The Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) wants to engage individuals and communities on the process of handling adoption personal belongings. The purpose of this engagement project is to seek feedback from community members about access and handling of personal belongings. The department will be speaking with adopted individuals, adoptive parents and kinship caregivers, birth parents, other relatives and interested individuals through quarterly engagement sessions and smaller work groups.

What is an adoption personal belonging?

A personal belonging, sometimes referred to as a personal effect, is an item that was given to the child-placing agency for the adoptee or birth parent; it is not a form or document related to the adoption. Examples include photographs, letters, family heirlooms, keepsakes and/or documents unrelated to the adoption.

How did the Department of Children, Youth, and Families and child-placing agencies come to possess these items?

• Contact and reunion services. DCYF has had many roles in the placement of children for adoption; some of the items may have been given directly to DCYF from adoptees, birth parents, social workers or other relatives.
• Other items may have come to DCYF from private agencies that closed.

About privacy on this site

Please do not share full names, or other information that would make people or agencies identifiable in your public comments. If you have feedback you want to provide that contains your name or names a county, Tribe or agency, please email us privately at Crystal.Graves@state.mn.us or Betsy.Hodek@state.mn.us.