family
routes
Annual Report:
FAMILY ROUTES
2023

Foreword- Chair
In 2023 Family Routes continued to build and consolidate its Board Membership. One
member, Elizabeth Shaw, concluded her time with the Board in November 2023. A
further member is in process of introduction. This pending member has personal
experience of adoption and has used Family Routes, services in the past.
Since being appointed as Interim Chair in June 2022 my priority continues to be the
reconstruction of the Board with the appropriate skills and knowledge to meet our
current operating climate including particular economic challenges in the funding
environment. Elizabeth Shaw concluded her time with the Board in November 2023
and I would like to take this opportunity to thank Liz for her guidance and expertise
during her time on the Family Routes Board.
The number of Trustees has increased to six with two further potential Trustees
identified, one of whom has personal experience of adoption and has used Family
Routes, services in the past.
My knowledge and experience of the quality of the services offered by Family Routes
and the contemporary challenges to those services is growing and l am impressed not
only by the humanity of the work but also by the innovation in service development.
As Chair once again l extend my thanks to staff who put the beneficiaries at the heart
of everything they do. l also want to thank our funders and supporters whose ongoing
confidence in the quality of our services and the funding of these services mean that
many children, adults and indeed whole families receive much needed support and
intervention at a time of great challenge.
Joseph Copeland
Chair, Family Routes

Family Routes is the overarching corporation that incorporates four distinct
services:
Ado
tion Routes
Adoption assessment and post-adoption support for families and adults
Ori
Access to adoption records. information and potential reconnection.
Fertilit Counsellin
Service Nl
Leading provider of specialist fertility counselling.
Next Ste
Support and counselling service for birth families.
TESSA
Therapeutic and education support for adopted children and their adoptive parents
TESSA TEENS
Mental Health programme of support for adopted teenagers and their families.
The staff group comprises a core team of 6 staff including social work, counselling,
support and admin roles, and a regional resource of 50+ specialist therapists,
counsellors and social workers. Family Routes provides training and awareness
raising on adoption and fertility-related issues, and plays a key role within the sector,
working in partnership with a wide range of voluntary and statutory organisations.
Family Routes services are funded through a variety of sources including DHSSPS
core funding. SPPG (Next Step), National Lottery Fund, Community Foundation
Mental Health Fund, as well as donations from the public and some Church of Ireland
parishes.
In mid-2023 the organisation was advised of a 500/0 reduction in Core Grant Funding
as was the Voluntary Sector in general.
Increasingly service users e.g. adopteesladopters are engaged in the shaping and co-
design of service development.

Adoption Routes
As with all Family Routes services, the Adoption Routes service is available to people
throughout Northem Ireland.
In recent years, Family Routes has placed a great focus on developing support
services for people affected by adoption services which support birth parents (Next
Step) and adopted children and their adoptive families (TESSA). In line with the new
three-year strategic plan Adoption Routes has focused on building capacity and
capability to place more children in the Northern Ireland care system rather than place
children from elsewhere in the UK. This has included the establishment of a new
Northern Ireland-based adoption panel. Reprofiling the adoption offer through
upgrade of the existing website and establishing a skilled staff team in adoption.
Origins
This service supports adult adoptees as they consider tracing their birth family.
The impact of the Truth and Recovery Strategy interest in exploring origins has
increased for adopted adults. We have been a member of the Access to Adoption
Records Group developing new policy and practice guidance in this field alongside
experts by experience. The newly published (November 2023) Access to Records
Policy and Procedure will now guide our practice in this area going forward. The
Family Routes Board of Trustees has been engaged in giving careful consideration
to lodging our Adoption and Mother and Baby Home archive with PRONI for the
purposes of restoration, preservation and storage. The decision has now been
made to take this action in early 2024. Family Routes will retain a digital record and
any individuals seeking access to their records and potential reconnection will be
directed to Family Routes for support and guidance. The overarching priority for the
Board has been that we continue to be able to exercise our legacy duty of care to
our historical beneficiaries. The Truth Recovery Panel will shortly seek to access
information from our archive and we are committed to give our full co-operation in
this respect again with the focus being on the historical beneficiaries.
Fertility Counselling Service ni (Fcsni)
The Fcsni offers specialist fertility counselling to individuals and couples from across
Northern Ireland who are considering or undergoing fertility treatment. People are
referred by the two Fertility Clinics in Northem Ireland: The Regional Fertility Centre
(RFC) which is an NHS clinic which also treats private patients and with whom the
Fcsni has a Service Level Agreement; and Belfast Fertility TFP which is a private
fertility clinic established in 2014 at which point a contract with Fcsni was established.
People may also self-refer.
Recognising the life trauma posed by the experience of infertility, the Human
Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 states that:

