Practice brief: letterbox contact

Benefits of indirect contact

• When two-way indirect contact works well, it can help to keep the birth family ‘alive’ in the adoptive family, create opportunities for adoptive parents and children to communicate about adoption, reduce young people’s sense of rejection, answer questions, provide information and help to prepare young people for the possibility of a future meeting
• For birth relatives, successful two-way indirect contact can provide reassurance about the child, lay a foundation for future meetings, give them hope that their letters reduce the child’s sense of rejection and provide an opportunity to seek likenesses in the child
• Positive indirect contact sometimes leads to successful direct contact, often at the young person’s instigation in adolescence

Challenges of indirect contact

• Indirect contact via letterbox is sometimes seen as the default plan for adopted children, but it is not an easy option and tends to decline over time
• Most indirect contact that falters does so early on
• Adoptive parents often find it hard to know what to say in letters. They are worried about mentioning holidays and other treats in case this seems insensitive to birth relatives on limited incomes. It can also be hard to talk about difficulties such as divorce, or problems the child may be having
• Birth relatives can find it hard to know what to put in the letters and what to leave out, particularly when their lives are hard or there are important changes (like having another baby) which they fear will upset the child
• Birth relatives sometimes worry that the letters they receive do not tell the full story
• Young people can find it strange reading letters from people that they do not know
• Young people can feel hurt when birth parents write about caring for pets or other children
• Young people may object to information being shared as they get older
• Adoptive parents can be uncertain about if, how and when to end the exchange as the young person becomes an adult
• Birth relatives may worry about how their role could change if and when reunions occur or the young person becomes an adult and indirect contact comes to an end

When indirect contact is not sustained

• It is hard if birth relatives do not reply. Children can feel rejected and hurt, adoptive parents may be uncertain how to respond
• Some adoptive parents withdraw because they find it too emotionally demanding, are unhappy with the birth relative’s reply or do not receive replies
• Other adopters continue to send letters despite not receiving replies because they seek to honour their commitment to do so, feel empathy for birth relatives or acknowledge the child’s connection to their birth family
• Some young people seek direct contact because they did not receive letters as planned or these did not answer their questions. Direct contact in these circumstances tends to be more mixed
• When birth relatives stop receiving letters without an explanation they often feel worried about the child and are concerned that they might have done something wrong.

Back to Contents

Practice guide: letterbox contact for young children

• Letterbox contact should not be viewed as an easy option. Both birth relatives and adoptive parents are likely to need support to start and sustain an exchange. Writing a letter is an unfamiliar task for many parents who have grown up in a digital world
• Parents with poor literacy or English as a second language may need particular help
• Parents with learning disabilities will need extra help, including prompts to remember what has happened in their lives over the last six months or a year
• Parents with chaotic, transient lives and multiple difficulties may find letterbox contact particularly hard to sustain. Grandparents or other birth relatives may have more stability and be in a better position to act as a point of contact
• Birth parents may respond to a final decision about their child with a period of crisis in which the problems that led to the child’s removal get worse. With time and support their situation may improve and they may become more able to manage letterbox contact
• There is a fine balance between supporting birth relatives to write a positive letter and presenting a misleading picture of who they actually are
• Setting up an introductory meeting between adopters and birth parents without the child can help to build a relationship that will make letterbox contact easier
• Practice experience suggests that it can help to build trust if adoptive parents write to birth parents to thank them after this meeting and send a settling in letter shortly after placement (see practice resources in this section for examples)
• Adoptive parents need to be prepared for the possibility that birth relatives may not always feel able to send letters as expected and ready to support the child with the hurt this may cause. Understanding the complexity of birth relatives lives and how much they may rely on the letters for reassurance may help adoptive parents to continue to send letters even if they do not receive a reply
• Letterbox contact tends to work best when it becomes an accepted part of adoptive family life, with parents sitting down together with the child and talking about birth relatives and sharing thoughts and feelings
• Even when children are too young to understand letterbox contact, it can still be helpful to talk to them about receiving or sending letters.  This avoids dilemmas about how and when to tell the child when they are older. Instead children may feel that they ‘always knew’
• Letterbox contact needs to be reviewed as children get older.

