NSW birth certificates to recognise adoption
Adopted people will be able to have their birth family and adopted family included on birth certificates for the first time in NSW.
The new integrated birth certificates (IBC) will modernise important legal information by including an adopted person’s full history.
The new reforms will mark the first change to birth certificates for adopted people in 55 years.
Under current laws, a birth certificate can only record the child’s adoptive parents and any adoptive siblings, with no reference to the birth parents.
The new changes will provide adopted people the choice to use a birth certificate that includes information on their parents and siblings at birth, and their parents and siblings after they have been adopted.
Newly adopted people will be issued with an IBC along with the existing post-adoptive birth certificate that is provided after adoption.
People adopted before the start of the reforms can contact the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths & Marriages to find out how to apply for an IBC.
Minister for Families, Communities and Disability Services Gareth Ward said making an IBC available to adopted people aligns with contemporary open adoption practices.
“Today we mark a further step away from the secrecy associated with the adoption policies of the past,” Mr Ward said.