (PAO) made it possible for those not domiciled in Great Britain to adopt children born to UK citizens.  The only requirements for the applicant were to have a home somewhere in the UK for a period of six months and to promise that in the future they would legally adopt the child in the country in which they were domiciled.

Already before the Adoption Act 1958 was given Royal Assent, there were concerns about the addition of the Provisional Adoption Order.  The House of Commons raised concern and said that “The Government are taking a gamble on the future of these children and, what is worse, we shall never know whether this gamble has come off.”  The gamble was that once a Provisional Adoption Order was issued it was impossible to check that adoption had been completed.  How many were ‘adopted’ using the Provisional Adoption Order is hard to say, but in the first four years of its existence, eight-hundred and seven (807) Orders were granted.  If the demand for the order continued at the same level, then over its eighteen-year life, a total of three thousand six hundred and thirty-one children (3631) could have been affected by it.

This site is for those of us who are affected by the Provisional Adoption Order. I hope that this site helps you and goes some way to explaining those three mysterious words on our birth certificates. If you are, like I am, one of those for whom an adoption never materialised, I have tried to gather as much information as possible together in one place. Unfortunately, the British Government currently does not recognise this situation and refuses to see this as anything more than a problem. If you are fortunate and live in England and your adoptive parents are also living in England, then you are considered adopted by the English Government, despite not having the legal paperwork. If you or your parents are not in England, then no country other than England recognises the Provisional Adoption Order.

My advice to anyone reading this in the USA is if you discover that you are affected by this and you were not legally adopted in the USA, get the best immigration lawyer that you can afford to help you with this situation. There will be little if any, help from in UK.

Practical Help – A list of posts dealing with issues facing provisionally adopted people.

Adoption Act 1958 – Contains the sections governing the Provisional Adoption Order.

If you are a ‘PAO’, please use the form below to make contact, I would love to hear from you.