Dear Rosieflowerbloom,
I am so sorry to read about your experience. I am very impressed about how you have handled it!
While I understand that human errors happen, the way the college handled the situation is truly unprofessional and unlawful.
Further recommendations:
1) I would contact health services and other services involved with your family and ensure that they make a note of birth family knowing your child’s full details and they may attempt to call and request more details and ensure that nothing is disclosed to them (in case that the birth family decides to call around to find out more information).
2) I would also contact your local Local Safeguarding Children Board/Safeguarding Partners. It is their responsibility to ensure that all organisations in their area safeguard children – I think that they would benefit from being aware of this breach so that they can ensure that it does not happen in the future elsewhere but I also wonder if they would be able to signpost you to other bodies/provide some sort of further assistance.
3) If you have photos of the birth family members, you may consider giving them to practitioners working closely with your family so that they keep an eye whether your children are approached by them.
4) It is absolutely crucial that you are informed about when, how and what exactly was disclosed to the birth family so that you could put safeguarding measures in place accordingly without any further delay; you wrote that they disclosed the names and address but given the college's attitude, there might be something else. This is what I would request from your local social services - can they contact the college and request this information so that a safety plan to safeguard your daugthers can be put in place accordingly?
5) In terms of the well-being of your daughter (I am sure you have considered/implemented them already but will list them anyway):
- I would complete a safety plan with her in terms of what she needs to do should she be approached by any of her birth family members.
- I would tell her about all the steps which other people have taken to protect her.
- I would reassure her that everything is OK and make sure that she is no longer exposed to me making further enquiries regarding this so she feels like everything has been handeled already.
- It's so nice that she felt comfortable to leave the letter for you - I would tell her that she can do so anytime or suggest other ways how she can tell me about her feelings/worries (letter, special notebook/diary, text me etc.).
- Once the intial emotions have passed, I would revisit how she feels about meeting her family to ensure that she is not telling me only what I want to hear (ie. she does not want to have anything to do them) due to her loyalty to me - she may be actually curious about them etc. If this brings out many issues for her, I would contact Adoption Support Service and ask if they could complete some work on Lifestory or provide whatever other support she may require.
