More than three decades ago, Dr Jo-Ann Sparrow stepped into the imposing sandstone and brick home of Queensland’s registry of births, deaths and marriages with a goal: find the biological family she was separated from under the state’s historical adoption practices.

Sparrow, eventually, had success – thanks to laws allowing the adult children taken from young and unwed mothers, and their birth parents, to access identifying information. But a recent shift in legal interpretation has now shut key pathways without warning or consultation.

“We can’t even get the authorisation we need to get identifying information we’ve had for 33 years,” Sparrow, now the president of forced adoption support service provider Jigsaw Queensland, told this masthead in an interview.

Dr Jo-Ann Sparrow, presiden

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