LAS COMUNAS

It is important to emphasise that what is being spoken of here are forms of direct face-to-face contact. The case review and the interviews and focus groups confirmed prior research findings (Neil, 2018) that indirect contact was widely accepted as conventional practice post-adoption. As a barrister commented:

I mean you tend to find that local authorities will argue and the courts will accept that your identity needs can be met by way of indirect letterbox contact. You know, you’ll know who you are, the family you’ve come from and you’ll get an idea of that without having to see family members face-to-face. (Barrister 1)

40 Re C (A Minor) (Adoption Order: Conditions) [1989] AC 1, Lord Ackner at para 18 (emphasis added).

The judgment in a recent case is an example of conventional judicial thinking and expectations:

I wish to stress that I am deeply conscious in this case, as in most cases involving adoption, that C and his sisters are likely to outlive most or all other relatives connected with them, and that the legal effect of adoption would be to sever lifelong the legal relationship between them. They would, however, be brought up with continuing indirect contact and knowledge of each other, and the capacity to resume a social and emotional relationship in adulthood if they wished. (Kirklees Council v LS, TL [2018] EWFC 12, Holman J, at para 45)

The approach here reflects the government guidance which emphasises that in adoption:

…all concerned need to understand that the purpose of any such contact, if it is to take place, is fundamentally different from contact that would normally be arranged between children in care and their families. (DoE, 2013, para 7.8)

While indirect contact can take different forms, what is emphasised is not so much ongoing contact but factual knowledge of and life-story work; the direct/indirect binary often reflecting a distinction between the present (childhood) and future (adulthood). This is especially the case where siblings had no prior actual relationship, as one solicitor noted:

It keeps the door open, you know, so it maintains a degree of relationship, just an awareness of the fact that this person exists and an avenue that if they get to an age where they decide that they want to look up their family they can. (Solicitor 9)

From the perspective of an older sibling the benefit of indirect contact was described by a solicitor in minimal terms as simply being that, ‘they have a reassurance that their sibling is…I guess at the most basic level they’re still alive’. (Solicitor 9)

One of our young advisers indicated the complexity of the message this sent to young people:

Well it’s like kind of as well they’re kind of throwing away like an opportunity of finding a solution to this because the way they see it is well once they turn 18, the child that’s adopted can then make contact with birth family but…they’ve already had major life without that sibling that’s been in foster care so it’s kind of discouraging that kind of contact anyway…you’re just kind of pushing something under the rug and hoping something happens in like a couple of years’ time when it’s not their kind of responsibility really.

(YPPG2)

Others in the group similarly commented on how confusing it might be:

It will affect him, yeah, because he’ll know that he’s got all this other family that he’s not part of. (YPPG2) Because he’ll be in school and people will be going on going, ‘Oh yeah, my sister got me this’… ‘I went to this place with my sister’. ‘Me and my brother’s done this, that and the other’, then he’s going to be sat there like ‘I’m aware I’ve got brothers and sisters but I don’t actually’. (YPPG1)

In the legal analysis in placement for adoption proceedings, a judge noted that: ‘I can mitigate the loss by having indirect contact, life story work and so-on’ (Judge 2). But at the same time concerns were raised about their being ‘insufficient analysis of…the pros and cons of direct or indirect contact’ (Solicitor 6). As a social worker noted:

if the plan is for adoption it’s a kind of almost like a script where it’s, you know, yes, indirect contact of three times a year, photographs, birthday cards. It’s almost like oh right, yes, I’ll put that in that one so it’s cut and paste. (Social Worker South Focus Group)

In the context of social media there was a lack of clarity about what type of contact it represented:

I don’t know, is it direct or indirect contact, I’m not sure really?…It’s indirect because if you’re using social media you’re…I mean I don’t use social media so I’m a complete luddite when it comes to something like that but it tends to be by messaging rather than by visual, doesn’t it?…It’s an area that the court cannot regulate. (Judge 4)

We discussed this with our young advisers and they expressed a similar ambivalence about how to categorise forms of technological contact.

92 Siblings, contact and the law: an overlooked relationship? Full Report

I don’t know how to describe it but like if you hugged them and all that so there’s that like emotional bond and like when it’s just Facetime and that, it kind of takes the great qualities of like meeting up with someone away. (YPPG2)

…when you think about it, like indirect without face-to-face, isn’t it, so like technically it is indirect but then the message is going straight to that person so technically it is direct. (YPPG 2)

One solicitor appeared to suggest that it was a form of direct contact, contrasting it with letter-box contact.

I think I’ve seen care plans actually that say if the children are far away, you know, that must be at least a Skype conversation every couple of weeks and so, yeah, I’ve certainly seen that but in terms of social media in terms of the older children and the adopted children we don’t…We just try and keep it to letterbox. (Solicitor 3)

A solicitor noted that social media resulted in pictures sometimes no longer being included as a form of indirect contact, because of the potential risks attached.

That’s why everyone’s reluctant or a lot of people are reluctant for this to include photos. The idea that that would give a… make it easier to trace someone via social media. It is something that generates a lot of… I guess a lot of concern about people tracking people down. Again, even in the relatively short time I’ve been doing this, it used to be quite routine for the indirect contact to include photos and now the opposite is true, it almost invariably doesn’t and the reason that’s cited is for, you know, the risk of identification, security placement sort of thing. (Solicitor 9)

Similarly a judge noted at the ‘celebration of adoption’ hearings at court: ‘in the standard invitation that we send out, we routinely advise not to post photographs of the child on social networking sites because you are running a risk’ (Judge 4).