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Adoption and Social Care Review / CVAA overview of the Independent Review of Children?s Social Care final report

« Last post by Forgotten Mother on April 29, 2024, 07:24:56 PM »

https://cvaa.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Care-review-final-report-summary-May-2022.pdf

CVAA overview of the Independent Review of Children?s Social Care final report

Last week saw the publication of the final report from the Independent Review of Children?s Social Care, which was launched in March 2021. The full report can be found here, alongside an executive summary and children and young people?s summary. The report is long but easy to follow with its recommendations clearly highlighted throughout, so we would recommend looking through it if you can find time. Government will not be publishing its formal response to the report until the end of the year.

The Report has been broadly welcomed by the sector and many have praised its ambition and the fact that it does not shy away from the big challenges we face. However, children?s organisations remain cautious, such as Ofsted which has said it is still working through the detail, and ADCS which has stated that more detail is needed about how reforms would work in practice and therefore urges careful trialling to ensure the proposals are in children?s best interests.

It is important to first outline the broad themes of the Review which provide helpful context for its implications for adopted children and families, and the adoption sector as a whole. The Review?s diagnosis of the problem with the care system is that we are stuck in a vicious cycle, driven by scarce resources, reactive crisis management and not recognising the strengths of families and communities enough. When children?s needs escalate as a result of inadequately responding to families? needs, resource is directed towards episodic and siloed crisis responses, continuing the cycle of fewer resources for supporting families.

The Review is divided into 6 key themes which it believes will break the cycle:

? A revolution in Family Help (making the case for heavy investment in supporting families in the right way and shifting away from crisis intervention)
? A just and decisive child protection system (outlining proposals to develop specialist safeguarding practitioners and multi-agency working)
? Unlocking the potential of family networks (focused on new rights and support for kinship carers)
? Fixing the broken care market and giving children a voice (about new Regional Care Cooperatives to run public care services more on this later)
? Five ?missions? for care experienced people (in response to inequalities they face)
? Realising the potential of the workforce (about better career pathways for social workers and reducing reliance on agency workers).

It identifies the central aim of care as strengthening lifelong relationships, and believes this can be achieved by moving towards a system with greater freedom and responsibility, guided by a clear national framework but without compliance led processes. It argues that if its recommendations are implemented by the government in England, 30,000 fewer children will come into care by 2032 compared to the current trajectory.

What the Review says about adoption

The Review includes a very short section about ?modernising adoption?; other than that there are few mentions of adoption in the report. This is disappointing but not surprising the Review has consistently indicated its views that adoption does not need to be a strong focus because of the recent Adoption Strategy. The DfE is expected to underscore the priority of adoption in its response.

We were pleased to see that this section opens with Ward?s 2022 Australian research which found that adoption can lead to better outcomes for children than foster care and residential care. The central focus of the section is about modernising adoption through transforming contact i.e. updating Letterbox contact, better supporting birth parents, regularly reviewing contact plans and harnessing digital solutions such as the RAA Letter Swap pilot and ARC Box. It states that ?contact between adopted children and birth parents should start to be assumed by default and supported unless this is not in the child?s best interest?, which supports CVAA?s position and helps strengthen our case for investment in lifelong connections, ahead of our paper on a national connection service to be launched this summer.

The section also states that ?The Adoption Support Fund should specifically include provision to support better contact between adopted children, adoptive parents and birth parents.? This is a positive message but there is no detail about how this would be achieved, such as how much more funding the ASF would require and what type of interventions would be included, which is discouraging, and the DfE show no appetite for moving away from the purpose of the ASF as providing therapeutic support to children only.

The brevity of this section means that some pertinent issues have been glossed over, such as the falling number of children with adoption as their plan, the long waiting times for children with particular characteristics, and the increasing numbers of adopters waiting to be matched. There is also a brief reference about the establishment of RAAs contributing to ?improved the support for adopters and adoptees? which shows limited scrutiny of the RAA programme and the difficulties it has brought alongside advantages.

Adoption UK has published the following apt commentary on the report:

?We welcome the call for deep reform, the focus on sustained, loving relationships and the recommendation for a new protected characteristic for care experienced people.  Sadly, children adopted from care are in the shadows of the report. Adopted children have the same traumatic start in life, with the same lasting effects and the same ongoing need for support. Until every child adopted from care is thriving, we will not have properly reformed the system.?

The report also misses some opportunities to join up thinking across all care pathways for children, such as showing why its family help proposals could also meet the needs of adoptive families as well as other families. Its proposals tend to be specific to different care pathways rather than focused on the rights and needs of children regardless of care decision making.

What are the other implications for adoption?

The wider report contains numerous recommendations which are relevant to adoption, many of which we warmly welcome and are things that CVAA has advocated for in the past.

Unlocking the potential of family networks

There is an entire section on the value of kinship care and ways that kinship carers can be better supported, in line with the support adoptive parents receive. It discusses variation in kinship care across the country, the costs of overlooking kinship care as an option for children, and gives examples of other countries such as Australia which rely more heavily on kinship carers. Its central recommendations are:

? There should be a new arrangement in law Family Network Plans to support and oversee care from wider family networks. Under these plans children would not become looked after.
? All local authorities should make a financial allowance paid at the same rate as their fostering allowance available for special guardians and kinship carers with a Child Arrangement Order looking after children who would otherwise be in care.
? Legal aid should be provided in a range of circumstances where special guardians and kinship carers with a Child Arrangement Order interact with the family courts.
? All new special guardians and kinship carers with a Child Arrangement Order should be given kinship leave, which matches the entitlement given to adopters. For example, by expanding the recently announced a ?1 million programme for 2022-23 to establish kinship peer support groups in local authorities.
? A legal definition of kinship care to include those in informal arrangements.

CVAA is fully supportive of kinship care arrangements where they are in the best interests of children, so these recommendations are a step in the right direction. However, our position is that there should also be parity between adoptive parents and kinship carers when it comes to assessments and training, and that further longitudinal research is essential to understand the long- term outcomes of children in kinship arrangements compared to other forms of care, to fully understand the implications of these policies for children?s outcomes. A prominent care leaver and care professional on Twitter, John Radoux, has noted that LAs already search for family members first and are unable to find them, so we need to be wary of seeing this as a silver bullet.

A new regional model to transform care

One area of concern in the report is the section entitled ?A new regional model to transform care?, which outlines issues with the care market at present, including weak oversight, high costs and profiteering, poor planning, and lack of coordination. Its solution is to establish new Regional Care Cooperatives (around 20) to take on responsibility for the creation and running of all new public sector fostering, residential and secure care in a region, as well as commissioning all not-for-profit and private sector provided care for children as necessary. It states that ?The larger scale of RCCs and dedicated capabilities will mean that they can provide specialist marketing, recruitment, support and training for foster carers within their region?.

The parallels between RCCs and RAAs has not gone unnoticed by the sector especially the number of 20 RCCs compared to 32 RAAs yet it could be said that this section raises more questions than answers. The section falls short of detailing how this partnership will actually work, stating that RCCs will be fully accountable to LAs but Government should consider the best organisational form. It adds that LAs will no longer be involved in sufficiency planning and running/creating new services but will have ?direct involvement in the running of RCCs?. The report also states that ?Over time, the functions of Regional Adoption Agencies should be integrated into RCCs given the strong overlap in functions of recruitment, support and training?.

Children England?s commentary on the creation of RCCs is particularly thought-provoking; it questions the relationship between RCCs and LAs and challenges the assumption that RCCs would be able to procure better services because of their wider geographical scale. It adds that RCCs would fundamentally be a new market structure rather than an alternative to the market itself, wherein the problem lies. The Care Review Watch Alliance has also expressed doubts about the proposed model, stating that whole system change ?could leave children even more vulnerable as they will be out of scope of the State losing many protective layers whilst millions of pounds are given to unregulated organisations?. Article 39 shares a similar sentiment: ?It is heart-sinking that the care review?s principal recommendations are for major structural reorganisation, which will, for years, consume many millions of pounds and the hearts and minds of people who could instead be leading cultural change to put children and their rights at the heart of everything.? The Fostering Network warns that we should learn lessons from the past and make sure to value local recruitment.

