Where parents relinquished their baby and expressed a wish that she be adopted outside the natural family, the degree of interference with family life was less than where the parent-child relationship was severed against the parents' wishes. The parents' decision was an important consideration in determining whether the interference was necessary and proportionate and it therefore followed that approval of adoption in such cases did not depend on the court concluding that ‘nothing else will do'. However the parents' wishes were not decisive and had to be evaluated along with other factors in s 1(4) of the 2002 Act; the authority was under an obligation in all adoption cases to carry out a thorough analysis of the realistic options as highlighted in Re B-S (Adoption: Application of s 47(5)) [2013] EWCA Civ 1146, [2014] 1 FLR 1035.

The giving up of babies for adoption belonged, it was thought, to another era. Until the late 1960s the situations in the present two cases, albeit without the international element, was the norm, but a typical adoption in England and Wales today is of a child already in care. The present hearing before Baker J thus involves, effectively, a throwback to that ‘traditional' adoption of the past (and according to his Lordship other judges have noticed similar cases of mothers from other countries relinquishing their babies here). Consequently there has been no recent judicial consideration, until now, of the applicable principles and procedures.