It may take place in a contact centre, a public place or at the home of the foster carer, birth parents or another member of the birth family. Is all contact between children in care and their birth parents ‘good’ contact? “The foster child is not an isolated being. Although face-to-face meetings with their birth family and other important relationships may have continued for a few children in foster care during the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions, the vast majority of contact that took place was by using virtual means – video-link, … If you have contact with the birth family, it may be helpful to have a conversation with the birth family before the visit to fill them in on things going on in the child’s life, foster conversation between them … Contact plans for children in adoption and long‐term foster care are decided on a case‐by‐case basis, as directed by the paramountcy principle in the Children Act (1989). This yielded some recent papers which were incorporated into the discussion. Introduction 1 1.1 Purpose and scope of this paper 1 1.2 Methods 2 2. "Intensive contact with birth parents: implications for the emotional development of infants and young children placed in foster care." Parent-child visiting and shared parenting are a natural fit. Your child is in a new environment, and they finally have a permanent home — but now it’s possible that they’re ready to maintain a relationship with their biological parents or other family members. Foster parents are not only a huge support to a child, but also to that child’s birth parents. Professionally supervised contact is a limited resource. Social Media : Thanks to social media, like Facebook, this is another world of contact that social workers must keep in mind and possibly monitored. 1. An open, encouraging relationship with birth parents is one of the best gifts a foster parent can give to their foster child. As Kate, a mother whose child spent time in foster care, explains in the box below, contact between foster and birth parents—including contact during visitation—can sometimes blossom into relationships that help parents make the changes needed to reunify their families. History of ‘contact’ in foster care 3 2.1 Impact of the new contact order powers on resources 4 2.2 Debates between the legal and welfare professions 4 3. A study of supported and supervised contact centres in England and Wales found that: Today, learn more about maintaining openness after an adoption from foster care. Foster parents may also have to monitor the amount of time the child is on the phone with birth family. The idea that birth family contact helps children resolve issues around attachment, separation and loss, and identity is prevalent in social work practice. as contact/access, birth family/parents, foster care/family/parents, and attachment. Contact Between Adoptive and Birth Families: Perspectives From the Minnesota Texas Adoption Research Project Grotevant, McRoy, Wrobel, & Ayers-Lopez (2014) Provides findings from a study on the dynamics of relationships among birth parents, adoptive parents, and adopted children based upon the level of contact. “Foster care is service and ministry to a whole family,” said Latham.