It is interesting to note that the Review states that Ofsted should create a new framework to inspect RCCs, which could add weight to our policy ask that RAAs should be individually inspected, in the same way that VAAs are. We will be closely watching how this recommendation develops and looking for opportunities to contribute our views where appropriate.

The Courts

The Review puts its weight behind court reform which is a core strategic priority for CVAA. Its recommendations mirror what we have asked for previously, particularly the first two of the list below:
? More data and information for the courts to understand the outcomes of their decisions and how decisions in their area compare with other areas. It states that Local Family Justice Boards should be part of a learning loop, and Designated Family Judges should be full participants in these Boards.
? Improvements to the quality and consistency of local and judicial decision making through improving the quality and transparency of data and facilitating learning at a local level.
? Recommending that the Public Law Working Group should lead work to bring learning from Family Drug and Alcohol Courts and other problem solving approaches into public law proceedings, to make proceedings less adversarial and improve parents? engagement in the process.

Additional points relating to adoption

There are a few additional points throughout the report which we believe will impact upon the adoption sector in a positive way, if implemented. These recommendations include:
? A strong emphasis on children and families co-designing services at all levels this is something CVAA strongly supports and is one of our strategic ambitions for 21st Century Adoption.
? High quality family finding support should be available for children in care and young people that have recently left care, up to the age of 25, recognising that many will have not been offered a family finding service whilst in care. It highlights the work and success of the

Lifelong Links programme.

? A new lifelong guardianship order should be created, allowing a care experienced person and an adult who loves them to form a lifelong legal bond. It cites the 2016 Australian Adoption legislation which was amended to make adult adoption a possibility.
? In its section about implementation, the Review states that Government should work with people with lived experience of services, practitioners, researchers and other public services to develop a National Children?s Social Care Framework to set the purpose, objectives and outcomes for children?s social care alongside the best available evidence for achieving this.

One of these objectives should be: ?Where children cannot remain safely at home, there is a relentless focus on engaging and supporting a child?s wider family network to step forward, supporting successful reunification with a birth family or other forms of permanence that
promote lifelong relationships?.

The review asks for this to be delivered at pace through a five year reform programme. It states that reform will come at a cost of ?2.6 billion of new spending over four years, comprising ?46 million in year one, ?987 million in year two, ?1.257 billion in year three and ?233 million in year four.

However, doubt has been cast on how motivated the government will be to deliver this funding settlement, especially given that the DfE?s accompanying press release gives minimal detail about this aspect of the review. Children England maintains that government should double the ?2.6bn figure at least.

A sample of media coverage

? BBC: Care system: Help families before they reach crisis, urges review
? Guardian: Overhaul of children?s social care in England urgent and unavoidable, review finds
? The Times: Plea for equality law to protect children in care
? The Mirror: Ministers told to slap windfall tax on top private children's home providers
? Sky - Children's social care: System needs 'radical reset' to prevent 'enormous' problems down the line - report
? Daily Mail - Is the door closing on children's jails? Axing young offender institutions is part of radical demands in major review of 'dysfunctional' care system as annual costs spiral towards ?15bn
? CYP Now: CARE REVIEW: DFE ANNOUNCES PLANS FOR NATIONAL IMPLEMENTATION BOARD TO OVERSEE REFORMS
? Community Care: Care review urges national social work pay scales to reward expertise and boost retention

Appendix: Central recommendations in the report not outlined above

In this section we summarise additional significant recommendations included in the report which give a flavour of each section and the direction of travel.

A revolution in Family Help

? To ?reclaim the original intention of section 17 of the Children Act 1989?
? ?2 billion over the next five years to bring early help and child in need work together under one single category of Family Help. The service will be delivered by multidisciplinary teams and will be based in community settings
? A single service would reduce transitions between teams
? The review would like there to be a national definition of Family Help and who is eligible, while leaving room for professional judgment locally
? A non-stigmatising front door where mechanical referrals and assessments are replaced with tailored conversations
? Access to high quality universal and community services to meet families? needs where they are not severe enough for Family Help support
? The review defers to the SEND and AP green paper for matters relating to children with SEND, but outlines a few areas where it would like to see change, including more transparency for families about what support is available to them where their children have different levels of need, improving transitions to adults services, and improving the strategic integration of children?s social care with the SEND system.

A just and decisive child protection system

? ?Expert Child Protection Practitioners? to co-work alongside Family Help Teams to remove the need for break points and handovers
? Expert Child Protection Practitioners should be supported by more regular and direct involvement of a multi-agency workforce
? A multidisciplinary response to extra familial harms should be supported by a clearer statutory framework, and the system for responding to extra familial harms needs to be simplified (e.g. the NRM)
? Expectations for the features and capabilities of a joint multi-agency child protection response should be set out nationally in Working Together
? Coordinated action to support local authorities, health, police and education to make the technical changes they need to achieve frictionless data sharing
? Better engaging with parents throughout the CP process.

Transforming care

? New universal care standards should be introduced covering all types of care (it cites unregulated accommodation and deprivation of liberty cases as examples of inflexible current care standards and regulations)
? A windfall tax on profits made by the largest private children?s home providers and independent fostering agencies should be levied to contribute to the costs of transforming the care system.

A new deal for foster care

? A "new deal" with foster carers, including better support networks and training, as well as a new national foster carer recruitment programme, to approve 9,000 new foster carers over three years
? Use of family group decision making to identify important adults that are already known to a child and may be willing to foster
? Foster carers should be given delegated authority by default, to take decisions which affect the day to day lives of children in their care
? Independent, opt-out, high quality advocacy for children in care and in proceedings should replace the existing Independent Reviewing Officer and Regulation 44 Visitor roles (this has attracted a lot of controversy!).

The care experience

? Five ambitious missions so that care experienced people secure: loving relationships; quality education; a decent home; fulfilling work and good health as the foundations for a good life.
o No young person should leave care without at least two loving relationships, by 2027
o Double the proportion of care leavers attending university, and particularly high tariff universities, by 2026
o Create at least 3,500 new well paid jobs and apprenticeships for care leavers each year, by 2026
o Reduce care experience homelessness now, before ending it entirely
o To increase the life expectancy of care experienced people, by narrowing health inequalities with the wider population
? Government should make care experience a protected characteristic, following consultation with care experienced people and the Devolved Administrations
? Local authorities should redesign their existing Independent Visitors scheme for children in care and care leavers to allow for long term relationships to be built
? A National Children?s Social Care Framework to set the direction and purpose for the system, and a National Practice Group to build accompanying practice guides.

Realising the potential of the workforce

? A five-year Early Career Framework to provide a desirable career pathway for social workers, as well as action on improving case management systems to reduce administrative tasks completed by social workers
? New national rules on agency usage supported by the development of not-for-profit regional staff banks to reduce costs and increase the stability and quality of relationships children and families receive
? Measures to support the development of the wider social care workforce and strengthen existing leadership programmes

Implementation

? Government to work with people with lived experience of services, practitioners, researchers and other public services to develop a National Children?s Social Care

Framework to set the purpose, objectives and outcomes for children?s social care alongside the best available evidence for achieving this

? This would sit alongside a balanced scorecard of indicators for learning and improvement. should include guidance on the best known ways of achieving these objectives, led by the National Practice Group
? A review of the role of the DCS and the local authority to ensure that they have a clear role as a champion for children and families across a local area
? Government should introduce an updated funding formula for children?s services, and take greater care to ensure that changes in government policy that impact the cost of delivering children?s social care are accompanied by additional resources for local government
? Ofsted inspection should be reformed to increase transparency in how judgements are made, ensure a rounded understanding of being 'child focused' and to ensure inspection supports the proposed reforms
? Government should establish a National Data and Technology Taskforce to drive progress on implementing the review?s three priority recommendations to achieve frictionless data sharing by 2027, drastically reduce the time social workers spend on case recording and improve the use and collection of data local.

