How can ongoing communication benefit the child?

Host: How can ongoing communication benefit the child?

Sarah Mejac: A birthparent having access to ongoing support throughout their life is very important not just to the birthparent but also to the child, whether there is any continued communication between an adoptive family and a birth family, partly because overtime many birth parents at the time they place are in their teens or twenties or maybe early thirties and there isn t a lot of information known about a family s health issues and I know that many times birth families have medical issues that arise that they would like to share with the family for their child and that can really only be achieved if there is some ongoing communication or if communication is somewhat opened up or facilitated through the adoption agency and those are sort of crucial issues to the child that obviously as a birthparent, you continue to evolve and you continue to grow throughout your life and you realize maybe through a friends of yours that are adopted, they may not have any health information, any type of information available to them or ever be able to have access to it. So, ultimately you are going to benefit your child if there are issues that arise with your own health or with your extended family s health if you can make those available to the child and their family.