I wanna trace people for FREE!

urban_spirit

Anyone involved in adoption work will have to follow the protocols of the organisation they are employed by.

That was my point in my earlier post - but clearly I was having a bad head day!
There's legislation governing adoption and if you're tracing any parents you have to be very careful for many reasons.
(P.S. We've had many debt collection companies claiming to be parents/relatives trying to get and pass on information so DWP shouldn't pass on letters).

cheese_2

Thanks very much to all who've replied.

It's a very difficult area, when birth mothers aren't always able to give accurate or recent details on men who abandoned them many years ago, and the courts expecting the local authority to do their utmost to trace these men before adoptions go through.

It would be nice if I could spend some money, but my experience of working for the local authority tells me this is unlikely!

Seems the best bet is the electoral roll.

black-saturn

Isnt it against the data protection act to contact someone in this way?

Grumpy_Old_Duffer

cheese wrote:

It would be nice if I could spend some money, but my experience of working for the local authority tells me this is unlikely!
Seems the best bet is the electoral roll.

If this is an established department within a Local Authority then you should be provided with the tools to do your job.

As it has already been mentioned "How has it been carried out previously?"

Sorry to be sceptical, but having been involved with adoption first-hand, this sounds a bit iffy to me.

Dora_the_Explorer_5

cheese wrote:

Thanks very much to all who've replied.

It's a very difficult area, when birth mothers aren't always able to give accurate or recent details on men who abandoned them many years ago, and the courts expecting the local authority to do their utmost to trace these men before adoptions go through.

It would be nice if I could spend some money, but my experience of working for the local authority tells me this is unlikely!

Seems the best bet is the electoral roll.

If you work for the local authority there will be protocols and precedent. I can't understand why you don't have access to them. Can you explain why you don't have access to them?

KenW

the_devil_made_me_do_it wrote:

I didn't think just anyone could view the full electoral roll. + I'm not sure how up to date it is. I searched for someone and they were still down as living at an address 2 addresses ago.

The electoral register is updated every October, but is reliant on information given to the department by householders.
That is why you can sometimes get the pet cat or goldfish listed, and kids of only a few months too. Then the people write to the papers and say how silly the council are listing the baby, the dog, the fish or whatever, when it was their stupidity in the first place.
I have actually seen today an instance of one person being listed twice, where a woman married and is still on the register in her maiden name and in her married name.
Inspection of full registers is available at libraries in the area, as well as at council offices, and it's free. 192.com does require you to have credits for some searches, but these can be earned in small numbers by doing surveys and things like that. It's worth a look. On 192.com, if you have some credits you can enter just the full name and it will search for all the people listed with that name. If they have opted out of the shorter list, though, you will only find them in the electoral roll proper at the library.

MINMOUSE

Try http://www.missing-you.net

the_devil_made_me_do_it

KenW wrote:

The electoral register is updated every October, but is reliant on information given to the department by householders.
That is why you can sometimes get the pet cat or goldfish listed, and kids of only a few months too. Then the people write to the papers and say how silly the council are listing the baby, the dog, the fish or whatever, when it was their stupidity in the first place.
I have actually seen today an instance of one person being listed twice, where a woman married and is still on the register in her maiden name and in her married name.
Inspection of full registers is available at libraries in the area, as well as at council offices, and it's free. 192.com does require you to have credits for some searches, but these can be earned in small numbers by doing surveys and things like that. It's worth a look. On 192.com, if you have some credits you can enter just the full name and it will search for all the people listed with that name. If they have opted out of the shorter list, though, you will only find them in the electoral roll proper at the library.

I visited 192.com recently, and it seems they've taken down those surveys, and you have to buy credits now. Still dosen't help if the electoral roll isn't update correctly.

dippy-dora_2

apologies if it's been suggested already

Have you tried friends reunited?

if you know what school they went to, and year then you could send them a message if you join up.

edit: you don't need to know which school, just the name and age roughly.

Spikey_2

What about something called the UK info disc? any body heard of this?