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Articles / Guatemala?s baby brokers: how thousands of children were stolen for adoption

« Last post by Forgotten Mother on April 27, 2024, 05:17:56 PM »

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/jan/04/guatemalas-baby-brokers-how-tens-of-thousands-of-children-were-stolen-for-adoption

Guatemala's baby brokers: how thousands of children were stolen for adoption

From the 1960s, baby brokers persuaded often Indigenous Mayan women to give up newborns while kidnappers 'disappeared' babies. Now, international adoption is being called out as a way of covering up war crimes
by Rachel Nolan
Thu 4 Jan 2024 05.00 GMT
Last modified on Fri 12 Jan 2024 10.17 GMT

In 2009, Dolores Preat went looking for her birth mother. A softly spoken woman with a bob haircut and glasses, Preat had been adopted as a five-year-old from Guatemala by a Belgian family in 1984. Her adoption paperwork recorded her birth mother as Rosario Colop Chim, originally from an area that had been brutalised in the civil war that ravaged Guatemala from 1960 to 1996.  Aged 32, Preat booked a plane ticket to Guatemala. She had managed to trace Colop Chim to her home in Zunil, a small town sitting in a green valley at the base of a volcano. Zunil means reed whistle in the Indigenous Mayan language K'iche', and the town's population is almost entirely Indigenous. (In Guatemala, Indigenous people make up about half the population, identified and differentiated by language, by home town, and ? especially among women by brightly coloured hand-woven clothing.)  Though Preat spoke no K'iche' and only a little Spanish, she had no trouble finding the right house. When she showed up, Colop Chim wasn't there, but her sister was. The sister was confused. Colop Chim had never given up a child for adoption, she said. But someone had kidnapped a girl from across the street in 1984, and her family had been looking for her ever since.  Preat crossed the street and met a woman nearly her age with a very familiar face: it was just like her own. The woman called her mother, who tearfully recounted the kidnapping. Testimony given for a later criminal case captured the emotion of the moment: "The family gathered, Dolores told them about the adoption, and all was confusion. Her aunts and uncles arrived, and one of them said that on seeing Dolores he felt the call of blood."

DNA tests confirmed what Preat had felt right away. The woman with the familiar face was her sister, and the woman's mother was Preat's birth mother. Rosario Colop Chim was not Preat's mother at all, but her kidnapper.  It took Preat's birth family some time to put together the full story, but eventually they realised that after stealing her neighbour's child, Colop Chim had posed as her birth mother to sign legal consent forms for the adoption. In seizing Preat, she had acted as a jaladora, or baby broker: someone who is hired by a lawyer to supply babies for the purpose of placing them in private adoptions. This process should, of course, occur with the parents' consent. In Guatemala, this was not always the case.  Preat is one of an estimated 40,000 Guatemalan international adoptees who now live in the United States, Canada and Europe. The first wave of adoptions took place from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. Sweden and Canada were popular early destinations. These were soon joined by other European countries including France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy.  The second wave, which began in the 1980s, sent adoptees to the US. Some Guatemalan adoptees came from orphanages, but many were placed through private adoptions. Agencies in Europe and the US contracted directly with lawyers in Guatemala to find children, match them to families and do all the paperwork without judicial oversight.  This system was expensive: total adoption costs began at the equivalent of $3,500 per child when adoption was first privatised in 1977 and shot up to $45,000 in later years. Despite the cost, private adoptions were more popular than those from orphanages because they were faster and adoptive parents could select the kinds of children they wanted rather than rely on the "supply" of usually older children in orphanages. Jaladoras often had a mandate to find the youngest children possible, or ideally contact pregnant women to sign up babies before birth.  By the mid-2000s, Guatemala had overtaken other "sender" countries, including South Korea and Russia, until it was second only to China for the number of children adopted abroad in absolute numbers, not adjusted for population. It was also the only country in the world to allow fully privatised adoptions from 1977 to 2008. At the height of the adoption boom, one in 100 children born in Guatemala was placed for adoption with a family abroad. "Some countries export bananas," one lawyer who arranged private adoptions told the Economist in 2016. "We exported babies."

Guatemala is often cited as the worst-case scenario for what can go wrong when adoptions are commercialised and children are sent from poorer countries to wealthier ones. Outright kidnappings like Preat's were rare, but other abuses were common. Some were technically legal: women pressured to give up babies or to sign documents they could not understand, or they were approached when pregnant about whether they wished to relinquish a child. There are also many documented cases of women being paid a small sum for their children which was illegal. Despite plentiful evidence as early as the 1980s of corruption and abuses within the industry, international adoption did not become illegal in Guatemala until 2008.  After Preat was kidnapped, her parents tore up the countryside, searching for their daughter in hospitals and nearby farms. They didn't report the kidnapping to the police, terrified by a note that the kidnapper had left threatening to kill them if they did so. In any case, the authorities were a source of fear more than protection in many areas of the country. In the mid-1980s, Guatemala was suffering the most violent period of its long civil war, in which an estimated 200,000 civilians more than three-quarters of whom were Indigenous Maya peoples were massacred by government forces, the army and the police. Sociologists and historians now often refer to this period as state terror rather than civil war because of the asymmetry of the violence. Hundreds of children who were stolen by government forces were placed in international adoptions. Crimes like Preat's kidnapping shared features with war crimes.  Preat brought a criminal case against Colop Chim in Guatemala, and hearings began six years after she had embarked on the search for her birth mother. Her lawyers sidestepped the statute of limitations by arguing that this was more than a simple kidnapping. Preat had been "disappeared" that most Latin American of crimes. Forced disappearance constituted an ongoing crime, the prosecution argued, because of the anguish and uncertainty that Preat's family had experienced every day since the kidnapping, and because of her own long-term mistaken understanding of her identity.  Preat's lawyer told me that this legal strategy, pioneered in Argentina, was one of the few ways to convict war criminals who were otherwise let off the hook by statutes of limitation or amnesty laws. In 2015, Colop Chim was convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison. While her crime was not unique, the series of events leading to its punishmen Baby brokers have worked in countries as varied as Haiti, South Korea, Ethiopia and Cambodia, but they were especially common in Guatemala. In Spanish, the word jaladora has soap opera overtones. It comes from the verb jalar, to pull, as in to pull children away from birth families. Fernando Linares Beltranena prefers to use the word intermediary. These linguistic choices are important to him, as a lawyer who, for more than a decade, helped match children with adoptive families. "We worked through intermediaries who had contact with mothers who most likely would want to give up their children," he recalled.

