Adopt North East has replaced letterbox contact with a secure site where birth and adoptive families share messages and photos. Checked November 2026.

Adopted children’s families and birth relatives in North Tyneside can now keep in touch through a secure website, in place of the traditional letterbox contact system.

Adopt North East, the adoption agency for North Tyneside Council and four other councils, has been using the platform since the beginning of 2026. It is called Virtual Memory Box, or VMB.

Adopt Coast to Coast and Adoption Tees Valley use it too. The three regional agencies launched it jointly, with funding from Adoption England’s Innovation Fund. They describe it as one of the largest regional rollouts of digital contact in the UK.

What the system does

The agencies call letterbox contact “often slow, inconsistent, and administratively heavy”. They say VMB is secure, encrypted and moderated.

Adoptive parents and birth relatives can use it to exchange:

  • messages
  • photos
  • voice recordings
  • videos
  • updates
  • life-story materials

Close friends and previous carers can also use it to keep up their relationship with a child or young person.

The system sends birth relatives automatic prompts reminding them when they can upload an update. All of this can be done on a mobile phone, so nobody needs a laptop or PC.

VMB was originally designed to store memories safely for children in care. The North East agencies saw that it could also manage contact between adoptive and birth families. Adopt North East ran a pilot with VMB, then the three agencies carried on developing a bespoke system together.

“Birth family members engaging for the first time”

Jade Stephens, Recruitment, Assessment and Support Team Manager at Adopt North East, said: “We worked with the team at Virtual Memory Box on a pilot to see how their software could benefit adoptees and their families. We knew that our current processes for maintaining relationships could be improved. 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. We’ve had some birth family members engaging for the first time, feeding back that they find VMB more accessible than ‘traditional letterbox’.

“Because of how the system has been designed and the ongoing support of the VMB team we are able to adjust the system to families’ different needs. This has resulted in contact that is more reliable, consistent and dynamic for many families than we have seen previously.”

The agencies also shared feedback from people using it, without naming them.

One adoptive parent said: “I think the message option will be much easier to use. I like being able to confirm I have received birth mother’s update and let her know I will reply as planned so she is not just waiting.”

A birth mother said: “It (VMB) is good. It was easy to log on using my phone and I could see photos and my letter.”

The announcement does not say how many families are using the system or how much money came from the Innovation Fund.

What it means for you

Adopt North East’s main office is at Quadrant West on Cobalt Business Park, and its training room is at the Linskill Centre in North Shields. The other councils in the partnership are Gateshead, Newcastle, Northumberland and South Tyneside.

If you are a birth relative, the agency’s Family Connections service offers advice about your rights, a support worker and an in-person support group for birth parents. Call 0191 643 5099 or email familyconnections@adoptne.org.uk.

If you are thinking about adopting, you do not have to live in one of the five council areas. The agency says it considers applications from anyone over 21, with no upper age limit. Call 0191 643 5000 or visit adoptnortheast.org.uk.

The agency’s website says it approved 59 adopters in 2024 to 2025, more than any other adoption agency in the North East. It placed 75 children that year, 13 of them starting as Early Permanence placements. We checked those figures on 5 November 2026.