North East adoption agencies work together to digitalise family contact
North East families will now have access to a digital communication platform between adoptive and birth relatives.
Adopt North East, Adopt Coast to Coast, and Adoption Tees Valley, supported by funding through Adoption England’s Innovation Fund, have jointly launched a new digital approach to adoption contact and maintaining relationships.
The agencies have implemented the Virtual Memory Box platform, which supports safe, meaningful, and child‑centred communication between adoptive families and birth relatives.
Virtual Memory Box (VMB) is a secure, encrypted digital website, originally designed to safely store memories for children in care.
However, Regional Adoption Agencies (RAAs) in the North East recognised that the platform could be developed to also manage contact between adoptive families and birth families.
All three agencies have been using the system since the beginning of 2026, each receiving positive feedback from birth families, adoptive parents, staff and professionals about how the system has improved their experience.
The new offering replaces traditional ‘letterbox contact’ with a modern, intuitive platform that allows adoptive parents and birth relatives to exchange messages, photos, voice recordings, videos, updates, and life‑story materials in a safe, moderated environment.
Jade Stephens, Recruitment, Assessment and Support Team Manager, Adopt North East, said: "We were keen to explore digital options to offer a more reliable, easily accessible and secure system for families that could strengthen relationships between adoptive families and birth relatives.
“We can already see the long-term benefits of VMB administratively but more importantly we can see it is supporting more meaningful relationships, contributing to life story work which will benefit children and their families.