Letterbox

[Rosebud2005]

Since the first lockdown started my letters from ds to birth mum have not been getting there. It’s been over a year now since she heard from us, I feel so ashamed since we agreed we would write to eachother. There has been one to him from her sitting at the office for months and I’ve now written the third one to her since the last two were lost. Ive left countless messages for this social worker to contact me to get the letters passed on as she said she would arrange to have them picked up in person and she is not answering these messages. I’ve literally only ever spoke to her once. The office has been closed to public but I even said can I come find and hand it to the social worker. It’s a disgrace. They’re busy but really over a year? What do I do?

That's atrocious.
Our letterbox has continued as normal, though slightly longer delays but nothing significant.
Can you go up the chain of command at all?

Apparently she’s a senior

So,sorry you are having this issue op. Our letterbox has continued as normal and communication has been good. There is no excuse for this at all. Have you considered taking it further?

Yes but I don’t know where to take it

look on the council website for the head of childrens services

if you can’t see it phone the switchboard and ask for the name

Thank you

I’ve been emailing mine because the office is closed - I know where I am a number of sw building are closed to staff and members of the public and some of the Covid stuff has been very tightly enforced. Is email a possibly?

They haven’t even suggested that to me

I've always emailed mine in, it saves the hassle of typing it up, printing it out and sending it by post. It also means I have evidence of what I wrote, the date I wrote it and the date I sent it across.

Given that one year they completely failed to forward a reply to our letter, it came with the following year's, I think it's important to be able to prove to anyone who asks that you've kept to your side of the agreement.

You mean you send the actual letter by email?

Yes, I type up the letter and email it to the letterbox office and they print and send it.

Thanks

Yep. I type mine as a word document and attach to an email.

We are overseas adopters and I didn't dream that "letterbox" meant a physically written letter in the UK! How quaint!

LOL

We send a physical letter and printed photos.
I wouldn't be happy with the BPs receiving electronic due to the meta data stored with the files, so I save SS the trouble of printing by sending a hard copy.

I have had exactly the same problem. I found out this week that birth mum had written to us for the very first time months and months ago, and the letter has sat in an office 'because of COVID'. I also found out that 2 letters that we had sent to her have not been passed on. I find this so totally unacceptable. We all know that COVID has impacted on ways of working, but essential services have continued all over the country so I really don't see why letterbox can't.

I'm so disappointed that BM will think that we haven't written to her. Previously she hasn't engaged with the process, and thinking that we aren't committed to the process she may not write again.

SS print ours off to send via the post and we don't include photos with ours.

The issue isn't birth parents necessarily knowing how to harvest metadata, it's about their current and future partners, friends, advocates, or exploiters knowing how to do it. And it's that technology has become so good, so quickly, that you have to be sure what you send is safe now, but will stay safe for ten years or more, with increasingly sophisticated tech. Our BPs are vulnerable, and while the individuals may not have the know how, those who use them may do.

To add, I do send the letter via email, but the above is a reason to be cautious.

So another month after I wrote this, still no letters to or from bm or ds. Called our own sw last week who said she’ll email the letterbox sw and see what the problem is. I get that offices have been shut but as she said herself she has had garden visits. This is only a case of swapping letters. I could try posting it again but they’re not getting there either

When I couldn’t get in touch with Letterbox last year I rang post-adoption support to ask what was going on and they said there was literally a heap of non-opened contact post outside the office door, nobody had touched them due to Covid .

Would you believe the letter I spoke about was picked up from here two weeks ago?

I guess we should celebrate something happening