Year is the financial year of the adoption application outcome. This may not be the same year the application was filed.
The current court for applications granted in courts that have since closed is recorded as the nearest court (eg. for Lower Hutt the current court is Hutt Valley).
Each adoption application represents one child.
Definitions
Justice service area: Justice service areas are geographical groupings of individual court locations for administrative purposes. Prior to June 2017 a different administrative grouping, called service delivery areas, was used.
The court location is the location of the court where the application was filed or granted (eg. Wellington District Court is recorded as Wellington).
A small number of records in the Ministry of Justice database are missing some details.
Inclusions
This data includes children who were adopted by their own biological parents. This is caused by the outdated New Zealand legislation, which discriminates against same-sex parents and other families who go through surrogacy.
Changes to data collection/processing
From 29 April 2016, the Ministry of Justice sources courts data from the new Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW), rather than the justice sector data warehouse (ISIS) used over recent years. Changes in data processing may cause small differences if compared current output with similar results produced before 29 April 2016.
From the dataset Justice Statistics: Children adopted 2025, this data was extracted:
Sheet: 2.Granted applications by court
Range: C16:L88
Provided: 730 data points
Dataset originally released on:
September 16, 2025
About this dataset
Adoption information data includes the number of applications filed and granted, court locations, and the age and gender of children adopted.
Method of collection/Data provider
Adoption application data is extracted from a live data warehouse that is used for operational purposes. This means that data will be updated through late data entry and active applications progressing through the court process. Therefore, this data may differ to data reported elsewhere with a different extraction date.