Adoption is the state’s most powerful intervention in family life. It is a permanent break between a child and their birth family, and alters the child’s identity forever. In law they are no longer the child of their birth parents, and most adopted children grow up without seeing or knowing any of their birth family.

Around 3,000 children are adopted in England each year. It’s a process that must be authorised by judges in family courts, who set out the level of contact the child will have with their birth parents – usually just letters, sent twice a year, via an intermediary.

While adoption law has evolved over the years – allowing children to know more about their history than they once did, in some ways, families say, adoption is still very much stuck in the past.

Now a new report from a group set up by the most senior judge in the family court, external says wholesale reform of the system is needed.

“Letterbox” contact between adopted children and birth families is outdated, the report says, instead recommending face-to-face contact where that is safe.

The extremely detailed report is strongly supported by Sir Andrew McFarlane who says there is no need to change the law for this to happen.

The report is likely to influence family court adoption hearings throughout England and Wales.

Angela Frazer-Wicks describes her experience of adoption as a “life sentence… without any right to appeal”. As chair of trustees of the charity Family Rights Group, she is pleased mothers like her will have more chance to continue seeing their children after they have been adopted.

“It’s a seismic shift,” Angela says. “It’s been such a long time coming. My hope is that we start to see just a bit more compassion towards birth families – they are so often seen as the problem.”