Back to Contents

Practice guide: letterbox contact for older children

Social work support is important in keeping letterbox contact going as well as getting it started.

Benefits

• Letterbox contact can help children to develop a realistic picture of their birth family, answer their questions and reassure them that they have not been forgotten. These issues may come to the fore in adolescence
• Successful letterbox contact can build a foundation for successful introduction of direct contact as some young people get older
• Letterbox contact can be an important trigger for conversations about children’s thoughts and feelings about their birth families as they grow up, supporting communicative openness
• Some birth relatives who could not manage letterbox contact in the aftermath of care proceedings may become more accepting of adoption over time and more able to manage contact generally.

Challenges

• Indirect contact can be hard to sustain. There are no established social rules for birth relatives to write to a stranger who is caring for their child or, in the case of adoptive parents, the biological parent of the child
• When letterbox contact stops or falters, everybody involved can be left feeling anxious, rejected or fearful that they have done something wrong
• Unreliable or difficult letterbox contact can prompt some young people to ask for direct contact in the hope of getting their questions answered or finding out more
• When young people have problems in adolescence, birth parents can question whether adoption was for the best or feel guilty about their own role in the child’s troubles. Birth parents may need support to work out how best to help the young person, particularly if the child’s relationship with the adoptive parents is difficult at this stage
• Birth relatives often worry about what the child has been told about them and whether contact will continue after 18. They may hope for a reunion and/or feel anxious about this. Additional emotional support may be needed at this stage
• Adoptive parents often worry about what will happen when formal letterbox contact comes to an end when the child turns 18.

Changing needs

• Letterbox contact needs to be reviewed as children get older and their needs change
• As adopted children get older, they may want more say about what information is shared in letters about them. The young person’s role in the exchange may need to change
• Some young people want to take a break from involvement in contact of any kind during adolescence whilst they focus on other things
• On-going support may be needed in early adulthood as young people take more control of contact arrangements for themselves.

Back to Contents

Exercise: understanding the benefits of letterbox contact

Download the exercise as a PDF (264KB)

Research message: when letterbox contact works well it can help adopted children to develop a realistic picture of their birth relatives, answer their questions and help with feelings of loss and rejection.

Adoptive parents value the exchange of letters as a way of keeping the birth family ‘alive’ in the adoptive family, reducing the child’s sense of rejection, answering their questions and keeping up to date with changes in the birth family.

Letterbox contact can help to reassure birth relatives about how the child is getting on, provide an opportunity for them to try and ease the child’s sense of loss or rejection and keep in touch with their development, seeing likenesses as they get older. Successful letterbox contact can help to prepare everybody involved for future meetings during childhood or in adulthood.

Writing letters to a stranger is not easy and both birth relatives and adopters often need support with this.

This exercise is suitable for: individual learning; discussions in team meetings, training for social workers, contact supervisors, foster carers, kinship carers and adopters

Listen here to the clip of Liz, adoptive mother, talking about her family’s experience of opening contact with birth relatives.  Consider the following points.

• How did letterbox contact benefit this child?
• How did it benefit the adoptive family?
• How did it benefit the birth family?
• What made contact work so well in this particular case?

Notes for trainers

The aim of this exercise is to highlight the benefits of letterbox contact and increase the willingness of both practitioners and adoptive families to promote this. 

Back to Contents

Exercise: supporting birth relatives with letterbox contact

Download the exercise as a PDF (KB)

Research messages: when letterbox contact works well it can help adopted children to develop a realistic picture of their birth relatives, answer their questions and help with feelings of loss and rejection. Letterbox contact can help to reassure birth relatives about how the child is getting on, provide an opportunity for them to try and ease the child’s sense of loss or rejection and keep in touch with their development, seeing likenesses as they get older. Successful letterbox contact can help to prepare everybody involved for future meetings during childhood or in adulthood.  An introductory meeting between adoptive parents and birth relatives can help to get letterbox contact started well.

