Letterbox

[OurMiracle1106]

I finally heard back from the new social worker which has taken a month, to be told adopters will be sending a letter next month. (So May)

Feel so disillusioned with the whole system right about now

Tempted to say I want contact formalised:

@thomassmuggit. It's been explained already. This is past well meaning discussion.

There have been a few of this type of 'visitor' to the adoption forum recently. I strongly suggest we all don't feed the bridge dwellers.

Dear miracle,

Can I say firstly that you are clearly a fabulous mum who has, at the greatest personal expense, put your child's welfare before your own. No one who reads your posts could possibly doubt your commitment to your son's best interests. I do admire you.
I think that you have had great advice here about the quality and frequency of contact being entirely under the control of the new parents. I also understand your concern about how your son will perceive your efforts at contact when he is older.
You have no way of knowing or controlling how you are being portrayed to your son. You have worked so hard at being compliant and positive in your communications but unfortunately, the reality is that there is no certainty that what you write even reaches your son. There was no contact in my day but my guess would be that the best thing for your son is for his parents to feel as relaxed and unthreatened as possible. Perhaps it would be best to be cheerful and positive to promote as much trust as you can.
Having said that, I hope that one day, you and your son will be reunited and you will want to reassure him of the truth of how much he was loved and missed. I do have plenty of experience of this aspect of adoption and I regret that I didn't record my feelings throughout the years in writing for my child to fill in the gaps. Some mothers wrote letters and birthday cards over the years that could be given to their children who came looking. I think that this would have been particularly helpful to those many adoptees who looked too late to be reunited with living parents. I'm sure that won't be the case with your son, since he will certainly be aware that he was adopted. However, retained letters or cards might be helpful to him in reunion and may help you now to feel that a veritable record is being kept of your love for your child and your respect for his parents.
I do hope that you can find a solution that you are comfortable with and that doesn't challenge any relationships.

All the best...

don thomasmuggit I am not a troll, I will try not to take the attacks personally, and I will explain my motivation and my experience of the subject later when I have more time.

OP I apologise that my question to the adopters about why they felt the way they did and my advice for you to get objective advice has caused the thread to go awry.

@superjam. Obviously I do not know your motivation, and would not claim to. I am not trying to be rude, but I think your suggestions have been unhelpful and your level of challenge to quite experienced posters is odd if you wanted to contribute constructively.

Every so often we get posters with no posting history, who are just argumentative. So I've come to the conclusion that just ignoring them is for the best.

If you would like to look back through this board, you will see that many posters (e.g. thomas, flapjack and sanders) have given excellent advice for many years- they are highly knowledgeable. If you want to join in here, you will genuinely find it to be a welcoming and supportive place; but perhaps a little less suited to robust argument than the rest of MN. Perhaps introducing yourself with a different discussion thread would be a nice idea.

Hello again don thanks for your message. I am not a stranger and I was genuinely trying to understand the POV of the posters. I think all parents will feel stressed about an application for contact (in divorce cases too) and like most people I absolutely empathised, but I wasn't sure about the comments about shutting down and doing the minimum.

I think it is important that people get independent legal advice. It isn't possible for a poster to give objective advice, nor any advice really as it is unlikely we have the full picture.

In relation to the general comments about contact, we don't know for sure how many adoptees feel what, nor why. My feeling is that more research and guidance is needed about contact arrangements in terms of what would be best for adoptees generally.

In case anyone is interested, here is an article from 2014 about the relevant legislation, also providing a commentary about the importance of agreement in relation to what is proposed (though NB I have not searched to see if there is a more up to date article):

www.familylawweek.co.uk/site.aspx?i=ed136606

And here is the legislation itself:

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2014/6/section/9/enacted

Divorce and adoption are really not comparable. In divorce you expect your child to be maintaining some kind of relationship. As I said before, a request for contact in adoption would be like a random stranger suddenly deciding they had a right to access to your child. Unless more significant contact were agreed during the adoption there is no legal case for it; adoption severs all links with the birth family. Miracles case is slightly different and we all recognise that.
I really am very interested to know your motivation for being on this board @superjam . For the vast majority of us, in whichever way linked to adoption, we are here seeking and giving help and support as we all have a heated interest in it.

Heated???? Vested.

