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Section 19: Placing children with parental consent

Adoption and Children Act 2002 · 2002 c. 38View on legislation.gov.uk

Part 1: Adoption — Chapter 3: Placement for adoption and adoption orders

Where an adoption agency is satisfied that each parent or guardian of a child has consented to the child—

being placed for adoption with prospective adopters identified in the consent, or
being placed for adoption with any prospective adopters who may be chosen by the agency,

and has not withdrawn the consent, the agency is authorised to place the child for adoption accordingly.

Consent to a child being placed for adoption with prospective adopters identified in the consent may be combined with consent to the child subsequently being placed for adoption with any prospective adopters who may be chosen by the agency in circumstances where the child is removed from or returned by the identified prospective adopters.

Subsection (1) does not apply where–

an application has been made on which a care order might be made and the application has not been disposed of, or
a care order or placement order has been made after the consent was given.

References in this Act to a child placed for adoption under this section include a child who was placed under this section with prospective adopters and continues to be placed with them, whether or not consent to the placement has been withdrawn.

This section is subject to section 52 (parental etc. consent).

About this text

This legislation text comes from legislation.gov.uk. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. These source and reuse terms cover the legislation text, not Remedy's commentary.

Reuse reviewed 21 August 2026 under Open Government Licence v3.0.