Inter-country adoption and the immigration rules

The Department has produced a leaflet which provides an overview of the process for Intercountry adoption. The leaflet is aimed at prospective adopters thinking about adopting a child from overseas, and provides further information on the relevant legislation and process. Paper copies of the leaflet can be obtained via the Department's publications agency (Prolog) quoting ref no: DCSF-00809-2008.

UK adoption agency checklist

UK adoption agencies must ensure your application is complete before sending it to the casework team. Any incomplete files submitted will result in delays in the processing time for cases.
 
We recommend you attach the Adoption Agency checklist to the front of your application, which will help us and you ensure all of the papers are included.

Prospective adopters

If you have recently been approved to adopt by your UK adoption agency and your application is ready to be (or has been) sent to the Department, you should ensure you have completed a contact sheet, and also a disclaimer if necessary. If your UK adoption agency has not supplied these to you already, you can download them here.

Contact sheet - complete and return this to the ICA Team at your earliest convenience. We require full completion of this form in order to progress your application. You may return it to us by post, email or fax.

Disclaimer - if your application requires notarisation and legalisation, you may wish to instruct your notary public to send your documents directly to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the embassy of your chosen country for legalisation, rather than have the documents returned to the Department beforehand. Complete and return the disclaimer if you wish to proceed in this way. 

Please note: If you have applied to adopt from China, the Chinese Embassy will only accept applications for legalisation that have been sent to them directly from the Department. It will not accept applications from a notary public.

Contact details

PROLOG
dfe@prolog.uk.com
Telephone: 0845 602 2260