Staying In Touch

Staying in Touch: Keeping Connections Safe and Meaningful

For many adopted children, maintaining connections with birth relatives helps them feel secure, understood, and connected to their story. Staying in Touch is our service designed to support adoptive families, birth relatives, and young people in safe and positive ways.

What Staying in Touch Means
“Staying in Touch” is the term we use for all the ways adopted children can stay connected to the people who are important to them. This might include birth relatives, previous foster carers, or other significant adults. These connections are planned carefully to make sure they are safe, supported, and in the best interests of the child.

Why It Matters
Children benefit from feeling connected to the people who have been important in their lives. Maintaining these relationships can support identity, emotional well-being, and a sense of belonging.

Ways Children Stay Connected

Meeting Up Time
Face-to-face visits or phone calls between a child, their adoptive family, and birth relatives or previous foster carers. These meetings help maintain meaningful relationships in a safe and supported way.
Letter Exchange
Letters are exchanged between a child’s birth relatives and adoptive parents, either instead of, or alongside, other forms of staying in touch such as digital messages or visits.
Wish You Well Meet Up
Usually, the last family meeting before adoption is finalised. This gives children a chance for closure in a safe and positive setting, no matter what the ongoing post-adoption plan looks like.

Looking Ahead to Adulthood
When a young person turns 18, Letter Exchange becomes direct between them and their birth relatives, without involvement from adoptive parents. We contact families at 17 to explain this change. In some cases, arrangements can continue briefly beyond 18, if agreed with the young person

Support for Families
We provide guidance, advice, and emotional support to adoptive families, birth relatives, and young people throughout the process. Our goal is to ensure that all connections are positive, safe, and meaningful.

Opening hours:
Monday–Thursday: 9:30am – 4:00pm
Friday: 9:30am – 3:30pm
(Not open on Bank Holidays)

Call: 03303 550 333

Email by region:

Bristol: letterboxbristol@adoptionwest.co.uk
Gloucester: letterboxgloucester@adoptionwest.co.uk
Trowbridge: letterboxtrowbridge@adoptionwest.co.uk

Online Safety

Online Safety Advice for Parents of Adopted Children

Technology will continue to evolve, and children will continue to explore it. The goal isn’t to eliminate risk, it’s to help young people make safe, thoughtful choices online while knowing they can turn to trusted adults for support.

For adoptive families, online safety is closely connected to identity, relationships, and belonging in the digital world. With the right guidance, children can learn to use technology safely, confidently, and positively.

Why Online Safety Is Important for Adoptive Families

Children who have experienced adoption or foster care may interact with digital spaces differently from their peers. Online platforms can raise questions about identity, birth family connections, and personal history.

Some common situations include:

Searching online for birth family information
Receiving unexpected messages or friend requests
Sharing personal information without understanding the long-term impact
Encountering content that raises questions about identity or family relationships

Supporting children to navigate these experiences safely is a key part of digital safeguarding in adoptive families.

Practical Online Safety Tips for Adoptive Parents

Keep communication open and supportive

Show interest in what your children are doing online, have open conversations, including your use of social media. Children are more likely to ask for help when they know they won’t get into trouble.

Use parental controls alongside trust

Privacy settings, filters, and screen-time controls can support online safety, particularly for younger children, but conversation remains the most effective tool.

Keep adoption-related personal information private

Help children understand why certain details about their history, identity, or family should not be shared publicly online.

Talk about unexpected contact online

Encourage children to speak to you about messages, friend requests, or interactions with people they don’t know offline.

Use parental controls alongside trust

Privacy settings, filters, and screen-time controls can support online safety, particularly for younger children, but conversation remains the most effective tool, partiuclarly if your child enocunters content that is not intended for them.

Know where to get online safety support

Trusted organisations can help parents and carers respond to online concerns quickly and confidently.

Supporting Positive Digital Experiences for Adopted Children

While parents can rocognise the challenges, and potential risks, of interacting with the online world, it is also important to acknowledge it provides the oppurtunity for education, connection, support, and community.

Healthy digital engagement can:

Reduce isolation for adopted children
Help young people connect with peers
Provide access to adoption-aware communities
Encourage creativity and learning

Adoption UK’s Empowering Use of Social Media guide provides practical advice for maintaining safe boundaries while benefiting from online connections.