It's true that, according to Guatemalan and international law, a birth mother must consent to relinquish her child for an adoption to go forward. But in a context of extreme economic pressure and inequality, what constituted meaningful consent from birth mothers was not at all clear.  I have spent the last decade researching the adoption industry in Guatemala from 1968 until its closure in 2008. Many records I read, of private adoptions and those through state orphanages, contained a signature from the birth mother in the form of a thumbprint indicating that she was illiterate.  Linares Beltranena received me in his law office in Guatemala City, at his ease and expansive, wearing his trademark bow tie, which set off a Charlie Chaplin moustache. He began arranging adoptions in the 1980s and eventually oversaw hundreds of cases, mostly for families in the US. He remains one of the most insistent defenders of international adoptions from Guatemala.  Because lawyers moved in wealthier circles than did the birth mothers, they subcontracted the job of finding children to women like Colop Chim, sometimes paying them $500 per child or more. One lawyer told me that her "best" jaladoras were those who had previously relinquished their own babies for adoption.  I spoke to several lawyers about private adoptions, but Linares Beltranena was the only one to say that I was welcome to look through his old files. He had never committed crimes, he said, and he had nothing to hide. The birth mothers his jaladoras found were usually poor and their pregnancies unwanted, he told me.  It was illegal for baby brokers to offer birth mothers money, but it sometimes happened. More often, though, they used other methods of persuasion. Linares Beltranena's paperwork, along with police records and Guatemalan news reports, showed that his jaladoras would approach poor, often Indigenous women who were visibly pregnant at home, at bus stops, in hospitals, in marketplaces. Baby brokers sometimes also worked as midwives, maids, nurses, obstetricians or civil registrars, or they ran nurseries or daycares. They would ask if the mother-to-be had money to raise a child, or if the child would be better off with a foreign family in a country with more opportunities. Some jaladoras carried photo albums, which they flipped through in front of pregnant women, showing them Guatemalan boys and girls in the comfortable homes of middle-class families abroad. Many of the women they approached already had young children they were struggling to feed.  Linares Beltranena's files contained photographs of the adoptive couple, often pictured in classic all-American scenes, like sitting together at a picnic table on a front deck with their barbecue grill visible behind them. One couple sent a photo of the whole family out jogging together. Interiors feature bourgeois comfort: pianos, wall-to-wall carpeting, fireplaces.  One file describes a birth mother who was caring for her five children without the help of either of the two men who were their fathers. She consented to give up her two youngest boys for adoption. A social worker noted:  "She dresses modestly, she wears discreet makeup. One perceives in her: physical and mental health. She can be considered of normal intelligence.  She states that she decided to give her children in adoption, because what she earns is not enough to buy milk for the youngest child. Since they are siblings, she thought they should remain together for ever.  She appeared very tearful, very tormented, ashamed, but she recognises that her decision will favour her children because at her side they would have endured many hardships."

When the adoption was finalised, this mother signed her consent with a fingerprint. Her file contains a full invoice, dated 1 July 1987. Lawyer fees were $3,500 per child, and expenses were $3,392.65. In the following decades, as more and more international couples looked to adopt from Guatemala, prices would almost quadruple, but the extreme poverty of birth mothers remained the same. Jaladoras provided a service that was more in demand than ever.  When international adoptions boom the way they did in Guatemala, there is often a backlash. If the backlash leads to adoptions becoming illegal in a particular country, other countries enlarge their adoption programmes to meet demand, which in the drug trade is called the balloon effect squeeze here and it expands over there. These days, now that Guatemala is closed, popular countries include Colombia, India and Haiti. International adoption is declining overall, but international surrogacy is surging in popularity raising similar questions about what constitutes meaningful consent given crushing poverty and inequality.  In Guatemala in the 90s, signs of the increasing panic over adoptions were everywhere. Graffiti reading "gringo robani?os" (Gringo child thieves) and "Yankis robani?os fuera" (Yankee child thieves get out) appeared around the capital. Truths about adoptions mixed with rumours: that children were actually taken for organ trafficking, for example, or for "baby parts". Several foreigners travelling in Guatemala were killed or maimed on suspicion of stealing children. Francisco Goldman, the Guatemalan-American journalist and author, who was living in Guatemala City at the time, put it this way to the Washington Post in 1994: "Everything about the baby parts story is true, except for gringos and baby parts." He added: "Children get stolen all the time in Guatemala. But not for their organs and not by foreigners. The Guatemalans steal them for adoptions."

Baby brokers featured centrally in these fears, and for good reason. Some outright tricked or coerced birth mothers into giving up their children. They persuaded birth mothers to sign blank documents, which could later be repurposed into consent forms faking legal relinquishment. Another ruse was to tell birth mothers that the adoption was temporary or that they would be allowed to see their children on a regular basis. Yet another was to offer to cover a child's medical expenses or the medical expenses of a sibling.  Even though international adoption has now been illegal in Guatemala for more than 15 years, fears about child snatchers persist. One woman in a tiny town in the department of Jalapa told me she had recently been the only parent to sign up her child for a programme providing free school supplies, because everyone else feared it would end with strangers taking the children out of the country. (In this case, the aid was real.) The woman turned to her young son, who was hanging around us listening, and said to him, in what I hoped was a joking tone, that he had better not go away with me or I would "turn him into soap".

There were cases of babies stolen from hospital, cases of women told by nurses moonlighting as jaladoras usually in rural areas that their children had died in childbirth. (Such cases are not unique to Guatemala: they have been reported in Israel, Chile and Spain.) Mariela SR-Coline Fanon was adopted as a baby by a Belgian family and found her birth mother in Guatemala in 2018. When they were reunited, her birth mother told her that nurses at the hospital had said she was stillborn and refused to let her see the body, claiming to have already buried it. Fanon wrote a memoir called Mother, I Am Not Dead, in which she observes: "A human being, living or dead, has no price. But demand creates supply."

The US became aware of adoption fraud as early as the 1980s. In 1996, Duke Lokka, then the chief of American Citizen Services and Immigration Sections at the US embassy in Guatemala, acknowledged in an interview that adoption lawyers routinely falsified paperwork, usually by listing the wrong name of the birth mother in order to allow another woman like Colop Chim to "relinquish" the child. To minimise fraud, the US had begun requiring birth mothers to travel to the embassy in Guatemala City to be interviewed. But power imbalances and language gaps meant that the interviews were not always reliable not least because the embassy relied on freelance interpreters, often provided by the lawyers, for conversations with Indigenous birth mothers.  Despite these known difficulties in verifying consent, adoptions to the US skyrocketed from the 90s onwards. According to the US Department of State, a total of 29,807 Guatemalan children were adopted in the United States.nnThe jaladora who allegedly worked on Fanon's adoption, Ofelia Rosal de Gamas, was an unusually high-status woman. (She has since died, but criminal investigations of her adoption ring are ongoing in Belgium.) Rosal de Gamas was the sister-in-law of one Gen ?scar Humberto Mej?a V?ctores, the dictator who ruled Guatemala from 1983 to 1986. She worked with several lawyers supplying children for private adoptions, and her name pops up like a persistent ghost in the archives and in interviews.  Many of the children Rosal de Gamas brokered were from Malacat?n, a town near the Guatemala-Mexico border. Father Juan Mar?a Boxus, a courtly Belgian priest I met in the rectory in Malacat?n, recalled Rosal de Gamas visiting frequently in the 1980s and inquiring about children on behalf of the Belgian adoption agency Hacer Puente. (The same agency organised Dolores Preat's adoption.) Father Boxus said Rosal de Gamas was "persistent", though there was no indication at the time that she was involved in crimes. Unusually for a jaladora, she would sometimes take the children to Europe herself. One adoptive mother recalled her as "tall, a little cold".

Rosal de Gamas also worked with Edmond Mulet, a well-connected lawyer who arranged adoptions for Canadian families. In 1981, Mulet signed five requests for tourist visas for babies to travel to Canada, the quickest way to get children out of the country. Doing so was illegal, since the Canadian families had no intention of returning with the babies to Guatemala. Mulet was arrested and charged with falsifying adoption paperwork. At Mulet's pre-trial hearing in Guatemala City, one of the birth mothers testified that Rosal de Gamas had approached her at a street market when she was pregnant. "We kept chatting on various occasions and she even sometimes brought me bread or tortillas as a gift," she said. "Finally she asked me if I would give him [the baby] to a person who could support him."

