What does good practice look like for supporting children and adults to stay in touch post-adoption? Explore a new open access resource hub to help practitioners plan for and support these important relationships.
The extent to which adopted children and young people stay in touch with birth relatives and important people has lifelong implications for everyone involved. These relationships can mitigate loss and the damage of separation, provide love and reassurance, connection to family history, religion and culture as well as support into adulthood.
Staying in touch: Contact after adoption brings together a range of materials and resources that can be used in the training and supervision of social workers and contact supervisors as well as in training adopters. At the heart of the resources is the voice of lived experience of adopted children and young people and birth relatives. Each topic area supports practitioners when drawing up contact and support plans. The resource hub has three key sections:
- Purpose of staying in touch: Research briefings/guides on making good decisions for children in public law and how children understand adoption over time.
- Planning for staying in touch: Planning guide, template and worked examples; guides on assessing strengths and challenges.
- Preparing for and supporting staying in touch: Reflections from birth relatives on contact and support; guides on working with adoptive parents to support relationships.
Staying in touch: Contact after adoption
An open access resource hub for practitioners working with individuals to maintain meaningful relationships after adoption.
Using the resources
Practitioners are encouraged to explore the resources in the different sections and think about how they might use these when thinking about contact and support plans. Some of the resources are also designed for practitioners to use with adoptive parents to help them think about the importance of children maintaining relationships with their birth relatives after adoption.
Although the hub is aimed at those working in adoption, it also offers an accessible way for all practitioners working in children’s social care to think about different ways that children and young people can be supported to maintain relationships with their birth relatives.
Developing the resources
The collection has been developed by a team from Research in Practice and the University of East Anglia (UEA), and commissioned by Adoption England. It builds on and updates the 2017 iteration of the same name and helps to drive a change in culture in the approach to maintaining relationships in adoption.
In a new blog, Professor Beth Neil introduces the research behind the project and how the resources have been developed.
Staying in touch – Changing our approach to contact after adoption
In this blog, Beth Neil introduces the research and findings behind a new resource hub that contains a range of materials that practitioners can use at all stages of considering contact.
In our short video you can also hear from Professor Neil and three adopted adults, Tiegan, Isabel and Chris, talking about the online resource collection and the importance of contact after adoption.
