Letterbox

[GracieHC]

We’re due to start next month. BP’s have angrily refused to sign the agreement or engage with anything regarding LO for well over a year - no judgement here. I get it. Just stating facts.
I’m happy to write them in case one day they change their mind and also as a diary for LO when older.
My issue is that the agreement states twice yearly. There’s a big part of me that feels until
we know these letters are going somewhere other than into the great abyss wouldn’t once a year suffice? On the one hand I feel guilty for even considering this but on the other it feels all the more heartbreaking to send letters twice a year to
nowhere.
Just wondering really what others thoughts and experiences were surrounding this.

Even if they never read the letters, it costs you nothing to write them.

all you really have is a bit of enforced structure at making a baby book documenting your child’s life. You and your child will appreciate having a copy of nothing else.

rather than every six months, it might actually be easier to sit down once a month and write something small. At least in the beginning they change so much. Then just collect the pieces together and send it out every six months.

I started off twice a year. But after years of BP not replying, and letterbox saying they can't contact them, I said I'd take it to annual. There is a cost to these things, your time, emotions etc. I struggle to know what to say. Plus it increasingly feels invasive to DC to share their news into the void.

Letterbox isn’t about giving the birth parents a detailed account of how your child is - certainly nothing as detailed as a baby book type thing. I would do it twice yearly initially to keep your side of the agreement, it may encourage the birth parent to reply if they see you making the effort.

It can be very light touch, I’ll usually mention how the kids are, something they’re interested in just now and something they’ve achieved in school/out of school activities. Usually one page of A4, covering both kids. I don’t put anything in there that I wouldn’t be happy to tell a stranger in the street because that’s effectively what I’m doing in that the birth parents don’t know me or my children now.

I agree with Jelly . Over the last 16(!) years we have stuck to the same formula with contact letters which we do twice year (but we get replies). One side of A4, acknowledge info from previous response. Then info on what they have been doing: school, a holiday, hobbies, etc. Only ever stuff in the past no future plans in case they don't happen.

I would maybe sign the agreement with a rider that if no response after 2 years you will consider dropping to once a year only.

I think to start with I would advise to write the twice a year. Then, when your child grows up they can see that you did everything that was set out.

Originally, we were down for 3 a year which we did for a year. It did not work, between BPs always writing late, I was talking to letterbox every other week. We now do twice a year but we’ve recently had a letter ignored but we will still write it for the time being just for our child really.

Thank you all for your input. Unfortunately we have already signed the agreement, so wish I would have asked sooner as that is a good idea.
Yeah I think for me it will cost me something each time even if that’s not financial. But let’s start off as we should and see where we go from there.
just to clarify if the agreement had been signed on their end I’d have no issue with this regardless of how hard I found it.
I’m hopeful that once I get in the swing of doing it that it will become easier each time x

@GracieHC Just out of interest, how did you find out the BPs hadn't signed the agreement? Did the letterbox team tell you?

We are having issues getting them to confirm that they have sent our letters to BPs, and we can't work out why. (We've escalated it etc, because imagine being BP and having over a YEAR of no info if you wanted it and it was willingly given?) I was wondering whether BPs have refused to sign and they can't tell us or something? We also don't know whether they have letters for us that are waiting to be delivered.

I understand your frustration in being asked to write when they won't agree to receive them. We are using it as a diary for the kids, as well as to be sure we are doing what we can to support in the future, as pps have said, but it is hard to motivate yourself when it is so documentedly one-sided!

@Torvy How frustrating this must be.
we signed the letterbox agreement pretty early on in placement so LO’s SW told us during a visit that she was told in no uncertain terms where to stick the agreement when she reached out to BP’s. Given what has happened since, we have no reason to believe they have changed their mind.
its not even the writing that gets to me. Once a year I’d suck it up. Its that twice a year thing that is the real bug bearer.

@GracieHC ah, the words chocolate teapot fit very nicely with our kids sw, so that explains it!

Twice a year might be hard. We have decided to track certain things in the form of a chart so that we have some consistency of things to write about and it fills up space. We read something from one BP who said that she would go into shoe shops and wish she knew their shoe size, and eat their favourite food and watch the same TV show as them in their birthdays etc. It's harmless enough information for us, but we figured we would want to know I'd the situations were reversed. Add to that a brief monthly breakdown about going for walks at Easter, mini anecdotes about suncream and some well wishes and we manage to fill up about 2 pages that are mundane, quick and easy enough to write but with some stuff that we hope is meaningful to a BP.

Its hard sometimes though, and it's something people don't really discuss about in training

I think that if the BPs haven't signed up, and you are getting no responses, it wouldn't be unreasonable to drop to yearly after say 2 years. The BPs may calm down as time goes on so they need a chance.

We did similar with some extended family. We were meant to write annually but weren't getting responses and it was upsetting DD. So we wrote once more and said 'not getting replies is upsetting DD, unless you tell the SWs you still want these letters we are going to stop writing'. No feedback so stopped.

I’m always confused by the ‘signed the agreement’ thing. It’s not legally binding so if you don’t do it, what can happen realistically? I’m not saying you shouldn’t write but social services can’t do anything if you don’t.

We've never even seen a Letterbox agreement let alone signed one !

Just got a letter from LO's Placing LA after the AO saying this is who you are writing to and when.

The agreement is a piece of paper and it's not legally binding, nothing will happen if you don't do it. This is not to say I advocate not writing. I can't give any better advice on that than what has already been said. But yeah, the agreement is an arbitrary bit of paper that means nothing. I didn't sign it..mostly because I couldn't see the point. I said that I would write the letters, and that's what I do! It was another needless piece of paper in a long and complex process as far as I was concerned at the time!