Having a child, parenting and adoption

A to Z

• Adding a father's name to a birth certificate
• Adoption records
• Alcohol and young people
• Apply for short-term care for your child
• Apply to adopt a child through your council
• Apply to foster a child through your council
• Arranging child maintenance yourself
• Become a child's legal parent
• Child Support Agency (CSA) arrangements are ending
• Child Trust Fund
• Child adoption
• Child employment
• Child maintenance calculator
• Child maintenance if one parent lives abroad
• Childcare Grant
• Childcare out of school hours
• Childcare vouchers: better off calculator
• Contact Sure Start
• Early years foundation stage
• Find a Sure Start Children's Centre
• Find a registered childminder
• Find an Ofsted inspection report
• Find free early education and childcare
• Find help to get your child back from abroad or arrange contact
• Foster carers
• Get a police check on someone involved with a child
• Help if you have a disabled child
• Help paying for childcare
• How child maintenance is worked out
• If your child is taken into care
• Interest on savings for children
• Junior Individual Savings Accounts (ISA)
• Legal rights for egg and sperm donors
• Looking after someone else's child
• Parental rights and responsibilities
• Parents' Learning Allowance
• Payment to register a birth abroad in the UK
• Pregnant employees' rights
• Reciprocal Enforcement of Maintenance Orders (REMO) Unit
• Register a birth
• Register a birth abroad
• Register a stillbirth
• Rights for surrogate mothers
• Sure Start Maternity Grant
• Surrogacy: legal rights of parents and surrogates
• The law on leaving your child on their own
• Unpaid parental leave
• Use the Child Maintenance Service or Child Support Agency (CSA)
• When child maintenance payments stop

Detailed guidance

• Adoption and fostering

Births, deaths, marriages and care

A to Z

• Certificates, register offices, changes of name or gender

  Birth certificates, registering a death, marriage, family history and correcting certificates

• Child Benefit

  Information about eligibility, claiming and when Child Benefit stops

• Death and bereavement

  Reporting a death, wills, probate and Inheritance Tax

• Having a child, parenting and adoption

  Legal rights, birth certificates, parental rights and child maintenance

• Lasting power of attorney, being in care and your financial affairs

  Includes dealing with benefits, taxes and leaving care

• Marriage, civil partnership and divorce

  Includes getting married abroad, decree absolutes and looking after children

All categories

• Benefits
• Births, deaths, marriages and care
• Business and self-employed
• Childcare and parenting
• Citizenship and living in the UK
• Crime, justice and the law
• Disabled people
• Driving and transport
• Education and learning
• Employing people
• Environment and countryside
• Housing and local services
• Money and tax
• Passports, travel and living abroad
• Visas and immigration
• Working, jobs and pensions