In this article, @forever_macfamily shares how they tackled the letter and how they were able to make it so much more than just a list of things the child was doing.

The Settling in letter

It’s the first piece of written correspondence most of us are going to have with birth family. It’s natural to feel a bit overwhelmed about putting pen to paper.  It is, however, incredibly important to start as you mean to go on and it’s even more important for our children that we, as the adopters, take the lead in making these letters meaningful. 

Regardless of the situation that has brought our little ones to us and how that might make us feel about their birth families, we owe it to our children to be respectful and considered.

When writing our settling-in letter I took the lead over my husband as I wanted to write it mother-to-mother. Our birth mother didn’t want to meet us during introductions, so I wrote to her initially then; I wanted her to know that her daughter was going to be loved and was so incredibly wanted. But I also attempted to anticipate some of the questions our daughter might ask us when she’s older. 

We asked about her pregnancy, her childhood, favourite tastes, toys – that sort of thing so that we could provide those answers if our daughter came home from school one day asking what her birth mother craved during pregnancy.  Luckily, with the assistance of her worker, we got a response. That meant I could personalise our settling-in letter more easily and observe some of those connections. 

Sharing lots of detail

It was also very important to me that the letter was more than a perfunctory paragraph stating how long she’d been home, that she was feeding and sleeping well and liked to watch TV.  That’s just simply not enough. 

I wrote about all of the trips we’d been on, how much she was developing, about meeting her extended family, and how our daughter reacted to each of these things.  I made sure it was full of emotion and reassurance of how completely besotted we are with her and how incredibly lucky we feel to get to raise her. 

Of course, I spoke about what she was eating and playing with, and because of our earlier exchange, I could relate elements of that back to the birth mother and take the opportunity to ask further questions.  I described our house and her bedroom; spoke about the classes we enjoyed going to and gave a full report on her personality and how she was developing and meeting milestones. 

After I’d written our letter, my husband proofread it and added what he wanted to put in, so that we had both contributed.  I made sure I had no distractions for the period it took me to write it as I wanted to put what was in my heart down on paper. 

A journal of our daughter’s life

I think it’s important to remember that all of these letters are stored in our children’s files. When the time comes for our daughter to read hers, I want her to know that we love her enough to make every effort with letterbox contact.  Moreover, these letters will be like a journal for her to refer back to when she’s older, so she can see what she was up to over the years. 

If it helps to approach these letters like that, then it’s worth considering.  I am storing copies of the letters we write for her. Not everybody finds writing easy. Some might find it challenging to articulate their emotions – try dictating the letter and using an app to transcribe it for you. You can always edit it afterward or ask your social worker to help. Our daughter’s worker proofread our letter for me before I submitted it as I wanted to ensure it was phrased appropriately. 

Adoption is complex

It isn’t easy to make these connections. Adoption is hard and complex. For every happy emotion we have, there’s a moment of sadness for what our children have experienced and lost and perhaps for our own experiences and losses that have brought us together. For us, it was infertility and although we always felt we would complete our family through adoption, there’s not a day that I don’t wish I had given birth to our daughter. 

It would be too easy to demonise the birth family and resent them or feel anger towards them. But it’s not helpful to harbour those emotions.  I try to focus on the privilege of raising our little girl and how incredibly lucky we are to have found each other.  With that comes a realisation that if it hadn’t been for all that we lost, we might not be here now, together.

In that context, spending an hour or two once a year, to write a heartfelt letter to the person who gave birth to our little girl, really is the least we can do.  If we receive a response, then I’ll be glad, particularly for our daughter. But if we don’t then we know we’ve performed our part in the adoption triangle and put our daughter first. 

If you enjoyed reading this article, why not buy me a coffee to help keep the magazine free for everyone to read? If you’d like to read more articles about adoption, health and well-being, and parenting, head over to the home page and have a look at what’s new.

It’s so important that adopters understand the importance of contact for birth families. It’s sometimes the case that they don’t feel able to reply to our letters, but that doesn’t mean they don’t cherish every word that’s written. Sammy does receive some help and support to write her letters, but I don’t think that’s always available in a way that encourages birth parents to reply.

How often do you have contact with your child?

I have indirect via letterbox yearly.

How does this happen?

I get two letters via the letterbox team in my local authority.

What kind of things do you include in your letters? Do you send anything else with them?

I send photos of me, her cat, anything new in the family, and a birthday card. I always ask about health, school, wellbeing, likes and dislikes, her birthday, and Christmas. I ask about her pets and how her adoptive parents and brothers are. I also add memories from home and her cat and fish here and anything they have told me. Her adoptive parents write first then I reply. I include anything I’ve been up to too.

