This indirect written contact is now a well-established feature of adoption. It is an excellent way of helping children whose lives have been disrupted to maintain a coherent sense of themselves and to develop an integrated sense of identity which is very important to their long-term health. The exchange of news using the Letterbox service helps to reduce this sense of loss and confusion. In more and more cases, children adopted nowadays will have memories of their birth families and a sense of some connection to them whatever the reasons for becoming adopted. These factors and the knowledge that birth parents frequently feel unresolved anguish and concern have led to a belief that greater openness between birth families and adoptive families can help everyone. Why have a Letterbox service?Īdopted people can also feel upset by learning much later in life that they have brothers or sisters born to their own birth parents or they can be concerned by not knowing what happened to their birth parents over the years. If agreed, return news from birth relatives will be sent in reply to your news. This news is then sent on to the agreed birth relatives. This may be once or twice a year, occasionally more often. At agreed times each year, adoptive parents send in a progress report or newsletter about their adopted child, often with a photograph, for the attention of the Letterbox service. Once the arrangements for news-sharing via the Letterbox Service have been agreed, a clear statement of these arrangements is sent to both or all parties for confirmation.

Most arrangements are voluntary and represent an undertaking made in good faith by the parties. You can manage your cookie preferences using the checkboxes provided or accept all for a better, more focused user experience.įind out more on our privacy policy page at any time.The arrangements for this service are agreed before the child joins you, put in writing and signed by all concerned. Some of these are analytics cookies, set using third party web analytics software, which allows us to monitor our website traffic. They may also show us which email or web page visitors clicked through from in order to visit our website, and whether you opened an email we sent you. Performance cookies collect information about how visitors use a website, for instance, which pages visitors go to most often, and they let you store items in your shopping basket between visits. Because these cookies are strictly necessary we do not need to ask for your consent to use them. Without these, cookies services like your cart and checkout experience cannot be provided effectively. Some of our cookies are essential and enable you to move around the website and use its features, such as accessing secure areas of the website. Our cookies don't store sensitive or personally identifiable information such as your name and address or credit card details. The data we collect using cookies helps us understand our customers better so that we can provide a more focused user experience.

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