1) Foster and Adopted children need to know their life story. As they get older, it is important for them to know the sadder elements and the real reasons they were taken away or separated from their birth parents. It is imporant for them to know the problems their parents faced and that this is often not their fault.

2) Don’t accept the fact there is 100% anonymity or secrecy online. It is not possible to contractually guarantee this as technologies and sites change with time. Remeber that social media sites and other internet sites are not subject to the same privacy rules as adoption agencies, foster care agencies or child protective services.

3) Even if an adoption or foster care file is sealed, some children still remember identifying information (such as their parents names) about their birth relatives or previous family members from when they were younger. All it make take for the child who remembers to find and contact their parents may be a simple search of Google, LinkedIn, or Facebook!

4) Even if a child’s name is changed, a search of a know. Buddies friends list and looking and matching their picture may be enough to find their new name. Photo regonition searches may also lead to revealing this as well.

5) Remember internet contact is instant and unscripted. You will not have a confidential intermediary, a social worker scripting the conversation, or counseling if you choose to use the internet or social media to reunite.

6) Know what options you have if internet contact becomes unwanted or abusive. These include blocking the person online, changing your phone number or email address, deleting your social media account, contacting post adoption support, getting a restraining order, calling the police, moving, and others. Please note that any identifying information that has already been shared, entered a persons long term memory, or is stored offline or in private cloud storage cannot be erased. Each of these options restores a different level of privacy, but chances are you will not be able to get full secret surname anonymity back with any of them. Plus many of these will require the youth to make the decision to do or not.

7) If a youth decides to meet a birth relative in person before they are 18, encourage them to do research and see if the person is safe to meet or not. Meeting in a public place when it is busy with supervision is the safest way to meet if you don’t know. For low risk relatives that are very nice to the child, coming to Each other’s home could be safe. Adoptive parents need to guide in helping the youth make good decisions.

8) Adoptive parents need to take an active role and offer to search with the child to build a stronger bond to prevent breakdowns.

9) False death stories should not be told to a child’s brothers and sisters to hide the truth that the siblings were separated by the child welfare system and or adopted into other families. Instead the actual truth should be told and when possible the siblings given each other’s contact info when possible and safe to do so.

10) Older adopted children should be given more say into contact and options over than letterbox if desired if they want to say in touch with lower risk birth relatives.

11) Each case of a young person making contact with birth relatives before 18 should be handled on a case by case basis. If the relative is high risk, social worker intervention or restraining orders may be nessecary. If on the other hand it is a low risk relative and the relationship is turning out positive for the adopted child, the best option may be to let the non-letterbox method of contact continue and allow the child normal visitation. Social workers and adoptive parents need to consider the years in between if anything changed with the relative.

12) Social workers should offer to set up supervised visitation when a youth wants to visit their parent and it is a high risk situation. This might be better than the youth doing it alone.

13) Adoption agencies should be promoting open adoptions over closed ones as the norm. Even if one is closed doesn’t mean a young person can’t open it with an online search.

14) Parents should put the computers in a public place in the home, and supervise children online especially younger children.

15) Realize that children may access the internet in places outside the home and search in secret including at schools, libraries, coffee shops, stores, cyber cafes, on smart phones, and others. Sometimes an adult or a social worker might not find out a child has made contact with birth relatives till after it happens. In these cases offer to help, not panic or punish and encourage dialog about how it is going for the child.