Writing a confidential profile of ourselves

[Italiangreyhound]

We have been asked to write a confidential profile of ourselves as adopters to be given to the birth family.

Please can anyone who actually has done this give me some tips?

Please feel free to PM me if you wish to anything remotely confidential.

We have been given guidance but I just wanted to ask wiser heads than mine!

Many thanks.

Gosh Italian - never heard of this before. The BPs were only told 2 things about us - our religion and something about our race.

At our meeting with BM, we told her our names (v common names) and a v vague description of our professions.

I'd be interested to hear whether other people have been asked this...

How strange. I have never heard of this either. Like italian has said, we only told BM out professions but not our names and kept other facts very vague. I too would be interested to see if anyone else has been asked to do this. I assume that there are no security concerns and possibly you live a significant distance from the BF?

Personally I would be very worried about doing this please contact adoption uk before you do so

It's all good saying there are no security concers however people do get desprate and you don't want some one Turing up at your work ECt

We had to do our own profile but we were given an example to follow (and then shred). Worth asking for similar from your sw!

Oops, sorry - ours was for the family finder not the birth family, completely different thing. Agree it sounds worrying.

We have been given a sample to see what to do. We are not being asked to give our family name or daughter's name or where we live or what we do for a living etc.

We will have letterbox contact so unless we are going to write to them as parent A and parent B I think we would give our very run of the mill names.

I am just surprised no one else has been asked about this.

There is no way they could find us from this profile, it is very much non-identifying things.

Have you asked your SW, Italian, whether this is common? I would have thought it was the responsibility of the placing authority to provide this info - but orally.

Thanks one and all.

Personally, I don't see this as a bad thing. They did already warn us they would ask us to do this.

Hels20 If we are providing the information in written form I would feel more secure that exactly what we want to be passed on will be passed on and not other information although of course we do not ever know exactly what will have been said about us. Hopefully, this will give the birth parents enough information to feel positive about us (we really hope) but it is not identifying information.

I know families who have done this. As your names are quite common I'd give them , mention that you have a primary school aged daughter. That you live in a city / small town / village , you have a garden to play in / live near the park. That DS will have his own room. That you enjoy XXXX as a family eg days out at the seaside, picnics, going the cinema .if you have a large family /lots of cousins nearby , children in your street

Hobbies in a general way eg crafts, sport, music . Religion in a general way eg Christian not CoE or RC. Jobs In a general way . Pets if you have any . Education In a general way eg we have both Been to college and hope our children will too

I'm assuming that it's a closed adoption? No doubt you will get advice on security issues specific to your own situation

I hope this will be a little comfort to the birth family. I know of a birth mum who was happy to hear that one of the AP was a teacher, because she hadn't made the best of her own education and regretted that and she wanted more for her child. As we all do :-)

As long as there really is nothing identifying in there, I hope that it would be reassuring/of some comfort to the birth family

I think Kristina covered it, I was also thinking of the same things -

Profession - if you have an uncommon job, then say something more generic eg. a newsreader or camera operator might need to say they work in the television industry or whatever it's actually called!

Your area (you need to be cautious about the birth family's distance to you with this, if they are close and you've told them you live in a big city, or a small village, that's just a big help in tracking you down, whereas if they are 100 miles away, it's less of an issue)

Your interests, hobbies, religion, pets, family etc

And maybe a reassurance that any child you adopt would be loved so much by all the family etc? In case they are worried the adoptive family might be horrible people?

Yes, I don't see the harm if you're very careful about not saying anything identifying. See it as practice for letterbox. I try to build a picture without being specific - things like, "We live in a comfortable house, and x's room is really sunny with a view over the garden. We have a fat furry cat who is very soppy and daft. We live in a very friendly area; the neighbours have children of similar ages and they have a great trampoline in their garden which all the kids love playing on. I know that it's important to you that x gets a good education and I'm sure you'll be pleased to know that we have some great schools nearby." That sort of thing.

I don't use our names, but ours are a bit more unusual than yours, plus we have both been on TV and in papers a fair bit so have left quite a trail.

Devora as I mentally smirk at your trail I am grateful for your wise words.

All these wise words will help to build up ideas for my first letter box.

You are all very helpful and I am so grateful.

I would be careful with names though. Susan isn't identifying obv, neither is James, but once you have 'Susan and James and Chardonnay' (since she's our adoptive child name de jour ATM) ,you're a LOT more identifiable innit?