Letterswap/Arcbox - potential changes to letterbox contact

[Christmasbahhumbug]

We have the standard twice yearly letterbox contact. DD’s birth mother sometimes responds, her birth father has never responded. The letters are adult to adult and DD is not involved at all.

I’ve been reading about the recommendations to move to digital contact and the pilots currently ongoing. I understand the differing arguments and have followed the Pause time to deliver campaign. All of the dialogue around this seem very positive including adoption U.K.

I feel very nervous about it all. I can see the potential benefits but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s an experiment involving exceptionally vulnerable children and young people. It’s virtually impossible to get any kind of support anyway and I’ve learnt to keep the post adoption team very much at arms length. I guess when the time comes I just want to say thanks but no thanks. I’ve faithfully kept to the letterbox agreement I signed up for but this seems to be changing the goalposts.

Ultimately, I know it’s not about me, it’s about DD and I’ll do what is best for her when the time comes, I just have no clue what that is.

I’d be really grateful for other adopters thoughts.

We're new to all this - our little one moved in a few months ago so we've only sent thr settling in letter.

Our agency is very keen for us to email our letters, but we've said we want to do it by post. I just think if our little one wants to draw a picture in a few years time I don't see that a photo of that will be very meaningful.

I am keen to hear what more experienced adopters think about the whole thing.

I’ve not heard anything about. We have annual contact but in 7 years have never received a reply (or an acknowledgment of receipt from the LA). What does this involve?

I hadn't heard of Arcbox before this.

I'm a bit on the fence really. As probably the last generation who grew up without the Internet I think I'm more wary than many. I think our children would be more comfortable with it.
Given the poor quality, or total lack of, life story books, provided by LAs, it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of newer adopters were already doing something very similar.
I think I have three issues.

1 - Photos, videos etc etc are all very well, they tell a story. But for me the whole point of life story work is the child understanding why they came to be adopted.
2- So fine have a whizzy story on line about life in your new family , but where does the birth parent story link in, who uploads info about them
3- it says nothing gets uploaded until its been checked by SWs. It would need an army of SWs to do that - who pays for them. What is the accountability framework.
4- who does the content belong to. It looks like a private company to me, what happens if they go bust, what happens to the content then, how would families retrieve their information?

We’ve been trialing the online letterbox. I found it really easy. Upload the letter, it gets checked by the team and then sent on to north family. Unfortunately, north family haven’t engaged with it. We’ve had lots of lost passwords/can’t log on kind of feedback so we stopped and went back to the traditional way. We were hoping it would speed up letterbox but it just hasn’t worked that way!

We have been using letter box for 16 years now.

My concerns over digital would be any 'meta data' stored with letters / photos. (The bits of info stored with the document saying who created it, or where/when the photo was taken.)

Very good point @UnderTheNameOfSanders I do Letterbox by sending the LB an email who then copy and paste the text to another document. I didnt send it via a Word document as it has the name of the person who created the document in it... it's hidden but easily found with a few clicks.

My letters are always a word document sent attached to an email that letterbox print out and send the old fashioned way @ScottishBeth we also include a scan of any picture she has drawn and wants to send. LO has stated she wants to keep the original and as we send to 3 different family members, 2 would have to receive either different pictures or a copy any way. Different pictures are not really an option because it would be too much pressure on LO.

We email a word document for the following reasons (they are not listed in order of importance):
(1) I don't want to pay to post my letters to letterbox or have them get lost between me and birth family
(2) I can keep a copy of the email as well as printing out a copy of the letter for my LO for her memory box as a backup in case the original is lost/damaged
(3) I edit my letter over several days at initially writing it which is much easier to do on word than paper
(4) no one can read my hand writing so it's not fair to send something I've hand written
(5) I send 3 letters and get 3 responses so I like to personalise my letters for each recipient saying things like I hope you had a good holiday in turkey or you're feeling better if they've been ill but using word means I can just cut and paste the things I want to say like LO is doing well in school or has started having swimming lessons which they really enjoy.

For me personalising the letters is the most meaningful thing I can do along with sending them in on time. The fact that everyone gets a scanned version of her artwork is more important than no artwork, especially as I add in a few words about what she's drawn and why. The letters I get back say they love the pictures and they have pride of place on the fridge like all children's artwork should.