Have you requested any support from the local authority in connection with contact?

I receive help with my letters via the letterbox team. They help me with what is good to put in, but nothing around how it works.

If you haven’t received any support from the local authority have you received any support from another organisation?

Yes. I’ve received support and currently still do from PAC-UK. It helps as they don’t judge like social services do and see me as a parent, not a failure.

What do you get in reply to your contact letters?

They write first which is two letters, one from the adoptive parents and a hand written one from my daughter.

What type of information is in the letters? Do you think there’s enough or would you like more?

I get told a lot of information about my daughter’s daily life. Their letters are always two pages long and her own is a page long. I feel I get told a lot which I love and am really grateful for.

How old was your child when they left your home?

She was three-and-a-half when placed with her potential adopters and six when the adoption order was granted.

Were you asked if you wanted to add information to her life story book? If yes, what did you add?

I asked them and they agreed. They asked me to get photos and information about me, her family, her dad, pregnancy, birth milestones, later life letter, and any wishes I had for her future. 

Is there anything else you’ve given her such as an item of your clothing or keepsake?

My daughter has my brown bear called Benji. I got him from Santa one Christmas Eve as I was ill in hospital. I gave him to her and I’m told she knows what he means and that she has him. She also has a locket with a picture of us and her cat.

Did you get any support with life story work? 

The family practitioner came to my house and we put it together. She had worked with me and my daughter from when they became involved up to the final goodbye. She and my daughter had a good relationship. She showed me the information up to her being in foster care and what she put in about that. Then I couldn’t see anymore as that was information about her adopters.

If you’d like to read more articles about adoption, health and well-being, and parenting, head over to the home page and have a look at what’s new. Head over to the life story section to read more articles about this subject.

During our preparation course, we spent a lot of time learning about contact and how important it is to keep it up. The social workers explained however hard we found it, it was in our future child’s best interests that we committed to it.  I’m pretty sure if we’d said at matching Panel we weren’t sure we’d want to keep up with indirect contact, the match to our daughter wouldn’t have been approved.

Unfortunately, the reality of contact for us hasn’t matched anything close to our expectations. Our daughter’s social worker left the agency just before the adoption order was granted. Another social worker was appointed so that all the local authority boxes were ticked.  But she knew very little about our daughter’s case.

Some of the work that should have been done for her life story book wasn’t. I chased it with our social worker several times but the work wasn’t done. In the grand scheme of things, it isn’t the end of the world. I know what’s missing.  Based on the information we have, I’m sure I’ll be able to put something together.

An omission in the life story work is something we can address. Not organising contact at all is a whole different kettle of fish.

We struggled massively with our decision not to be considered as carers for our daughter’s little brother.  I’ve written here about how we came to that decision. One of the things that helped ease my conscience about saying no, was that our social worker said direct contact could be an option. That would mean our daughter could still have a relationship with her brother as they grew up.

We knew it would be up to her brother’s adopters, but we were confident that direct contact was going to be considered. We trusted the local authority to promote the relationship between our daughter and her brother.

Unfortunately, they didn’t.

Contact wasn’t at the forefront of our minds in the months following our decision to say no to little brother.  We concentrated on our daughter and strengthening the bond within our little family of three.

Every now and then it did cross my mind and I wondered when we’d hear that contact was going to start.  We do our annual indirect contact in the summer. In the spring, I realised we still hadn’t heard anything about contact with little brother.  At the very least, I’d expected an updated agreement including him in the annual contact.  So, I emailed our social worker.  It’s probably something that should be dealt with by the post adoption team, but our social worker is really lovely so it was a good excuse to contact her.

I can’t begin to tell you how let down I felt by her reply.  She had nothing at all to do with family finding for little brother so it wasn’t her fault. But basically, contact of any type had been completely overlooked.  So there was no contact agreement in place and no discussions had taken place about direct contact.

Clearly, the local authority have messed up big time with this. But I do wonder why little brother’s adopters didn’t ask about letterbox contact. They’ll have learned about the importance of it during their training. Why didn’t they asked for it to be set up? I know it’s not the first thing you think about once you’re matched. But it’s such an important part of the process.

I’m annoyed with myself for not chasing it up sooner.  There’s no excuse for it other than I trusted that the local authority would do what they said they would.

Little brother’s family have been contacted and have said they are prepared to do an annual update. I really hope this will lay the foundations for direct contact in the future.