Another birth mother, identified at the hearing as Delia D, earned 45 quetzales ($7.50) a month working as a maid. She testified that she was desperate when she discovered she was pregnant: the father said he wouldn't recognise her child, and she was worried that her employers would throw her out. She was walking in a park in the centre of Guatemala City when a stranger approached her, asked about her pregnancy and offered to introduce her to Rosal de Gamas. When she assented, Rosal de Gamas showed her albums of photos of adopted children to convince her that her child would have a better life abroad.  Some birth mothers said they had had a chance to read the adoption documents before signing. But Delia D alleged that when she went to Mulet's office to sign relinquishment papers, he was not there, and two young women rushed her along. "I did not read [the papers] and they did not read them to me," she told the judge. "I did not find out what it was that I signed. The se?orita told me I had five minutes to sign those papers."

Mulet denied the allegations, saying that the case was a political farce aimed to tarnish his image. Despite the evidence of falsified paperwork, the charges were dropped and he was released from prison. In the years that followed, he continued to facilitate adoptions. In 1984, Mulet was investigated a second time for falsifying adoption paperwork, but the investigation did not lead to any charges. (Mulet went on to have a prominent career in politics. From 1993 to 1996, he was Guatemalan ambassador to the US; he then served various high-level roles at the United Nations, including chief of staff to secretary Ban Ki-moon. Last year, he ran for president in Guatemala, securing nearly 9% of the vote in the first round.)  On 3 March 1987, police raided a house owned by Rosal de Gamas where 16 children, aged between one month and two years old, were held. Once birth mothers were persuaded to relinquish babies and children, lawyers needed a place to house them while they finalised paperwork. Jaladoras therefore sometimes ran what were effectively temporary orphanages. Police accused Rosal de Gamas of falsifying paperwork for these 16 children with invented details about birth mothers for an adoption ring. At her home, police found adoption files as well as receipts for childcare and birth certificates. The police noted that she paid babysitters 100 quetzales a month ($40) and adoptive parents paid between $20,000 and $30,000 per adoption.  The investigation into Rosal de Gamas was widely reported in the Guatemalan media, alongside stories about fraudulent international adoption practices. Almost two decades later, in the mid-00s, such stories began to appear in the international press. The New York Times wrote: "Critics of the adoption system here privately run and uniquely streamlined say it has turned this country of 12 million people into a virtual baby farm."

Many news reports mentioned "baby hotels", where foreign families lived for as little as a week to complete adoption paperwork and receive a child. The Marriott in Guatemala City sold nappies, wet wipes and formula next to postcards in the gift shop. The Camino Real, where Canadian mothers had waited to pick up babies from Edmond Mulet, outfitted its rooms with cots.  Dolores Preat had always assumed that her adoption paperwork was in order. She had no reason to believe otherwise until she began the search for her birth mother. Other adoptees' inquiries hit a wall when it became clear that their paperwork was falsified. They were left with doubts: did their mother really want to give them up? Did a jaladora force her to do so? Did extreme poverty force her to do so? Or could they be one of the children who was forcibly disappeared during the civil war?

In 1987, in response to Ofelia Rosal de Gamas's arrest, the Guatemalan newspaper El Gr?fico published a bombshell of an article by Carlos Rafael Soto, a columnist and political analyst. Soto wrote openly about two issues usually unmentioned in the censored press at that time: army massacres and powerful people's involvement in commercialised adoptions. Soto connected murderous state terror in the highlands, which was orphaning Indigenous children at a high rate, to lawyers and members of the elite profiting from adoptions. He identified "the exploitation of orphans as a valuable by-product" of war, one "destined to enrich a few people". International adoption, Soto wrote, was a business and a way to cover up war crimes.  As in many armed conflicts, the Guatemalan civil war involved appropriating the children of those seen as the enemy and placing them with new families, inside the country and out. "Forcibly transferring children" from one group to another has been part of the UN's definition of genocide since 1948, included because it was one of the techniques the Nazis used to wipe out populations. A report in 2000 found that of the 5,000 children in Guatemala forcibly disappeared during the war, at least 500 were put up for adoption. Most were Indigenous Maya. Human rights groups caution that that number is likely much higher, owing to fear of speaking about war crimes and the remote location of some of the most affected communities.  Many rightwing Guatemalans still strenuously deny that there was a genocide at all, and the history of children disappeared during the state terror stayed mostly silent, or was silenced. But this is gradually changing. Today, the walls of downtown Guatemala City are plastered with the faces of the disappeared, with posters and murals calling for justice. These are often pulled down, plastered over with apolitical posters or covered by stencilled graffiti declaring: "There was no genocide." Then the faces of the disappeared reappear, hung again by activist groups.

One of these groups is Hijos, a Spanish-language acronym for children. Hijos was first created in Argentina by children of disappeared adults. The Guatemalan branch, which was founded in 1999, now works with adoptees who were themselves disappeared as children ? including Francophone adoptees from Canada, France and Belgium. Other adoptees, including many who have neither the cash nor the desire to travel to Guatemala, frequently gather in support groups in Europe and the US. Preat is an active member of adoptee support groups and by all accounts a calming presence, counselling other adoptees on how to search for their birth families and how to handle what they find. Anglophone groups have been slower to form, since the adoptees are younger, but there are now two based in the United States. Each has more than 900 members.  Networks of adoptee groups around the world are lobbying for more transparency from governments about the circumstances of their adoptions. Slowly, their work is having an effect. In 2022, the French government announced an internal investigation "to identify past alleged illegal practices to prevent them from happening again".

Under pressure from adoptee activists, the Netherlands froze all international adoptions in 2021. South Korea, which over the last 70 years has placed more children abroad than any other country, last year opened its first governmental investigation into its long history of international adoptions.  In 2022, in Guatemala City, volunteers with Hijos hung posters around the capital. One poster read: "5,000 disappeared children. Where are they? Set fire to the genocidal state. We want justice."

This is an edited extract from Until I Find You: Disappeared Children and Coercive Adoptions in Guatemala, published by Harvard University Press

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Articles / Autistic first-time mother, 22, killed herself hours after learning her six ....

« Last post by RDsmum on April 21, 2024, 02:44:39 PM »

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13327201/Autistic-mother-killed-baby-adoption-inquest.html

Autistic first-time mother, 22, killed herself hours after learning her six-month-old baby might be put up for adoption, inquest hears

    Fern Foster died on July 8, 2020, after learning that her baby might be adopted
    The inquest concluded that local authority failings contributed to her death
    For confidential support, call Samaritans on 116 123, visit samaritans.org or visit https://www.thecalmzone.net/get-support

