Staying in touch: Contact after adoption

This online resource collection is grounded in knowledge from research, particularly the research carried out at the Centre for Research on Children and Families at the University of East Anglia (UEA) by Professor Beth Neil, Julie Young, and other colleagues. It builds on the practice development work to help drive a change in culture in the approach to maintaining relationships in adoption, led by UEA and funded by Adoption England. This work has included developing a theory of change about how and why practice can be developed. This practice development work has enabled us to build on the contributions from adopted teenagers and adults, adoptive parents, and birth parents as well as practitioners working in relevant fields.  

University of East Anglia research: 

• The 18 year longitudinal Contact after Adoption study, funded by the Nuffield Foundation. 

• The supporting direct contact after adoption study, funded as part of the Adoption Research Initiative. 

• An evaluation of the Letter Swap digital platform for contact, funded by Adoption England. 

Wider research links: 

• Research overviews and other projects published by the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory around maintaining birth family relationships. 

• Practice resources developed in the Fostering lifelong family connections project carried out by the University of Sydney and adapted for the UK by Adoption England.

Additional links:

• The Public Law Working Group report Recommendations for best practice in respect of adoption.

• Traditionally, staying in touch with birth/first family members after adoption has been referred to as ‘contact’, and generally seen as falling into two distinct categories: ‘letterbox’/ ‘indirect’ contact’ and ‘face-to-face’/‘direct’ contact. 

• However, the term ‘contact’ can seem impersonal or clinical and we rarely say ‘contact’ in referring to ordinary situations when we communicate with or meet with people in our kinship network.

• Many people prefer using terms such as 'maintaining relationships', 'staying in touch' or 'keeping in touch' to refer to the general concept of staying in touch with people who are or could be important to the child. We use the terminology interchangeably in the resources.

• Labels such as 'sharing updates', 'post-box exchanges' or 'digital communication', and ‘meet-ups’ can describe the different types of interaction that take place.

• 'Contact' continues to be used as an umbrella term to capture a wide range of ways of staying in touch. For clarity, on this website we use the following terms:

• ‘Contact’ to refer to all ways of staying in touch. 

• ‘Meeting birth family’ or ‘face-to-face contact’ to refer to in-person contact between the adoptive and birth/first family. 

• ‘Letterbox’ to refer to agency mediated written exchanges. 

• ‘Digital exchanges’ to refer to exchange of letters, messages, text, audio or visual material via digital platforms, which can be mediated and confidential (e.g. using a specific platform such as 'Letterswap') or informal (families communicating directly via email, messaging apps, etc). 

• In practice we suggest professionals use the more personal, normalising terms when speaking to families, negotiating with families how they prefer to refer to their arrangements.