Spence-Chapin.

Why the records are at Spence-Chapin

When a long-running adoption agency closes, its records have to go somewhere. State law and adoption-services norms generally require the receiving agency to be one that can responsibly hold sensitive child-welfare files and respond to post-adoption inquiries from the adoptees and birth parents named in them. When Louise Wise Services wound down its operations in 2004, Spence-Chapin — a separate New York agency with longstanding post-adoption services — accepted custody of the closed agency’s files. That transfer is what put Spence-Chapin at the center of any adoptee’s search for their Louise Wise history today.

Spence-Chapin is not, and has never been, a party to the Neubauer twin study. The agency had no role in the design or conduct of the research. Its position is that of a record-holder and a service provider to the adoptees of an agency it did not run.

What Spence-Chapin holds

The Louise Wise files at Spence-Chapin are adoption records: documentation of the placement of children, basic identifying information about birth parents and adoptive parents to the extent the agency collected it, and the agency’s correspondence with adoptive families. They include, for some adoptees, sibling information that Louise Wise had withheld at the time of placement. They do not include the longitudinal research data the Child Development Center collected — those records are at Yale.

For an adoptee approaching this story for the first time, the practical sequence is usually: Spence-Chapin first, to establish identity and confirm what is in the adoption file (including any sibling information); then, if applicable, the Jewish Board and Yale, on the research-record side, for material specific to the study itself.

What Spence-Chapin offers

The agency’s post-adoption services for former Louise Wise clients include access to nonidentifying information from the adoption file (medical history, circumstances of placement, basic background), facilitated disclosure of identifying information where both parties have consented, support for reunion contact, and counseling around what the search and possible reunion can mean. The agency offers the Louise Wise inquiry response as a free service to eligible inquirers — typically the adopted person, birth parents, or, in some cases, adoptive parents and direct family members.

Direct contact for interested parties

Contact details are taken from Spence-Chapin’s public-facing website. If they have changed since this page was written, the agency’s current contact page at spence-chapin.org is authoritative.