By Lettice Bromovsky

Published: 10:39, 19 April 2024 | Updated: 13:34, 19 April 2024

An autistic mother took her own life hours after being told her six-month-old baby might be put up for adoption, an inquest has found.  Fern Foster, 22, died on July 8, 2020, after an email sent to her partner by his solicitor outlined the news that their child might be adopted.  Fern's baby had gone into foster care almost a month after she was born, in January 2020, after the support Fern's family believe she was entitled to was not put into place.  The inquest which concluded yesterday found that a lack of an independent advocate on a regular, consistent and continuous basis contributed to Fern's decision to take her own life.  The court heard that Fern, from Monks Risborough, Bucks, was diagnosed with autism at 15 and struggled to get the support she needed, often using self-harm as a way of communicating her distress.  Fern found out she was pregnant on 25 July 2019 and shortly after, Buckinghamshire Children's Services became involved.  The court heard that Fern, who aspired to become an English teacher, was delighted when she found out she was pregnant, and the news changed her outlook on life.  While she was pregnant, and up to the point of her child being taken from her, she did not engage in any self-harming or other behaviour that would put her or her baby at risk.  It heard how Fern had described the process that ultimately led to her child being taken out of her care as a 'runaway train'.  Senior Coroner for Buckinghamshire Crispin Butler gave a narrative conclusion, recording the cause of death as suicide.  He added that the lack of an independent advocate and the way in which news indicating the adoption of Fern's child was communicated to her was contributing more than minimally to her decision to end her own life.  The court heard how Fern needed help at a much earlier stage from an independent advocate who could help her understand and engage with professionals.  This was the single largest reasonable adjustment that could have been made to support Fern's needs.  Fern had previously indicated intentions of taking her own life were her child adopted, and the court heard that the manner in which plans indicating adoption were communicated to her was a key trigger for Fern's actions.  No communication plan had been put in place and Fern became aware of the news via an email sent to her partner by his solicitor.  Fern's family describe her as bright, kind, caring and conscientious and someone who left a lasting impression with everyone she met.  Fern's sister Rowan said: 'We are pleased that the lack of advocacy provided in Fern's care, and the inappropriate delivery of the proposed care plan for adoption that the local authority had submitted, have been recognised as the causes of Fern's death.  Mothers who face their children being removed should be supported, especially autistic mothers, as autistic women have a 13 times higher risk of death by suicide.  It is tragic that there was never a clear plan to support Fern to be a mother, nor to protect her safety when she was told that would not be possible.  These essential requirements were repeatedly ignored, inevitably pushing Fern to breaking point. This was no way to treat a vulnerable, disabled, first time mum.  We believe that the lack of understanding and acceptance of autism in women and girls significantly contributed to the poor care that Fern received.  She was diagnosed late, repeatedly labelled with a personality disorder that she did not have, and the stigma around this led to her being harmed.  Fern was open about her suicidality, yet she was not taken seriously.  The misdiagnosis of personality disorders must end, as must the punitive and dangerous culture of care which comes alongside them.  Finally, we feel that the right of autistic parents to access the support they deserve is not adequately protected in policy or law. It is imperative that this changes and that autistic parents are protected in future.'

Caleb Bawdon, a Leigh Day solicitor who represented the family said: 'Fern's family welcome the coroner's conclusion which acknowledges that she was badly let down before her death.  It is approaching four years since Fern's death but her family have been clear from the very start about the difference that access to independent advocacy would have made to the outcome. 
'It is a testament to the strength and courage of her family during this time that the coroner has now agreed with them, and they are grateful for the care and consideration he took in conducting his investigation.'

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Adoption - Books, Theatre and Films / Coming home to Self: The Adopted Child Grows Up

« Last post by RDsmum on April 19, 2024, 02:11:58 PM »

Coming home to Self: The Adopted Child Grows Up - Nancy Verrier

Coming Home to Self is a book about becoming aware. It is written for all members of the adoption adoptees, birth parents, and adoptive parents as well as those who are in relationship with them, including professionals. It explains the influence imprinted upon the nuerological system and, thus, on future functioning. It explains how false beliefs create fear and perpetuate being ruled by the wounded child. It is a book which will help adoptees discover their authentic selves after living without seeing themselves reflected back all their lives.

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Adoption - Books, Theatre and Films / Mommie Dearest

« Last post by Forgotten Mother on April 17, 2024, 10:55:53 AM »

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mommie_Dearest

Mommie Dearest is a memoir and expos? written by Christina Crawford, the adopted daughter of Academy Award winning actress Joan Crawford. Published in 1978, it attracted much controversy for its portrayal of Joan Crawford as a cruel, unbalanced, and alcoholic mother, with Crawford's other twin daughters, household staff, and family friends denouncing it as sensationalized fiction. It was turned into a 1981 film of the same title starring Faye Dunaway.

In the book, Christina alleges that Joan Crawford placed far more importance on her cinematic career than her family life, and that Joan later was an alcoholic in the 1960s. She also claims that Joan had sexual affairs with various men, whom Christina was required to call "Uncle." Christina claimed that Joan's controlling behavior continued throughout Christina's adulthood, asserting that Joan was jealous of Christina's acting career in the 1960s, to the point of taking over Christina's role in the soap opera The Secret Storm while Christina was in the hospital recovering from an operation to remove an ovarian cyst. The book culminates with Christina learning that she and her brother, Christopher, were intentionally disinherited upon the death of their mother for "reasons known to them".

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Articles / A single mother at 16, I was forced by my parents to give up my baby for adoptio

« Last post by Forgotten Mother on April 13, 2024, 04:43:18 PM »

https://metro.co.uk/2022/07/31/as-a-single-mother-at-16-i-was-forced-to-give-up-my-baby-for-adoption-17029778/

A single mother at 16, I was forced by my parents to give up my baby for adoption
Jill Killington Published Jul 31, 2022, 9:30am

When I found out I was pregnant at the age of 16, I was shocked.  It was 1967 and I had been in a steady relationship with my 17-year-old boyfriend for six months by that point. When I told him, he was actually excited.  Suddenly, we talked about getting married and he said how pleased he was at becoming a dad.  But three months into my pregnancy, my parents found out and put a stop to all of that. Both of our parents were firm that the baby should be adopted, so that?s when my boyfriend simply left.  My parents then involved our family doctor, who put me in touch with a Church of England social and moral welfare officer. I felt I didn?t have a say in the matter. What followed was an agonising forced adoption where my baby was taken away from me.  I was just one of an estimated 185,000 mothers who were coerced into giving up their babies throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s. It?s why I fully support the recommendations of a recent report by the Joint Committee on Human Rights for the Government to apologise to people like me.  One of the biggest challenges of being young, single, and pregnant in 1967 was the abject shame bestowed upon me and therefore the shame transferred to myself. In most people?s opinion, I had committed the ultimate sin a fallen woman.  My social worker, family doctor, and my parents all told me it would be heartless to keep my baby with the stigma of illegitimacy forced upon him. I felt worthless, not listened to, not supported emotionally, and with no counselling or advice, nor any mention of financial support, which I now know would have been available.  My parents allowed me to stay at home until my baby?s birth but made it clear that if I wanted to keep him, I would have to leave home and fend for myself. Throughout my pregnancy, I felt very alone, very scared, and very upset.  The birth itself was a lonely experience.  The nurses showed no empathy whatsoever and I had no choice but to get through it on my own. Even before my baby was born, I had felt a strong bond with him it was as if it was me and him against the world.  Those feelings became even more intense after his birth when I got to care for him day and night for the 10 days I was in hospital. Visiting times were restricted to fathers only in the evening, and when that happened I would take my son from his crib and sit and nurse him alone.  I lavished him with love and attention. I wanted to give him all the love I could in the short 10 days we would be together.  During that time, I held out in the hope that my boyfriend would suddenly return and we would be together again with our baby. Unfortunately, that didn?t happen, and that?s when I realised that I was going to lose my son forever.  I left the hospital and had to take my son to his foster carer on Christmas Eve. It was the most terrible time for me.  I was inconsolable for many days so much so that my mother eventually contacted the foster carer to ask if I could go to see him. Kindly, she allowed this, and I could even take him for walks in his pram, which gave me huge comfort.  I was allowed to do this up until the day came when we had to travel down to London to take him to the adoption offices. Once there, a lady came into the room and asked if she could hold him, then immediately told me to kiss him goodbye.  That would be the last time I saw him for a very long time. It was devastating.  Back in the day, the law was that mothers and children should never have any further contact once the adoption was finalised, so I had to sign a legal document to that effect.  The people who should?ve been supporting me constantly told me time and time again: ?If you love your baby, you will give him up? or ?You will put all this behind you and get on with your life?.

