Adoption: About Birth Families

Before adoption takes place, birth families will have been fully consulted about the care plans for their children and will have been invited to share their wishes and feelings at reviews about their children.  Decisions about contact with birth families will be part of the child’s Permanency Plan. 

Research has found that it is usually best for children to maintain contact with their birth families in some way, either directly through face-to-face contact or indirectly through letters, photos and cards.  Contact arrangements could include grandparents and siblings as well as parents. Any contact arrangements will take account of the needs of a child and can therefore change over time.    

Support and preparation training is provided to adopters to help them with maintaining contact with birth families.  Sometimes the adoption service will facilitate contact. Wirral Adoption Service has a ‘letterbox’ service so that private addresses are not shared when this will be in the child’s best interests. 

The adoption service ensures that independent counselling is made available to birth families when their children are placed for adoption.  We know it is sometimes very difficult for birth parents to agree to place their children for adoption, and some never agree with the plan for adoption but, where possible, we work hard to enable them to make positive contributions to future contact arrangements for the sake of the children’s future welfare.