'a woman shall not be provided with treatment services. .. unless
she and any man or woman who is being treated together with
her have been given a suitable opportunity to receive proper
counselling...
Fcsni meets this need by providing much needed therapeutic support for individuals
and couples on this fertility journey.
Within the last year this service has also been receiving referrals to counsel individuals
undertaking transgender fertility preservation. This counselling is part of a Pilot Project
being undertaken by the Regional Fertility Centre, Belfast.
Stsff Composition
Fcsni is staffed by three professionally trained specialist Fertility Counsellors, two
contracted staff, and one self-employed sessional staff member.
Summary of Activity Levels
In the year to date the Fertility Counselling Service received 511 new referrals in total,
a significant increase in the previous year. With New Decade New Approach we
anticipate a further increase as more cycles of treatment will gradually become
available.
Feedback from ReferrerslPartners
'It is invaluable for us to be able to refer our patients to the Fertility Counselling Service
in Belfast. The feedback we receive from patients about the caring and Gompassionate
way they are received at the Fertility Counselling Service is always excellent and I
know that for many it has been literally a life saver. Our patient groups suffer from high
levels of recurrent grief and bereavement often leading to depression and anxiety,
sometimes with suicidal ideation. Attending the counselling sessions has helped these
patients to heal, to move forward on their journey and to repair relationships broken
through stress. The FCS see people quickly for first appointments and the telephone
counselling has been very helpfvl for those with work commitments, or who live some
distance away.,
Voluntary Sector Agency
Patients often show reluctance when the word "counselling" is mentioned to
them. However, without fail, when they return they Gonfess that the experience has
been enormously helpful. They report that the counsellors are empathetlG,
challenging and caring,. that they make them face up to and discuss issues that they
have perhaps ignored and that they have facilitated the patients in coming to a
decision (and not always the initially obvious one) about what to do next.
It is a very difficult balance between pushing couples (or individuals) too far and losing
their respect and pushing them far enough to ensure that they fully understand the
implications of their actions. We, in the Regional Fertility Centre, are very fortunate to
have Such an expert team responsible for providing our counselling services. I cannot
commend them highly enough for what they do and how they do it.

In addition to providing counselling services, staff also facilitate training and other
awareness-raising activities. This is highly sought-after due to the recognised
specialist knowledge base and expertise developed over 30 years of delivering the
service.
Next Step
The Next Step service is provided as part of a partnership arrangement since July
2015, with Adoption Routes as the lead agency and in partnership with Family Care
Adoption Services and Adopt Nl. Next Step is funded by the Strategic Planning &
Policy Group. The service provides support and counselling to birth parents, birth
relatives, siblings and foster carers who are impacted by a child being placed for
adoption, and includes the Regional Origins Tracing Service {ROTS} delivered by
Adopt Nl.
Birth parents are some of °social work's most alienated service users" (Charlton,
1998). They are, typically, a hard-to-reach group often facing multiple significant and
adverse challenges. Many birth parents having experienced complex trauma
themselves. The contributing factors resulting in their childlchildren being removed
from their care, are complex and varied. The adoption of a child is in and of itself often
very traumatic for any birth parent. Many of Next Step service users have little or no
family support and are very isolated and thus they have limited support helping them
come to terms with their loss and experience. Next Step has a vital role in the provision
of support to birth parents and other relatives at this pivotal time in their lives, in the
hope their experience of adoption can bring about change and be a turning point,
rather than yet another crisis.
Birth parents are often naturally suspicious of professionals, and it can take time to
build trust and rapport. Efforts are made to provide service users with regular
appointments. It is our experience at times that service users can stop attending for a
while and then want to pick up with the service again at a later date or at a further
stage in the adoption process, often reflecting periods of crisis or difficulty in their lives,
and also because they need some time and space to come to terms with the latest
decision or court outcome, for example. We are gently persistent in our approach,
recognising that service users face many real challenges in engaging with services.
They may not have telephone credit to make contact to cancel an appointment., their
housing situation may have changed and this has become their priority., or they may
be experiencing significant mental ill-health which makes managing normal day to day
activities difficult. Whatever the block to engaging with us we try to reassure them that
support is available to them and that we can pick up again when they are in a more
settled situation. We offer flexibility as we build a positive working relationship with
each individual person, recognising that while there are patterns, each person has
their own unique set of life circumstances and challenges. During the pandemic all
Next Step sessions have been via zoom or by telephone call - on Occasion counsellors
will meet a client outside for a walk, weather permitting. We will also continue to reach
out after other organisations are likely to have stepped back when service users miss
appointments. This is reflected in stats for cancelled appointments but is also reflected