If only people knew how impossible this was.  In the ensuing years, I was always thinking of the son I had lost wondering where he was and what he was doing. I?d try to reach out to him spiritually just by sending him thoughts every year, especially on his birthday.  Little did I know then that he was doing the same throughout all those missing years.  Then with changes in adoption law in 1975, it became possible for adopted adults over 18 to have access to their birth records and a contact register was set up. So on his 18th birthday as the only present I could give him I added my name to the register in 1985.  It felt like a eureka moment finally there was a possibility he might want to find me. Nine years later in 1994, I received a letter out of the blue asking for details of my whereabouts. It was from my son, Ian.  To say I was overjoyed would be putting it mildly, but it was also hugely emotional. In the days before email, our contact with each other was by airmail letter. This is when I learned he?d moved to Auckland after his family emigrated when he was just six years old.  We must have written dozens of letters over the next few months, until the day came when I flew out to New Zealand for us to meet for the very first time in over 26 years.  One of the first things he said to me was: ?Now I know where I get my blue eyes from?. We had a wonderful time together sharing memories and feelings. He took me to some of his favourite places in New Zealand the beautiful beaches, the forest and other landmarks that had formed part of his childhood.  When I had to fly back to the UK after two weeks of being there, it was like losing him all over again. Our reunion brought back so many emotional issues coping with loss, grief, bereavement, anger, depression, melancholy.  Since then, the relationship my son and I have has grown immeasurably in ways that we could never have dreamed of. I?ve lost count of the number of times we?ve spent together either me going to New Zealand alone and with the rest of my family, or just with my husband. He?s been over to the UK maybe half a dozen times as well.  We are definitely all one family now myself, my husband, other two children and granddaughters, as well as Ian, his wife and his two daughters.  I consider myself very fortunate to have the support of other mothers in the same situation, by virtue of peer group support meetings held regularly at the PAC-UK offices in Leeds. Just thinking about all the ?what ifs?, and how it might have been for us if we hadn?t been parted in such a cruel way can be all consuming  Thankfully, Ian has never harboured any grudges or resentment about his adoption.  The campaign for an apology from the Government has been ongoing for many years now thanks to the Movement for Adoption Apology. This is why we are all so thankful for the recent outcome of the Joint Committee for Human Rights, which was chaired by Labour MP Harriet Harman.  The Committee?s recommendation was for the Government to give a long overdue public apology on behalf of the State for the wrongs done to us. It also advocates for funding, counselling, better access to birth documents, and support for all the families who have suffered for so long.  I and many mothers like me fully endorse that recommendation.  All mothers deserve to be better supported. We shouldn?t expect babies and children to be taken from their birth families and then those families deserted and left to their own devices. It doesn?t serve the mothers or children well.  Those mothers like myself have been the forerunners. Because of our pioneering and campaigning, we have helped to force through changes to adoption policy and practice, and we will continue to do so.   We should be acknowledged for our patience and suffering. We definitely deserve an official apology, which would vindicate those of us who have been vilified for so many years.

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Articles / 'We had our babies taken from us we didn't give them away'

« Last post by Forgotten Mother on April 06, 2024, 11:54:05 AM »

https://news.stv.tv/scotland/year-after-nicola-sturgeons-forced-adoption-apology-time-is-running-out-for-mothers-to-find-children

'We had our babies taken from us we didn't give them away'

Jeannot Farmer urges Scottish Government to get answers for victims affected by historic forced adoption 'before it is too late.'  Women who were forced to give their babies up for adoption have made an urgent plea for help finding out what happened to their children.  Campaigners said the words in an apology made by the Scottish Government last year ?lose their worth every day? without measures to help victims of the ?ongoing injustice?.  It comes a year after former first minister Nicola Sturgeon delivered an official apology in the Scottish Parliament to those who have been affected by historic forced adoption policies.  The recognition was the first formal apology in the UK to tens of thousands of unmarried mothers ?shamed? and ?coerced? into having their babies adopted.  Group Movement for an Adoption Apology sent a letter and knitted baby bootees to over 60 MSPs urging them to back the campaign.  Jeannot Farmer warns time is running out for families.  She told STV News: ?We chose to put out a statement expressing concern that people are still passing away not knowing what happened to their children.  The pain associated with that is severe.  I know what it was like to find my son after 31 years and how every birthday was worse than the last one not knowing where he was.  I can?t imagine that being doubled. We have friends in that situation.  Living with the stigma all of those years is very difficult. But the stigma is nothing compared to the loss of your child.?

Jeannot was one of thousands of women forced to give up her baby for adoption.  At the age of 22, she gave birth to a boy while she was still a fourth year university student.  Despite having explored options with social services, she did not want to give up her son.  However, she was told while she was in hospital that her baby would be put up for adoption.  ?Sometimes I go back to the apology to remember what was said. Words like ?historic injustice? are meaningful and important. What happened was cruel,? she said.

?That day, the stigma and disgrace of giving my baby up for adoption was removed from me. Now I don?t have anyone thinking I have submitted my child for adoption voluntarily. That was done to me.  My child was not taken, not given.?

It is estimated around 60,000 women in Scotland were forced to give up their babies throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.  Hundreds of thousands of children were given up for adoption between 1949 and 1976 across the UK, at a time when unmarried mothers were often rejected by their families and ostracised by society.  Adoptions were generally handled through agencies run by the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church and the Salvation Army.  What you?ll find is most mothers it happened to don?t really know what happened to them,? Jeannot said.

?We had this idea mothers giving babies up for adoption analysed the risks and benefits of keeping or giving them up, then came up with a rational decision. That happened to no one.  A far more common story is the mothers gave birth, were sent to another room to hold the baby for a minute, then that baby was gone and never seen again.?

The group Movement for an Adoption Apology made a number of recommendations, such as councils delivering trauma-informed counselling services; easier birth record access; reunion services and formal apologies from institutions which administered services that resulted in coerced or forced adoption.  But campaigners insist measures discussed in the Parliament on that day have ?failed to emerge?.  While work is currently underway to deliver funding for peer-support services, Jeannot said more work must be done to allow victims to access records.  The system is already in place in states across Australia, where around 250,000 are estimated to have been affected by the practice.  Jeannot said thousands risk being left with unanswered questions about their identity without the government taking action.  ?It?s incredibly urgent,? Jeannot said. ?People are dying.  People should be allowed to know the name of the person they have lost and find out if they might still be alive.  We are losing the opportunity to pass on important information to our families and pass on a legacy for their relatives.  Those questions, the hurt and the grief does not end with the passing of the father and the mother. Those ripples extend beyond.  It?s also about passing on medical information; if a mother, sister or aunt has breast cancer, there is no way to tell a daughter who was adopted to get tested for the gene.  It?s about what the children inherit too; ?why do I have that shape of my nose?? ?Why am I good at art?? People want to know these things.?

Jeannot said that it is important to remember mothers and adoptees reserve the right to refuse contact.  She added: ?People have a right to privacy, but people also have a right to information. It?s about a balance in-between those two things.  But if our children had been taken by a random stranger, no one would question our right to know who they are.  That?s what happened to our children who were taken. We didn?t give them away.?

Marking the anniversary Natalie Don, Minister for Children, Young People and Keeping the Promise said:  ?I acknowledge the immense pain and suffering that adoptees, mothers and families have endured as a result of these unjust practices. Addressing the harms caused remains a priority for this Government.  We are establishing a series of lived experience sessions on historic forced adoption, to be facilitated by the Scottish Government?s Principal Psychological Adviser.  These sessions will explore collaborative solutions and will discuss what form of support is needed to address the emotional and psychological impact of historic forced adoption for adoptees, mothers and families.  We are also exploring what more we can do to ensure people affected by historic forced adoption are able to easily access the right information and support when they need it.  This includes working with both the National Records of Scotland and Scottish Court and Tribunals Service in order to assist people with the practical aspects of accessing records, as well as signposting to further support.  We continue to fund the charity, Health in Mind, to provide specialist support through peer support groups. Monthly peer support sessions are now being held for mothers and an adoptees group will begin shortly.?

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Articles / Roseanne Barr, 71, Poses with Daughter She Gave Up for Adoption Fans React....

