Implications of the children’s social care review for adoptive families.

[Bundlesofchocforme]

Having read the review I am disappointed at how little consideration there seems to be for adopted children and their families and wondered what others thought?

The recommendations for modernising letterbox contact using a digital platform and ongoing contact with birth families using the adoption support fund seem to be thrown in with little thought into the implications for already vulnerable children & their adoptive and birth families.

I’m hoping that this is the beginning of the conversation as I do see how changes could benefit some adopted children but worry that without a huge amount of careful thought any contact could cause a lot of distress and turmoil for those involved.

Moving over to a digital platform, in my opinion, does nothing to safeguard against any contact being made directly through social media which was one of the reasons given for it. Also it assumes a level of technological skill that could actually be a further barrier to engagement. I also have issues around traceability using it; how robust will it be against hacking and how will submissions to it be policed to ensure that they are appropriate?

I like the fact that we get a letter, a physical piece of paper that I can store in a file in date order next to our letters that we can flick through and read. I also like the fact that our coordinator will give us a heads up about the contents of any letters that might come as a surprise to us before sending the letter out.

A focus on in person support from a post adoption worker to help with letters both in terms of writing them and providing emotional support on reading them would be more appropriate.

Electronic as an option is fine, but it shouldn’t be the only option. My sons birth mother has limited access to the internet and wouldn’t reliably attend a face to face appointment to enable digital letter box to happen. How secure would it actually be, nothing is fool proof. How would the contents be checked before it is accessed by the childs family? You can’t keep something from an app. My sons birth mum very rarely provides anything, but I have kept everything, a hand written note and a drawing is a precious thing to keep, a few typed words on an app not so much.