But letterbox contact often falters quite early on after placement. Some adoptive parents stop sending letters when birth relatives do not reply, but others keep going. Failed or unreliable letterbox contact can make adopted children feel hurt or rejected. Writing letters to a stranger is not easy and both birth relatives and adopters often need support with this.

There is a lot that social workers can do to help.  Birth relatives are often in crisis in the immediate aftermath of care proceedings. They value post-adoption support from independent agencies with whom they can be honest about how bad they are feeling and how things are going. Support in coping with the feelings that contact evokes and in clarifying roles and expectations can help adults to manage contact more successfully.

In addition, birth relatives may have poor literacy, learning difficulties or little experience of writing letters. They may worry about getting it wrong and losing contact; or feel anxious that sharing good news makes it seem as if they have forgotten the child; sometimes there is not much good news to share and they don’t know what to put in. Birth relatives can feel uncertain about what is expected of them or what their role is. They may not know what to call themselves or how to start or end the letters.

This exercise is suitable for: individual learning; discussions in team meetings, training for social workers, contact supervisors, foster carers, kinship carers and adopters

Read the case study of Mikey Maddox

Imagine that you are Mikey’s mother, Leanne, sitting down to write your first letter to his new adoptive parents

• What sort of advice would you want about how to write this letter?
• How would you feel about doing this? What would your intentions be? What would you be scared of? What would you hope for?
• What kinds of things would you want to include? What might you leave out?
• What support would you want? Who from?
• What would you want the adoptive family to know about you? What do you want to know about them?

Notes for trainers

The aim of this exercise is to increase empathy for birth relatives amongst practitioners and adoptive parents, allowing more sensitive support with post-adoption contact, more positive responses to letters received and a greater commitment to continuing with letterbox contact even when it is difficult.  

Back to Contents

Practice resource: sample letter from adoptive parents to birth relatives after an introductory meeting

Download the letter as a PDF (252KB)

Research message

Building relationships between adoptive and birth families is key to making direct and indirect contact work. Introductory meetings without the child present make a useful contribution to building trust and can help all of the adults involved to feel more positive about direct and indirect contact in the long term.

There is sometimes a long gap between these introductory meetings and the first contact of any kind. The example letter below is intended to help bridge that gap and reassure birth relatives that their role in the child’s life has not been forgotten, building a foundation for direct or indirect contact when the time is right.  This example can provide some ideas about how writing a personalised letter can be approached.

Example of a letter from adopters to birth relatives

This template was created by Sefton Adoption Team to help adopters with writing this type of letter.

Back to Contents

Practice resource: welcome letter from adoptive parents after a child is placed

Download the letter as a PDF (424KB)

Research message

Building relationships between adoptive and birth families is key to making direct and indirect contact work well. There may not be any direct contact with birth relatives for some time after a child is first placed for adoption.

This letter is intended to bridge that gap and continue to build relationships. It also aims to offer some reassurance to birth relatives, many of whom grieve deeply at the loss of their child and find some comfort in hearing news.

It may be useful to include a few lines acknowledging any difficulties the child may have experienced with the transition (or otherwise) and how adopters are helping the child settle in and manage. This will avoid letters that are overly positive and which birth relatives may begin to distrust.

The example letter below can provide some ideas about how adopters with newly placed children can be supported to write a personalised letter. It could also be used as part of adoption training, helping prospective adopters to develop communicative openness and explore in more depth how they might feel about the reality of post-adoption contact.

This example was created by Sefton Adoption Team

Back to Contents

Film clip

Young people’s views and feelings: letterbox contact

Listen to three adopted children talk about their experience of letterbox contact, how they and their families have managed contact and what influence it has had on their life and identity.
Also viewable online via Adobe Connect

Back to Contents