All countries are signatories to the principles and rights laid out in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC),1 and comparative studies show that, at the national level, there are some similar basic principles underpinning the family welfare and child protection systems in many high- income countries (Gilbert et al, 2011; Skivenes et al, 2015; Burns et al, 2017; Berrick et al, forthcoming). These basic principles include: the central importance of the best interest and well-being of the child when key decisions are taken; an emphasis on family preservation and valuing the child’s relationships with birth parents and siblings; principles of least intrusion from the state; and the child protection system only having secondary responsibility for children compared with the family. However, the degree to which governments focus on each of these principles differs, and this is especially so if one considers the potentially contradictory principles that are most relevant when considering placement policies when children need to be removed and come into public care. In the majority of cases, therefore, there is scope for interpretation about what course of action will be ‘in the child’s best interest’, leaving space for courts, child protection front- line staff and, indeed, whole countries to determine the balance between these commonly accepted principles. It is not an exaggeration to point out that parental rights and family preservation have a strong standing in most states and systems, with the result that the rights of the child often come second to parental rights and are challenging for nation states and courts to respect and promote. Perhaps an example of this is when the European Court of Human Rights stated that only in exceptional circumstances and with an overriding child’s best interest consideration could parental rights be terminated (Breen et al, 2020). Child protection is about the ‘government’s responsibility to establish a system that has the authority to intervene into the family to support, restrict and even terminate parental rights if parents or caregivers are unable or unwilling to protect the child’ (Berrick et al, forthcoming). Adoptions as a child projection measure – or, as we refer to it in this book, adoptions from care – are to be understood as those adoptions where a child who is currently in public care or is under guardianship of the state, after full or partial removal of custody from the parents, is placed with prospective adopters and/ or legally adopted by their foster carers with or without the consent of the parents.