Couldn’t agree more Ruth! I’m both an adopter & a social worker and am currently hoping to make arrangements for direct contact with my daughters’ birth family as letterbox contact just isn’t working for her. Or any of us! But the professional resistance to this is huge and trying to pick apart what is genuine, evidenced concern and what is just professional bias / assumption is hard. Well done to you for negotiating your way through that. I’m looking forward to reaching that point & getting some meaningful face-to-face contact for my daughter & her very much missed Mum.

Don’t be humble, I think you’re dead right.
Thanks & good luck.

Hi Debbie. All three of us have worked as child and family practitioners and between us have considerable experience of arranging, managing, assessing and supervising contact for children in care. One of the authors is also a current foster carer. Your experience sounds tough and I’m aware that carers are often the people who have to respond when a child is distressed before or after contact. I agree with a view that contact should be in a child’s interests. I take issue with universal positions that presume contact should never happen, including in families where there has been physical and sexual abuse. Where contact is dangerous or damaging, or where a child clearly and consistently indicates they do not want it, there is no argument that it should not happen. However it is often not as simple as that. We know that some children in foster care retain strong emotional ties to their birth families and long to see them despite having had negative experiences, including abuse, while in their birth family’s care and no contact can be harder for some children to manage than having contact, even difficult contact. Some children need to know they have their birth family’s permission to move on before they can settle and commit to a long-term placement. Some need to hear that abuse they were subject to was not their fault and it may be particularly important for the child to hear this from the person who abused them. In such situations any potential contact needs to be closely assessed to ensure that it will be safe. And, birth families, children and carers need to be well supported before, during and after contact for it to work well. Even with such support not all birth families will be able to give children the messages they need to hear. But some can, and do. So I don’t think universal prescriptions on contact – either way – are helpful.

It is also way past the time when stone age U.K. adoption practice re contact should have changed. About 30 years past the time.