« Last post by Forgotten Mother on April 04, 2024, 11:45:51 AM »

https://news.amomama.com/424919-roseanne-barr-71-poses-with-daughter-she.html?utm_source=facebook.com&fbclid=IwAR0qHmIMkjmvcJBi1bUoiU_lKu-fMeFwLMS3Ktcok9mpuJXJPWWNBbre_K8_aem_ASvfZDW9jjuF1K30a7wnjiIHD-SZK1pyOX286UyhOD6cqhZkoDZg1TWM56OvStwe1rj1yhgKMX4oSZiby9xsqRac

Roseanne Barr, 71, Poses with Daughter She Gave Up for Adoption Fans React to Their Resemblance
By Bettina Dizon
Apr 02, 2024
12:15 A.M.

Roseanne Barr recently shared a heartwarming picture with her daughter, Brandi Brown, on Instagram, where they wore matching clothing. Fans were amazed by the strong resemblance between the television star and the daughter she reunited with at 17.  Roseanne Barr's post showcased the duo in a cute coordinated outfit: Barr, cozy in a beige beanie, and her daughter, Brandi Brown, sporting a similar gray beanie. Both mother and daughter also wore statement shirts. Standing side-by-side in what seemed to be a kitchen, the two stood smiling.  The post quickly became a focal point for fans and followers, many of whom couldn't help but comment on the striking resemblance between Barr and Brown.  One fan shared, "She looks just like you. I was adopted b u t [sic] my bio mom was not interested in a reunion. Happy for you two."

Echoing this sentiment, another remarked, "I can see the resemblance."

The stream of comments continued with expressions of awe and happiness for the mother-daughter pair. "Wow, there is a huge resemblance. Love this for both of you," one wrote, while another added, "She looks just like you."

Barr captioned the post, "Oldest bb 52 yrs old reunited @ aged 17! GD is good." emphasizing her profound happiness in being with her daughter.  While Barr's post may seem like the ordinary mother and daughter picture, it holds more significance to the two given their broken past. Brown is the television personality's daughter, whom she had given up for adoption decades ago.  Years back, at the tender age of 18, Barr faced the unimaginable decision of giving up her baby girl for adoption. She was 17 when she got pregnant out of wedlock, and although she wanted to keep the baby, she could not afford to do so.  "I got on welfare and rented a room for 50 bucks a month. I turned on the water, and cockroaches came out of the spigot. Outside, there were drunks. I just couldn?t go on there, so I went away to Denver and moved into a Salvation Army home for unwed mothers," she revealed.

Despite the heartache, she decided with her daughter's future in mind, to entrust her to the Jewish Family & Children?s Service in Denver. Yet, even in that moment of separation, Barr whispered a promise of reunion to her newborn daughter, that they would be reunited when she turned 18.  Years passed, and in a twist that seems almost fated, Barr's prediction came true under the most unlikely circumstances. A tabloid's invasive search led to the revelation of Brown's identity and her connection to Barr.   Then the tabloid called her, Barr was initially upset. She had left enough information for Brown to find her at age 21 and even told her succeeding children about the adoption. With the tabloid's interference, Brown's address, school, and adoptive parents became known. Meanwhile, she did not know her mother's name.  In a moment of panic, Barr hired a private detective to reconnect with Brown before the media could exploit their story. The reunion between Barr and her daughter, born on May 16, 1971, came two days later, but only through a phone call.  Brown learned that her daughter was raised by Stanley and Gail Brown in Denver. The circumstances surrounding Brown's adoption and the eventual reunion with Barr read like a script from a movie.  "What was really weird was that Gail Brown?s mother?s best friend is my mother?s best friend," Barr revealed. Remarkably, connections existed between the Browns and Barr's family, yet no one ever made the link until Barr herself pieced it together.

The physical reunion between Barr and her daughter became a moment steeped in raw emotion and the culmination of years of separation and longing. This poignant event happened at the Westwood Marquis Hotel, while Barr, took a break from her work on "She Devil."  She and her sister, Geraldine, arrived at the hotel, only to find that Gail and Brandi were not yet back. The decision to wait over a cup of coffee would serendipitously lead them to the moment they had been awaiting.   he encounter that followed was nothing short of cinematic, with Barr and Brown instinctively running towards each other, their embrace a testament to the enduring bond that had survived the years of separation. "We embraced and wouldn?t let go of each other, hugging and crying," Barr recalled.

In 2006, Barr admitted that she had made several mistakes as a mother but spent the past years trying to make up for them. Now much older, Brown has followed in her mother's footsteps and ventured into the entertainment industry, carving out her own niche as both a production crew member and actress.  She is best recognized for her contributions to notable projects, including "Roseanne" from 1994 to 1995, "The Jackie Thomas Show" between 1992 and 1993, "The Dr. Oz Show," and "Dark Faith."  Brown's involvement in these productions showcases her diverse talents and her successful entry into the world of entertainment, much like her mom. On the other hand, Roseanne Barr has been less active on television. Still, she remains very active on Instagram in her 70s.  She previously surprised fans and the general public with a daring new style. The beloved actress and comedian revealed her latest hair transformation: a textured pixie cut, a significant departure from her previously long, gray strands.bbWith a simple yet compelling selfie captioned "Cut," Barr unveiled her new look from what seems to be her bedroom. The post quickly gained traction, drawing in a plethora of responses and praises in the comments section.  The shift to a shorter hairstyle has sparked a wave of positive feedback. Fans didn't hold back their enthusiasm, showering Barr with compliments and noting how the fresh cut appears to have given her a more youthful and vibrant look.

9

General Discussion / Work

« Last post by Forgotten Mother on April 04, 2024, 11:09:25 AM »

A man came home from work and found his three children outside, still in their pajamas, playing in the mud, with empty food boxes and wrappers strewn all around the front yard. The door of his wife's car was open, as was the front door to the house and there was no sign of the dog.  Proceeding into the entry, he found an even bigger mess. A lamp had been knocked over, and the throw rug was wadded against one wall. In the front room the TV was loudly blaring a cartoon channel, and the family room was strewn with toys and various items of clothing. In the kitchen, dishes filled the sink, breakfast food was spilled on the counter, the fridge door was open wide, dog food was spilled on the floor, a broken glass lay under the table, and a small pile of sand was spread by the back door.  He quickly headed up the stairs, stepping over toys and more piles of clothes, looking for his wife. He was worried she might be ill, or that something serious had happened. He was met with a small trickle of water as it made its way out the bathroom door. As he peered inside he found wet towels, scummy soap and more toys strewn over the floor. Miles of toilet paper lay in a heap and toothpaste had been smeared over the mirror and walls.  As he rushed to the bedroom, he found his wife still curled up in the bed in her pajamas, reading a novel. She looked up at him, smiled, and asked how his day went. He looked at her bewildered and asked, ?What happened here today?'

She again smiled and answered, "You know every day when you come home from work and you ask me what in the world I do all day?"

"Yes," was his incredulous reply.

She answered, "Well, today I didn't do it."

10

Adoption - Books, Theatre and Films / Dear Son / Moving On

« Last post by RDsmum on March 31, 2024, 02:13:22 PM »

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dear-Son-Moving-Philippa-Hope-Hornsey/dp/1326243519

Dear Son / Moving On
by Philippa Hope-Hornsey (Author)

My life as a daughter, sister, wife, mother and an adoption survivor. When I was 19 years old I was forced to surrender my son. It broke my heart and I became severely depressed which included self harming and being suicidal over the years. In 2004 I found my son who had been searching for me and had found my family in 1999. I had fallen out with my family in 1999 but from 2001 (we had moved) I let my parents know where my husband and I were but they chose not to tell my son. Life has been a rollercoaster but reunion hasn't made up for the lost years and the pain is always with me.