Miracle I hope your LA takes your complaint seriously and changes their ways. I'm an adopter and have just sent our first scheduled letterbox and I'm disappointed with how it's been handled! I sent a letter and attached a paper with handprints and footprints at different ages weeks in advanced of the date it was due. The social worker contacted me the day before the scheduled date to ask if I'd wrote a letter. When I explained I'd sent it to the contact Co ordinator she said she'd have a look on her desk but could I email the letter to her in case she can't find it. Although I'm glad birth mum will get the letter in time I'm annoyed that she won't get the little handprints when I took the time to do that for her. I think the approach your taking is the most sensible. Your LA are causing the issues with contact not the adoptive parents. I understand they have changed the dates but I'm sure they did it for a good reason. Your social worker should have discussed the change with you.

In divorce you expect your child to be maintaining some kind of relationship but it isn't to do with expectations of the parent, it is to do with the psychological needs of the child, surely. Children's psychological needs don't change simply because an adoption order has been issued. I think that that is why over time, how contact is seen and understood and dealt with in adoption has been changing and will change. But who knows. In relation to this being a special case, anecdotally I am aware of many cases where the birth parent has contact and respects the adoptive parents and vice versa.

What exactly is your interest in adoption then SuperJam?

I think you will find that many adopted children benefit from Letterbox because it means they will know something of where they came from. It is not so that a relationship can be built up with the birth parents so that they can go and visit them when they turn 18.

My child might have a psychological need to know where she came from. She might not. I’m pretty hacked off at the way you are speaking about adoptive parents. Like we aren’t real parents and that contact should be maintained for when our children wish to go and find their “real” parents.

If that isn’t what you meant I suggest you rethink your posts. Or perhaps posting on a subject that you seem to have no first hand experience of and don’t seem to want to clarify exactly what your interest is.

headwobble I find your post a bit abusive, and I am pretty hacked off at the way you are posting to me. I am an adoptee, and I am currently looking into adopting or fostering. In relation to what you have said about letterbox and relationships there is zero research to support what you have said, the research all goes the other way. It is not a slur on adoptive parents to say that they may not know the best thing to do about contact. Contact is often a factor in disruption. Good luck to you.

@superjam. I really think your interest in discussing the legal aspects and research into contact is more appropriate for another thread. I find that stuff interesting and am always happy to learn where I might be wrong. You said you weren't a troll, so I tried to suggest another approach nicely- it doesn't seem to have worked.

@headwobble has not been abusive at all. She has put things more strongly than I would, but I don't think you are thinking through the implications of your statements to those who have adopted and I really think your references to court action for miracle are very unhelpful.

The range of adoptee experiences is very wide (I'm one) and the appropriateness of contact varies, but it is always the parent's choice- please investigate/discuss that on a different thread.

don why do you think the OP should not get independent legal advice on this point?

Do you think you might be being a bit controlling?

And finally, don, the article I posted clearly states that courts are unlikely to force adoptive parents to do anything which they are not themselves in agreement with. This and other aspects of the article should be reassuring to the various adopters who have become upset on this thread about the application being "nuclear" and help them to see things a bit more positively.

Serves me right for not taking my own advice. At least now there is no ambiguity.

I don't know what don will say but from my point of view I don't think Miracle should seek legal advice. She has met her child's parents, they will know the full background and why she agreed to the adoption. They are likely to be very sympathetic and currently do not view miracle as a threat and I would imagine are able to be genuinely very positive about her during life story work; this is evidenced through their sending of photos etc (I on the other hand spend every moment outside my house looking over my shoulder). But ultimately they will just be wanting to get on with their lives. Seeking further legal guidance/involving the court would make them sit bolt upright and go into a total panic that she has made a complete u-turn. They would ask questions like 'is she back with the birth dad' 'has she tracked us' 'is she planning on kidnapping' Photos would probably stop and letters would be very generic. As your article states, more often than not the court would side with adopters, so why put Miracle through the heart ache of a reduction of information?
Every adoption is different and involves a unique set of circumstances, but the majority of us here have children who have been subjected to serious abuse and neglect.

I don’t view my post as abusive. Yes, I tend to come across more strongly than others but as you don’t seem to be taking any notice of other people’s points I make no apology for that.

You were asked when you first posted whether you were an adopter etc. You said no and that you would post later what your interest was when you had the time. You didn’t. Not until I asked. Then you bring out “I’m adopted”. You may well be and your experience may be that you needed to seek your birth parents. Or perhaps you are thinking of it and have become very interested in the law surrounding this. This does not make you an expert, anymore than me. What I DO know more about though is how the adoptive parents might react to going to court. This is because I AM an adoptive parent. Miracle has asked advice countless times on this board, and has actually taken some of the stronger words with good grace. She is very open to wanting to consider all parts of her decisions, which is why we, as adoptive parents, feel free to answer her posts. Not just on the legal side but on the emotional side.