in the engagement with a vulnerable group of people who typically struggle to engage
and maintain engagement.
In the year-to-date Next Step received 45 new referrals. This service has been subject
to continuous contract extensions over the past three years and would benefit from
the opportunity to review and re-tender.
Staff composition:
The Next Step service is coordinated by one core member of Family Routes staff. She
is supported in delivering the service by other professionals on a sessional basis.
Feedback from referrerslpartners:
"I feel that my client has really began to accept the
current situation since starting work with Next Step.
She is very wary of social workers and as a result refused
to listen to advice and guidance given. She speaks very
highly of her Next Step worker and the fact that Next Step
is not involved in the court process really helps her to
trust Next Step and your advi￿.
(Referring Social Worker)
TESSA
TESSA is a National Lottery funded support service for adoptive families, offering
services to parents, children and schools
In the year-to-date TESSA received 47 new referrals.
In May 2022 TESSA additionally launched a new mental health programme for
adopted teenagers called TESSA TEENS. A number of specific programmes are
currently running including photographic, equine, art and music.
Staff composition:
The TESSA Project is staffed by a Project Coordinator and an Admin Assistant. In
addition, it contracts over 30 self-employed Counsellors, Therapists and Social
Workers on a sessional basis to provide a wide range of therapeutic and assessment
services to adopted children and their families.
This service has been extensively evaluated with very positive outcomes. In early
2023 the TESSA Service was awarded two-year funding from the National Lottery.
For the previous twelve months, Family Routes had sustained the service through the
Charity's own funds.

Networking and Influencing:
Family Routes is represented on the Departmental Adoption Legislation
Implementation and Policy and Procedure Development Groups.
During 2023 Family Routes has been a member of the Adult Access to Adoption
Records Group, membership being both professionals and experts by experience to
develop and implement new Policy and Practice guidance for Adult Post Adoption
Record Access and Support. The new Policy and Procedure guidance was issued in
November 2023, concluding our engagement in this pro￿sS.
Family Routes is a member of the Trauma Network.
Staff contribute to a range of committeeslpanelslnetworks.
For example, one
counsellor continued her role as a member of BICA'S Accreditation Board, one
counsellor continued membership of the HFEA'S Licensed Centre Panel in this year.
Staff also offer regular input to support meetings organised by the Fertility Network UK.
Family Routes has contributed to specialist training on the impact of infertility for
prospective adopters and also for medics engaged in the fertility field.
Staff provide awareness-raising and specialist training in a range of contexts e.g.
Delivering training to Health & Social Care Trust staff. raising their awareness of the
issues facing birth families, and bespoke training for BICA members on Trauma
Perspectives on Infertility
Staff regularly contribute to conferences and workshops e.g. Trauma Summit.
Family Routes is currently engaged in planning a Conference on Becoming a Family
with the Help of Donation in collaboration with the Fertility Clinics.

Priorities for 24125:
Continue review of all internal systems and processes to ensure the continuing
provision of high quality. effective and response services.
Continue to build the Board to ensure robust governance arrangements are in place
to support the ongoing development and sustainability of the service.
Maximise our newly-developed and enhan￿d online and social media presence which
aims to raise awareness of the complexity of issues relating to fertility and adoption.
and increases awareness of and access to the range of services we offer
Deliver a medial and advertising strategy to promote Family RouteslAdoption Routes
as the Adoption Agency of choice in Northern Ireland for Prospective Adopters.
Continue to deliver on our Financial Recovery Plan.
Continue to increase engagement with a range of current and potential stakeholders,
including service users.
Successfully transfer our archive records to PRONI and establish good operational
protocols to support aC￿sS for our beneficiaries.

Department of
An Roinn Slainte
Health
mann￿trie O Poustie
HSC
Health and Social
J Care Board
LOTTERY
FUND
LOTTERY FUNDED