Are you adopted

If you're an adopted adult, wanting to find out more about your origins is a natural part of developing your identity and feeling confident in yourself.

Aberdeenshire adoption service provides a free counselling and support service for those over the age of 16 to access their adoption files. Simply contact us and we will do what we can to help trace your files. We will need to verify your ID before proceeding. For young people under the age of 16, we can work with your parent’s support to access adoption records as well, where this is in your best interests.

If you are seeking information and advice on how to trace birth relatives, we can also help with this. Although we do not offer a full tracing service, we can provide advice and guidance on how to do this, and direct you to other agencies who may be able to help.

In Scotland, we have different adoption laws to England and Wales. Our information booklets provide more information about accessing your birth records if you were born and adopted out with Scotland:

• Accessing birth records: Information for people who have been adopted in Scotland (PDF 187KB)
• Accessing birth records: Information for people who have been adopted in England and Wales (PDF 77KB)

Contact us

If you'd like to request our counselling and support service, or want more information, please contact our Duty Adoption worker:

• Phone: 01467 532800
• Email: adoption@aberdeenshire.gov.uk