Family Connexions – Birth family support service

Your Family Connexions worker can support you in several different ways, although the main purpose of the service is to give you space to talk and share your thoughts and feelings about your child’s adoption plan. The other types of help include:

• We can help you to understand and share with you explanations to the often confusing processes of adoption, talking through each step of the process and how Family Connexions can support you at each stage.
• We can explore with you the reasons why your child(ren) was removed from your care and what steps you may wish to consider in preparation for parenting children successfully in the future. This may include referring and signposting you to other services such a mental health services, drug and alcohol services and domestic abuse services to help you manage some of your own difficulties.
• We can support you to meet your child’s adoptive parents, to prepare you for this meeting and explore the questions you may wish to ask. You will be supported after the meeting as we recognise how hard this will be for you and how overwhelming your emotions may be.
• We can support you with your letterbox exchanges with your child’s adoptive family. This can include reading and sharing the adopters' letters and helping you to know what to write back to the adopters and how to do this. If you struggle with reading and writing, we can look at different ways of you being part of the letterbox process.