We all struggled with adoption contact
This blog is written by Jan*, mum to Amy*. Whilst contact between children, parents and families within adoption is unique, Jan has kindly shared her experience. We are very grateful to Jan and Amy for sharing their personal story. If you are a parent and want to receive advice on contact, please speak with your local Adoption Support team.
‘For most adopters there is an expectation, and often a requirement, to maintain contact with your adopted child’s birth family, or other significant figures, after placement and adoption up to the age of 18. This may be letterbox or face to face and is facilitated by the Adoption Support contact team. Adopters often worry that contact is disruptive, backward looking or counterproductive and may not be keen to engage with it. Their child was removed from their birth family for a reason and how can it be helpful to be constantly reminded of that when contact is due.
I’m Jan* and my daughter Amy* was placed with me when she was seven. She had been in a foster placement, the same one, for four years following her removal from her birth family. She had weekly face to face contact with her birth mother at a contact centre, and regular, sometimes unsupervised, face to face contact with her grandmother. When she was placed with me for adoption these contacts ended. We were asked to have letterbox contact with her birth mother and grandmother twice a year. Having been with her foster carers for so long, my daughter also wanted to remain in contact with them, although there was no requirement to do so.
Adoption letterbox isn’t always easy
We all struggled with letterbox contact. Amy wanted it to happen but didn’t want to be involved in writing letters or cards; therefore it fell to me to do it. It was hard to judge what to include in letters and what to leave out. I wanted to try to give a sense of her new life, her achievements, her development as she got older, but also to be honest that adoption hadn’t suddenly made all her problems go away. Her grandmother found the letters difficult and unsatisfying; she wanted face to face contact. I judged that Amy wasn’t ready for that and so there was a period where her grandmother stopped writing. Amy found this very upsetting.
Young people and contact via social media
As Amy got older, I became aware that with access to social media she might initiate contacts with family so she and I discussed arranging a face to face meeting with her birth mother. She had some questions. As a teenager, her identity and origins were on her mind a lot. My daughter is of mixed heritage but is not sure what that heritage is. We arranged this contact via our Adoption Support Social Worker and agreed to meet at a café. I had met with her birth mother a couple of months before to think about what my daughter might want to ask her and how she might feel. She shared some photographs with me of other family members and we had a really helpful conversation about how she might feel seeing ‘our’ daughter after such a long time. This was really useful as it helped me to prepare Amy for the meeting.
The meeting went really well, it was emotional but very positive. Amy was reassured that her birth mother was OK and her birth mother was reassured that Amy was OK. We agreed that we would meet in person once a year. Then nothing. For over two years. No responses to letters and cards. In the meantime, her grandmother resumed letterbox contact but my daughter had been so hurt by the fact that contact with her could be picked up and dropped that she asked me to write and say that she didn’t want to be in contact.
During lock down, Amy undertook some detective work online and then came and told me that she had made contact with a cousin and two aunties she didn’t know she had. And then her birth mother. This led to an interesting few months, as this type of informal, more spontaneous interactions made my daughter realise that the story of her family is not as she understood – now having multiple versions, each slightly different.
She is also getting to know her birth mother in a different way and is becoming concerned that she may still be using drugs. The lack of a filter and boundary (previously provided by Adoption Support) is no longer there and my daughter and I are needing to work out where the boundaries are to prevent her being overwhelmed. In fact, after the initial excitement, she stepped back from it herself and doesn’t reply to messages immediately now. It’s exciting, confusing, powerful and scary for her (and me too).
Being open about contact
As an adoptive parent my approach to contact has always been to think about what is in the best interests of my daughter, despite whether it was making me feel uncomfortable, or despite what demands the other adults were making about what they needed. At points we stopped contact when my daughter didn’t want it, and we suggested changes to it as she grew older. In a couple of years she will be 18 and will, theoretically, manage it herself but because I have always facilitated and supported contact, and seen her relationship with her birth family as important, she includes me and consults me about it. Her newly discovered, and rediscovered, family include me too. Her birth mother Face Timed me to check about a suggestion she was going to make to see if it was OK. We are negotiating as we go along but it is respectful and my daughter is at the heart of it. The most important thing is that she is talking to me about it and using my advice and support.’
If you want support around contact, whether it’s writing Letterbox, starting contact or anything else, get in touch with your local Adoption Support team. To read how Amy felt about contact, read her blog – Contact – we’re in the middle, pulled between our new life and old.
* not their real names. Stock photo used