Birth parent

The Adult Adoption Information Act enables you to request a social worker to locate and approach your tamaiti placed for adoption, to establish whether they wish to share their identifying information with you as their birth parent.

You’ll need to complete a brief form, including the birth name of your tamaiti, and where and when they were born, and send it to us. If you don't have all the information, write down what you know.

Call us on 0508 326 459 (free phone) to request a Section 8 application form. We’ll get our Adoption Service team closest to where you live to send this to you.

Once we receive the form we’ll check any records we have and get in touch.

If you are a birth father, we will need to confirm that you are named on the original birth registration of your birth tamaiti or on the adoption records held by Oranga Tamariki. 

If you are not named, you can apply to Births, Deaths and Marriages to have your name added to the pre-adoptive birth registration. We’ll explain this procedure to you. 

If your birth tamaiti has placed a veto, we are unable to approach them. However, we will check to see if they have left a letter of explanation for you.

If your birth tamaiti is younger than 20, you may not be able to get information about them. If this is the case, we'll talk you through what this means.

If there’s no veto, we’ll do what we can to locate and contact your birth tamaiti, and ask if they wish their name and address to be given to you.

If they agree, we’ll give you their details and you’re free to make contact with them. A social worker will be available to provide advice and support.