Thanks, another interesting article. I must say that you have a very odd idea about what adoption is, but maybe that is informed by where you live or when you were adopted? It isn't 'Long Lost Family' anymore, and hasn't been for at least a generation - there is a reason why most adopted people in the UK are over 45. I realise it will feel frustating to think that you are not being heard but it is very difficult to engage in conversations about changing adoption with people whose experience and knowledge don't encompass current practice and don't realise it - the Dunning-Kruger effect.

You can't talk about adoption in isolation, you have to talk about child protection too, otherwise what's the point in talking? Adoption only exists as part of the child protection system. Putting it bluntly, if we never had nasty child-abuse cases like Star Hobson or Arthur Labinjo-Hughes (Google them) then we wouldn't have adoption. How best to 'look after' (the current UK social services term) children whose birth parents are an intentional ongoing threat to them and there is no functional birth family? Ideally we'd stop all child-abuse before it happens, and support the family to understand that they are harming the child. But even the best system won't catch everyone in time. Adoption may not be the best way of doing it, but you have to find that alternative and currently there is none - so why not work to create that new legal role?

By the way adoption, for all practical purposes, is closer to the 'stewardship' that you mention than it is anything else. It's just that a guardianship can't last beyond 18 as ironically that would be a breach of someone's human rights. In other words adoption (at least the modern version of it) is more compatible with human rights than a permanent 'stewardship'.