What is contact?

If a child is living with a foster family or their adoptive family, it could be very important for them to keep in touch with their birth family, even if they don't live with them. Contact is the word that social workers and other adults use for keeping in touch.

This book tells the stories of different children who have been adopted or fostered, and what they do to have contact with different people in their birth families - some write, some telephone, some send emails, and one of them even sends a video! Children can also keep in touch by sending text messages or making audio cassette recordings. Others may only have "letterbox" contact with their birth family while some may have "face to face" meetings.

The booklet explains how contact orders are made and describes visits and meetings and making arrangements for contact. Simple questions will help children separated from birth relatives to work out what contact may mean for them and how they would like to keep in touch - for 'keeping in touch is a life-long task' (last page).

What is contact? follows the same clear, colourful format as our other guides for children (Adoption: what it is and what it means, Fostering: what it is and what it means, What happens in court and What is a disability?).