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Widen the net, urges Julia Feast, project manager for the post-adoption and care project at the Children's Society.

In August, the Department of Health issued national standards for adoption, and a standard for consultation concerning adopted adults and their birth siblings. This is to be welcomed. But what has happened to the adopted adults' other relatives - such as parents, aunts, grandparents and adoptive parents? Do these other significant family members have no rights to the services identified for birth siblings? Do birth and adoptive parents and other relatives not need support or guidance when the adopted person is over 18?

Are these draft standards for adult adopted people an indication of what will be in the forthcoming Children & Adoption Bill? If so, why is the fact that adoption has lifelong implications - as reported by user groups, professional specialists and research - being ignored?

The forthcoming adoption legislation must embrace the needs of all the people involved - in particular, those birth parents who have been waiting a generation for legislation acknowledging their need to know what has happened to the child they placed for adoption.

For the past decade, many agencies have developed intermediary services for birth relatives, most of whom are mothers. This practice has arisen in response to research that found most adopted adults agree they have the right to be informed by an adoption agency of a birth relative's interest. They can then decide how they wish to respond. And just a year ago, the DoH issued practice guidance for agencies, encouraging them to provide an intermediary service for all birth relatives and aiming for uniformity of practice throughout England and Wales. Yet the draft standards carry no reference to this guidance.

Given that the expert working group appointed by the DoH did a lot of work on the needs of birth parents, it is perplexing that so little has been reflected in the national standards and the draft standards for adopted adults.

The standards document suggests that the government has not accepted the knowledge of post-adoption workers, and research evidence. Legislation and standards must embrace all parties - addressing the needs of today's children and the shortfalls of past practice that affect millions of adults. Without this, they will be discriminatory and backward step.