“I think it’s important to hear personal experiences” – Cassie, keynote speaker and adopted person

Join us for our 25th anniversary conference and join a lively day of discussion and learning about how to support contact with birth relatives for children in adoption, fostering and kinship care.

The aims of the conference will be:

• to share the experience of what works well in contact, from the perspectives of the child, young person, birth family and adoptive parents/carers
• to provide a framework and practical advice on how contact can be managed, supported and improved, so that the needs of the child remain at the centre of the process
• to explore the importance of contact in child development
• to navigate fears around contact and complex relationships.

Learning outcomes

The conference will enable you to:

• increase your knowledge of how to support and improve meaningful contact arrangements at each stage of a child’s development –  integrating different aspects of a child/young person’s identity
• feel confident to navigate the benefits and challenges contact presents
• understand the purpose of contact and its significance in shaping a child’s sense of safety, their attachments and identity
• understand the experiences of all parties and the frameworks that support this vital aspect of care.

A Good Practice Guide – Contact for children who are fostered, in special guardianship/kinship care placements or adopted: Family Futures Framework © Family Futures 2023, October 2023, will be available free of charge to all conference attendees.

Programme:

09:00-09:30 – Register/Create profiles/Network

Session 1

09:30-09:40 – Introduction by Alan Burnell OBE and Jay Vaughan MBE (co-founders of Family Futures)

25 years of Family Futures exploring the use of contact as a therapeutic intervention

This introduction to the Family Futures’ 25 year conference will briefly outline our learning from supporting families with contact over the years and considerations for achieving the best outcomes for children and young people.

Keynote - Dee and Cassie

Dee is an adoptive mother who is also an adult integrative arts psychotherapist and has worked for many years at Family Futures. Dee and her daughter Cassie, an adopted young adult, will talk about their experiences of adoption and the role that contact has played, highlighting both the challenges, the benefits and what has helped along the way.

Session 2

11:00-11:45 – Family Futures framework for Facilitated Contact by Sue Hughes

Sue Hughes is an experienced social worker and integrative arts child psychotherapist at Family Futures who is a well-known trainer and consultant in this field.

Sue will outline the meaning of Facilitated contact and explore one family’s experience of the Family Futures approach through interviews with an adoptee, her adoptive parents and her birth mother.

11:45-12:30 – Group discussion and live podcast facilitated by Sue Hughes

Join us  a special live recording of the Family Futures podcast. The Contact in Context conference and Family Futures podcast share the goal of amplifying, educating, and informing.

During this episode, the our expert by experience panel, consisting of Alison, Daniel, Helen, Julia, Michelle, and Matt, will reflect on the morning’s keynote speeches and respond to questions from our virtual audience. Sue Hughes will facilitate this unique discussion, which will be recorded live.

After the conference, the podcast episode will be available for streaming on The Family Futures Podcast. You can find the full program for the day on our website.

13:30-14:30 Workshop session 1 (Choose from Workshops 1-4)

15:00-16:00 Workshop session 2 (Choose from Workshops 1-4)

Workshop One: Sibling Facilitated Contact

This workshop will be presented by Julia, an adopted young person, and Jay Vaughan MBE, Clinical lead, with Karlien Smith-Claassens, Senior Child & Adolescent Psychotherapist from Family Futures.

The workshop will begin with Julia talking about her experience of sibling contact that was facilitated as part of her life story work and how life story and contact went hand in hand. Julia will also give an update on her ongoing relationship with her siblings and how this has supported her own sense of identity and her place in the world.

Jay will also discuss the role of the therapist in this process and how sibling contact needs to be facilitated and supported.

Main themes and discussion points:

• The pre-existing relationships between siblings and the impact of abuse on sibling relationships, such as scapegoating and parentification, and how to address this in the preparation for contact
• Supporting the other siblings and their needs and how to meet them
• Preparation of siblings during the contact process
• Facilitation of the sibling contact
• Follow up

There will also be an opportunity for questions and discussion.

Workshop Two – Facilitating contact between birth parents and children – a practical framework for contact

This workshop will be presented by Sue Hughes, a Social Worker and Integrative Arts Psychotherapist, and Stephen Mulley, OT and Dance Movement Therapist at Family Futures.

Sue Hughes will begin the presentation with a short, shared activity. She will then move on to talk about the research into what makes good contact and how to provide a developmental framework for facilitating ‘good contact’, that is meaningful for children and young people contact, in the context of trauma, and how key this is for identity building and the long-term mental health of the child and young person

Sue will talk about the role of the therapists in this process, share tools and approaches that are used and how the re-connection and the facilitated contact are supported.

Main themes and discussion points :

• The preparation of all parties for reunion and contact
• The facilitation of the reunion and contact
• Follow up post the contact and therapeutic support

There will also be an opportunity for questions and discussion. 

Workshop Three – How to respond when children make contact online without their adoptive parents/carers prior knowledge.

This workshop will be presented by Alison, an adoptive parent and GP, along with Alan Burnell OBE, co-founder of Family Futures, and Michael Kerman, Child Psychotherapist at Family Futures.

The workshop will begin with Alison talking about her family’s recent experience of her daughter making contact online with both of her birth parents, without Alison’s prior knowledge, and how she and her husband with the help of professionals managed to unscramble the situation.

Alan Burnell and Michael will then talk about the role of the therapist or social worker in managing this complex situation.

Main themes and discussion points:

• when there is no time for life story work before contact to put the relationships in context
• how to gain the positive participation of all parties
• the facilitation of the reunion and contact
• follow up post the contact, and therapeutic support

There will also be an opportunity for questions and discussion.

Workshop Four – Contact in Kinship Care

This workshop will be presented by Geoff Hudson, Social Worker at Family Futures, with an interview with Michelle Hall, a special guardian,  speaking about her research in this area, her experience of contact, and the challenges involved.

Geoff Hudson will talk about the value of ongoing contact with birth parents where there is no framework and no facilitation. He will reflect upon what, with hindsight, might have been helpful had there been some intervention to facilitate the contact. Geoff will also talk about how the lessons learned from facilitated contact in adoption can be applied to kinship care and fostering in general, with the principle of contact meeting the developmental needs of the child remaining paramount.

Main themes and discussion points:

• The quality of the relationship between the carers and the birth parent
• Addressing any feelings of guilt, responsibility or anger because of the child’s early experiences
• Addressing different narratives that the child may hold, or variations in the narrative between birth parents and kinship carers about the child’s early experiences and relationships
• Achieving clarity about the objectives of contact for the child
• Thinking about support available in the system for both the carer and birth parent

16:05-16:30 – Pulling it all together underlining the key issues, as Family Futures sees them, that surround contact arrangements –  by Jay Vaughan MBE

• the need for facilitated contact in any context
• contact as an integral part of therapeutic life story work
• the primary aim of contact is to help the developmental needs of the child by increasing their sense of safety, reducing their self blame and sense of responsibility for what has gone on in the past, strengthening their attachments to their primary carers and helping them to develop a positive sense of identity that is integrated and real
• creating a contact process that changes and adapts at different developmental stages but is always supported
• all participants need support so that contact can be a positive experience for all concerned

Closing Q&A