Teenagers are receiving the messages without knowing the background to their adoption. Photograph: Dave Parker / Alamy/Alamy
The natural parents of adopted children are increasingly using Facebook and
other social networking sites to track down their offspring, flouting
the usual controls and safeguards.
Adoption agencies are reporting huge numbers of calls from "deeply distressed" adoptive parents whose children have been contacted out of the blue.
Jonathan Pearce, chief executive of Adoption UK, said it was having to deal with
the consequences of this "intrusive and unplanned communication", and
warned that it was becoming more difficult to guarantee confidentiality
to adoptive parents and their children.
At the moment, official contact in adoption is most often made through the "letterbox" process.
The adoptive parents send the birth family
a letter and photos every year via a social worker or adoption agency
intermediary. If the birth parent wants to respond, they also have to
go through this route.
However, Facebook and other social networking sites have changed all this. Any scrap of information – a
name, location or date of birth – can help biological parents track
down their children.
But the agencies warn that the existing rules protect often extremely vulnerable children. Where once adoption
tended to involve a young, single woman giving up her unplanned baby,
now two-thirds of adopted children have been removed because their
parents abused or neglected them. In many cases, the birth parents
dispute the removal, blaming social services. One message sent to a
child given up some years ago for adoption read: "Hello, I'm your birth
father. I have been searching for you ever since you were stolen by
social services. You look beautiful. I love you so much."
Another read: "Darling son, I am so happy because I have found you here. I have
been looking for ages. Please write back because you've been told lies
about me." Many local authorities are now advising adoptive parents not
to include photographs in their annual letters, in case these are
posted online in an attempt to trace the child.
In a report to be broadcast on Channel 4 News tonight, one adoptive mother said a message to her daughter from the
biological mother had had a catastrophic impact on the family. The
adoptive mother, who cannot be identified, said: "Our daughter, who is
our prime concern, has gone from no contact from her birth family, at
the hands of whom she had a difficult start in life, to suddenly
finding they are there at the press of a button."
Her daughter had just turned 16 when she received the message in February.
She is due to sit her GCSEs shortly, but her adoptive mother said she
had gone through a whole range of emotions and that it had "completely
thrown her".
The natural mother failed to acknowledge why her daughter had been removed from the family at the age of seven. "She was
subjected to abuse and neglect over a long period of time," said her
adoptive mother. "But none of that is being acknowledged now."
In another case, a teenage girl was contacted by her biological mother
who, in turn, put her in touch with her birth father. The girl was
unaware that the man had sexually abused her when she was a young
child. The report also cites the case of the adoptive father of one
teenage boy who went to meet his birth father after contact was made
through Facebook. The boy had been removed from his family because of
severe physical abuse when he was a baby.
There are no reliable estimates of how many children have been contacted using social
networking sites. But agencies are so concerned that next month the
British Association for Adoption and Fostering is to send out new
guidance to social workers and adoptive parents.
Dr John Simmonds, the BAAF's director of policy, research and development, said
the guidelines recognise that Facebook and other social networking
sites are here to stay. "We will have to build them into the fabric of
our adoption practice and re-emphasise the importance of children
knowing why they were placed for adoption and the circumstances of the
birth parents," Dr Simmonds said. "There is nothing we can say to the
social networking sites."
Chris Smith, whose children were adopted seven years ago, said he uses social networking sites to
"follow them through life", although he has not sent any messages.
Smith, who believes his children were unfairly adopted, said he wanted
to know about their wellbeing. The annual letter does not tell you
about their health or interests, he said.
"Because I know where they are, I can just sit and see some of the photos of their school and of events and know they are doing OK," he explained.
Some agencies now ask birth parents to sign contracts prohibiting them from
using social networking sites to make contact. The adoptive mother to
whom the Observer spoke said that when she contacted social
services for advice they told her to stop their daughter from using
social networking sites. "I told them that I did not believe I could do
that because she would run away. I can cut back some contact, but not
all," she said.
Normally the girl would not have been able to meet her biological family until she was 18. Because of the unexpected
contact, her adoptive family is being forced to explore the option of a
formal meeting with the birth parents. The mother said this was "far
from ideal", but the "genie was out of the bottle".
■ Facebook is expected to introduce changes to its privacy settings as early as this
week following attacks by regulators and campaign groups, who claim it
has failed to ensure users' privacy.
Those briefed at Facebook's headquarters in the US say the company is to introduce a "master
control" that would simplify users' privacy settings. Users would then
be able to choose which groups of people they wished to share
information with – everyone, friends of friends or just friends. This
would replace the current automatic system that shares users'
information with third parties and has been criticised for being
over-complicated and confusing.
For the full report see Channel 4 News tonight at 6.30pm
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