If you had been transparent from the beginning, and said you were speaking from your experience as an adoptee. If you had thought through your posts and tone, then it would have made for an interesting and varied discussion.

As it is, you have cried “abuse” when challenged and refused to take on board any of our comments.

Now, as you consider me to post in an abusive manner I will not post to you anymore. I feel my point can’t be made any clearer anyway.

@superjam
Could you give us links to the research you have referred to?

@clairdelalune I don't think the courts take "sides" I think it is more that they need to do what is in the best interest of the child, and anything counterproductive (which forcing the issue might be) would be avoided. In relation to taking legal advice, I am a lawyer (not a child protection lawyer) and I think the right of independent access to legal advice for everyone is extremely important. Advice does not mean claims. In fact here the advice would probably be along the lines of the article - the provisions are said to be seen as a token gesture - though there is potential there too, as the wording is quite wide. The advice is unlikely to be "go for it, hell what may".

The point of the legislative framework is to support the adoptive child. Not to steal them away or reduce the importance of the relationship with the adoptive parent.

I think it would be really helpful to move away from the mindset that anyone who thinks contact is of immense importance is saying that the relationship with the adoptive parents is not "real", and move away from the "us" and "them" mentality.

Children are adopted if the birth parents cannot or will not look after them, we all know that, and we all know the great aspects of that. But that doesn't mean we have to accept everything about adoption as cast in stone, and in particular as far as I am concerned letterbox does not work, it seems to cause a lot of angst, and I think there are more sensible alternatives. A part of the reason for slow change is the adopters, there is judicial comment that adopters often do not want contact and this is why letterbox arrangements are made, not necessarily because it is a particularly good solution. It doesn't mean things won't change. And changing mindsets is a big part of that.

@headwobble I am sorry, I didn't even get beyond the first few lines of your message to me. Your posts are disgusting. They are accusing me of things which I hadn't said or suggested, they are gaslighting, they are personal attacks - how much more abusive do you want to get? I don't share my personal experiences because of posters like you, that is the reason why I didn't volunteer the information readily and only said it when pushed, by you.

@dontbuymesocks yes I will dig out some research for you when I get the chance.

OP one of the posters thinks I should advise you on the emotional side as well as the legal side. It is slightly different for me because if I adopted I would be very pro contact with the birth family and this situation wouldn't arise unless the member of the birth family wanting contact were dangerous or a threat in which case I'd go through the process, as unpleasant as it would be, and if managed supervised contact were possible, I would go for that. I wouldn't batten down the hatches simply because a claim had been made, because I think contact is too important for that.

I can tell you that as an adoptee I started to think a great deal about my birth family when I was about 8, and it caused me anxiety, and if the adoptive parent is able to support the child and help them process what they are experiencing, then the more contact the better. I think @ofredalba has given good advice about doing things at home. The key thing though is that it depends on your circs and the adoptive parents, and this is why getting independent advice is better, as you cannot be fully open online. I suggested independent legal advice because you have mentioned the formalising before, and I think it would be really helpful for you to understand the situation fully.

Best of luck

Contact is fraught with difficulty, Letterbox does'nt seem to work for anyone. We don't have it. We are supposed to have direct contact with dad. It worked ok 'ish' for the first two years, then broke down. I've busted my guts for 6 years trying to make it work. He made last minure excuses, his car broke down, he missed a train, he was sick, once he told me his mum was dying of cancer .
On one occasion my son phoned him in the early evening, he said he was driving so he would call back in 10 minutes. He didn't, he didn't answer texts, or turn up for contact the next day. It was a week before we heard from him, I was worried sick about whether or not he'd been in an accident. Quite frankly I can't take the stress and worry about whether or not he will turn up, nor can I expose my son any longer to the disappointment when he doesn't show up. I have had a devastated little boy to deal with far too often.
My son is now 14. We have had theraputic life story work. It was painful and traumatic. My son grieves for his dad but understands why he isn't seeing him anymore.
I won't be making any more efforts to facilitate contact between them.

If you feel my posts are abusive then please report them.

@headwobble thank you for the pm, it was much appreciated and very decent of you. I should have handled it differently, and should not have jumped off the deep end.