Membership Scheme

Reasoning

With many years experience of providing intermediary services to adopted adults and their families, the North East Post Adoption Services has built up a considerable amount of personal data regarding people touched by the adoption experience who are actively searching for birth relatives, this includes siblings, grand parents, aunts, uncles and many significant others.

Given this predicament it was decided to create a Database and move away from the present manual system for controlling personal data. The main reason for this is that it was becoming apparent that as the volume of data grew the likelihood of missing a match, or making an error also increased and is now thought to be too much of a risk and something should be done to alleviate this growing problem. At anyone time approximately 60% of our total client base is awaiting some form of reunion to take place but obviously there are many reasons why reunions in any format sometimes do not take place as quickly as some people would like.

Given the reasons outlined above, NEPAS in line with their constitutional document decided to create a membership scheme that would allow parties belonging to adoption triangle to periodically access the database and for others to join the database through the Electronic Membership Form

Information about Members Section

This section has been created to help and advise adoptees and members of their families who are aged 18 and over, who are part of the adoption community and have taken an informed decision (for example received Section 51 advice) to undertake a search and in some cases reunions with birth relatives and others. It contains services that as independent discrete post adoption providers we have identified that people continually requested, usually advice and information.

There are several core services open to our members:

Adoption Data Base Of People Tracing (ADOPT).
We have created a purpose built in house database. This database has grown continually over the last four years and now contains the names of many families and individuals who are searching for birth relatives. It was originally for the people of the North East but as time has progressed we now hold names of adoption communities worldwide. This database will be checked continually for matches as new entries are made.

File Finder for England and Wales.
This is in map format and has been designed to help people both at home and abroad who have limited geographical knowledge of where their adoption records maybe. It has a series of pop ups giving information on both past and present adoption agencies and societies and where the records may be found and in some cases, sadly where no records exist. Members may add their knowledge to the File Finder section for members to share.

Message Board.
The message board allows people to seek advice from adoptees/birth relatives who have already carried out a search. Over the years we have notice that people spend huge resources tracing and searching. Often as not someone has already carried out a similar search and is quite willing to share this experience. Obviously because of the sensitive nature of the information exchanged moderators will examine the messages to offer security to all members. Any member who tries to infringe on the confidentiality of another member or acts in a manner that could harm another member of the community will have their membership revoked. The reason for revocation will be explained to them in full. It is envisage that this message board will be especially helpful to adopted people now living abroad.

Advisory information
From years of post adoption work with adults we have built up a range of tools and advice to help the adoption community. This section will provide you with sample tracing letters for sending to families and organisations As the site develops this section will grow.

Audio Narratives
This will link members to NEPAS' audio narrative site that gives personal accounts of peoples search and reunions to listen to.

Links and PDF files
This section contains useful links, information and documentation that can help the adoption community and will be regularly updated.

Note: The members section has been created by listening to the many clients who have used our post S51 adoption services and the recognition that the needs of the community seeking support may not be met in general as the immediate task far outweighs the services available at present. Hopefully this modern interactive post S51 services will go some way to meeting the needs of many millions of people globally who wish to know a little more about their birth and adopted backgrounds.