Tips for Families
Searching for Adoptees
[Update 8/2021]
It's always
wonderful to see parents and siblings signing up and involved in searching for
their lost children. It gives adoptees hope and courage to persevere
knowing their original families might be searching for them, too, and are
open to contact and would be happy to hear from them.
It is very difficult, if not impossible, to find an adoptee who is not also actively searching. Here are some things that have proven successful:
2. Find out what your rights are and sign
up at the State registry, if there is one. To find the laws, go to State Statutes Search, choose the state, then click "Access To Adoption Records."
3. Contact
the agency that handled the adoption and ask to put an updated medical/family
history report in the file. Also ask if they have a policy about contacting the adoptee or else if they will give you any information about the family who adopted your loved one.
4.
Sign
up at International Soundex Reunion Registry (ISRR) (download the form from www.ISRR.org.
5.
Register
with G's Adoption Registry.
6.
IMPORTANT: In the on-line registries, don’t put every
bit of information you have; hold some items back to use for verifying that a
respondent is legitimate, some things only your true son/daughter would know.
7.
Purchase
a list of all males/females born on that day from Ameridex. UPDATE. 10/2018: Apparently Ameridex (Kadima) is now member-only access.
8. Another option is to get a membership at David
Gray's (http://www.adoptionsearching.com/)
(about $25/yr).
9. Take the names to other sites such as Intelius, Google, etc. and search for other bits of information about them. Purchase a membership at Classmates to see if there are yearbook pictures. Other sites for yearbook pictures and public information are Ancestry, E-Yearbook, and MyHeritage (all subscriptions from $30-$100/yr).
10. When you search Google, put the name
inside quotation marks in the search bar (i.e., “John Q. Public” or “Public,
John Q.”) to get the best results.
11.
If
you are in the area where you believe they were raised, go to the public
library or school library and peruse the high school yearbooks for the years
they would have been 14-18. Many of these yearbooks are now on-line at Classmates, E-Yearbook, and Ancestry (all subscriptions).
12.
Place
a "Happy Birthday" ad in the local paper around the
time of their birthday. "I think about you every day,” “Would love
to see you again," etc.
13.
Contact
the local newspaper and television station and ask if they are interested in
doing a story about families searching for people “lost to adoption.” This might be more appropriate for siblings
searching for an older brother or sister, since the media is usually hesitant to
help mothers. On the other hand, the
more mothers who contact the media gets the message out there that we are here
and open to contact and longing to know about our son/daughter, which in turn
might encourage more adoptees to begin a search.
14.
Set
up a special "search page" at Facebook with your
name as it was when you gave birth and put in your interests or profile
"searching for child born on [date] in [city]". If you have
other children, be sure to add them as friends and post pictures.
Believe me when I tell you how exciting it is for an adoptee to search the
internet and find pictures of his or her bio family!
15.
Finally,
be sure to have a special email address specifically for your search to field
responses.
