A North East digital innovation that’s already transforming the lives of children in care is now expanding nationwide to support thousands more young people and families.
Following a successful pilot with Adopt North East, Virtual Memory Box is now being rolled out to Regional Adoption Agencies (RAAs) across the country, helping adopted children, birth families, and adoptive families safely stay connected and maintain meaningful communication.
Virtual Memory Box, a tool that keeps memories safe and secure, is already working with local authorities across England to support life story work with children in care.
Adopt North East is the largest adoption agency in the North East. Since it was set up in 2018, it has found hundreds of forever families for children and supported over a thousand adoptive families.
Jade Stephens, Recruitment, Assessment and Support Team Manager, Adopt North East, said,
“Letters can now be uploaded directly by adoptive and birth family members, removing delay and supporting a more modern approach to building and maintaining relationships. Letters form part of a child’s life story, with the memories and updates included within these sitting alongside any photos, videos etc uploaded by their adoptive family. This offers a much more coherent life story for a child to access, with memories being stored safely.
“Professionals found the system easy to set up and use. We also had helpful feedback from adoptive parents who could see the benefits and birth family members have been very positive overall around the ease of logging in and viewing and uploading memories and updates. Many have spoken about how they prefer receiving their letters on VMB, with some birth family members engaging for the first time in exchanges after accessing the system.
“We can really see the long term benefits of VMB both administratively but also in supporting more meaningful relationships and life story work which will benefit children and their families.”
Christian Brock, Virtual Memory Box MD said,
“We are delighted at the success of this pilot with Adopt North East – our aim to is make Virtual Memory Box as accessible and useful for as many looked after children and their carers as possible. We are working with many local authorities across the country to make it easy for young people in care, and the adults in their life, to keep precious memories safe and secure. Now, to be working with Adopt North East and other RAAs nationwide is the next logical and exciting step in our journey.”
https://www.adoptnortheast.org.uk
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