This White Paper sets out a programme of comprehensive reform to the adoption system and the court system for children's proceedings, in order to give every child the opportunity of a stable and loving family life. The programme aims to: improve services and support for children and adoptive families with an investment of £66.5 million over three years; introduce new National Adoption Standards; increase by 40 per cent by 2004-05 the number of looked after children adopted; introduce an Adoption Register for England and Wales to match children with a parents across the country; set up an Adoption and Permanence Taskforce to tackle poor performance and spread best practice. The programme also aims to speed up the process of adoption. It sets out measures to improve the process for adopters including making the process of applying to adopt clear and understandable and introducing a right to an independent review if the agency plans to reject their application to adopt. A summary of this paper is available in English, Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Urdu, Bengali, Chinese, Vietnamese, Greek, Turkish, Somali and Arabic. It is also available as an English audio cassette tape and in Braille and large print.