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Articles / I loved Jack whom I adopted aged three. Then his drug-addicted family lured ....

« on: May 21, 2025, 04:27:31 PM »

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-14732429/Jack-adopted-three-drug-family-violence-grief-CATHERINE-TAYLOR-familys-nightmare-final-unimaginable-blow.html#newcomment

I loved Jack whom I adopted aged three. Then his drug-addicted family lured him back and the violence began. Through shattering grief CATHERINE TAYLOR tells her family's nightmare and the final unimaginable blow

By HEATHER MAIN

Published: 01:45, 21 May 2025 | Updated: 01:45, 21 May 2025

Catherine Taylor does not use the swing in the front porch of her picture-perfect cottage in Yorkshire. Made for her by her teenage son Jack, it has become an almost unbearably poignant reminder of a happier time.  Catherine, a pharmacist, and her husband Henry, a self-employed builder, haven't seen Jack for almost a year.  Their bright 16-year-old whom they adopted at the age of three is living in a flat 50 miles away and working, they suspect, for a so-called County Lines drug-running gang.  Tracked down by members of his birth family, Jack was lured away from them, they say, with offers of money and cannabis, to which he quickly became addicted.  Most shocking of all, despite Catherine's pleas, she claims that not only have the authorities refused to help her get him back, but social services have actively encouraged Jack to walk away from her loving and secure home.  'It's not just sadness we're feeling, it's intense grief,' she says.

Clearly Catherine and Henry's version of events represents just one side of a highly fraught situation. Yet what they describe is every adoptive parent's worst nightmare a complete breakdown of the adoption itself and the loss of a teenage boy they remain devoted to.  Both 48, they found they were unable to have children when they married 20 years ago, and decided to forego IVF treatment in favour of adoption.  'We were desperate for a family, and we knew our love for an adopted child would be just as strong as it was for a child who was biologically ours,' explains Catherine.

Both came from stable homes and knew they could give a child a similar life in their three-bedroom house with a huge garden and good schools nearby.  In 2012 they were matched with three-year-old Jack.  'We just fell in love with him,' Catherine recalls. 'We were warned he had been very badly abused by his birth family. Social workers said it was the worst case of neglect they had ever seen.'

When a neighbour raised concerns, she was told, social workers found Jack huddled in a corner 'so motionless and detached' from what was going on around him that they couldn't even get any eye movement from him. He had learned how to physically and mentally detach from danger to the extent he was basically playing dead.  'We were prepared for it to take a long time to form a bond. But from the moment we first met Jack, at his foster carer's house, he instantly took our hands and led us to play on the trampoline.  He called us mummy and daddy on the very first day. He just wanted someone to love him.'

Jack quickly formed an especially close bond with Catherine, who gave up her job 'so I could be there for him all the time'.  'When Jack started school, he was anxious about leaving us. At the school gates at pick-up time, I'd see his eyes desperately darting around the playground, scanning to make sure I was there.  We arranged for him to have some play therapy and he soon made lots of friends but he remained very close to me. He would only go to sleep if I was holding him, or, when he got older, he'd want to take one of my jumpers to bed to cuddle up to.'

Over time Jack's anxieties calmed and, when he was six, the family was asked whether they would also like to adopt his newborn biological sister Poppy, who was removed from her family shortly after birth. They agreed.  Now the family was complete and life for Jack assumed the hectic but happy and above all, ordinary rhythms of school, playdates and holidays.  Indeed, the children enjoyed what many would describe as an idyllic upbringing, with trips to Lapland, breaks to the family's holiday home in Wales, sports clubs and, importantly, a loving family.  The couple were open with both children about the fact they were adopted but, Catherine says, neither of them ever showed much interest in finding out about their blood relations. The adoption agency had a 'letterbox' system in place, where both parties adoptive parents and biological family could send letters to each other through social services.  'I wrote a couple of times a year with vague updates, letting them know he was doing well at school, and how much he was growing. I hoped they would write too in case Jack wanted to read about them one day, but I didn't get a single letter back.  I think he used to be quite angry with them. If I tried to talk about them he would shut me down.'

It was when Jack turned 13 that the family's perfect life started to unravel. On trips into the local town, he began to hang out with a new group of friends, and though at first Catherine and Henry thought little of it, they soon discovered the boys were members of a notorious local family who had already dropped out of school. She and Henry were worried and warned Jack not to be friends with them.  Weeks later, however, they discovered Jack had secretly started vaping, after the family dog sniffed out a vape hidden in his room and chewed it to bits.  'It might seem like typical teen behaviour,' says Catherine. 'But given Jack's history, and the fact we knew he was born with addiction issues his mother had been a drug user we were concerned. We talked to him and he promised he wouldn't vape again.'

However, from that moment Jack seemed to go off the rails entirely. First he was caught stealing vapes from a local supermarket, then he began skipping school. He also took to leaving the house at night to see his new 'friends'.  'We were beside ourselves. I felt embarrassed I couldn't control the situation.  The school was increasingly worried about his behaviour and, at one point, the headteacher told us to just take Jack out of school for two weeks and go away as a family. We needed to get him away from the situation with the other boys and find the old Jack again.  And at our holiday home, it felt as though we did get him back. We went for long walks on the beach, played board games, enjoyed pub lunches it was idyllic.'

But it was not to last. Back home, Jack's behaviour now took a violent turn. 'At school, he'd kick doors in a rage or pull soap dispensers off the wall.  Sometimes he'd physically try to attack me. Henry would put himself in-between us and Jack would end up attacking him.'

Once Henry had to go to hospital after being hit over the head with a laptop.  'We were at our wits' end,' Catherine recalls. 'We begged social services for help, but they just offered music therapy.  Jack clearly needed more help than that he was dealing with deep-rooted trauma.  We talked about moving away, but my husband's business relied on local clients we couldn't afford to leave.  Eventually, we found Jack a place at a local private school, and moved him there.'

Despite initially flourishing at the new school, it wasn't long before he was hanging out with the gang again.  Now 14, Jack began to break out of home most nights, forcing Henry and Catherine to call the police to report him missing.  'At one point, we were calling the police at least once a week. Each time he disappeared, we were so worried about his safety; once, he left home for six days and we later found out he had been sleeping under a motorway bridge.'

By this time, Jack had also started smoking cannabis. 'We cut off Jack's pocket money so he wouldn't be able to buy drugs,' Catherine says. 'But then he started stealing from us: clothes, credit cards, technology, and running away in the night.  Again, I begged social services for help. But their only advice was to consider ourselves lucky he wasn't taking harder drugs. I couldn't believe my ears.'

One night, however, after the most violent outburst the family had ever witnessed, the truth came tumbling out.
After a local broadband outage, the wi-fi cut out, and Jack was unable to control his fury. Blaming his adoptive parents, he flew at Henry, leaving him with two black eyes and footprint-shaped bruises on his torso.  A neighbour called the police and Jack was arrested and temporarily placed in a children's home as an emergency measure.  'The police advised us that we needed to press charges this time. At that point, we were at the end of our tether and agreed,' says Catherine. 'Jack was charged with assault and criminal damage.'

On several previous occasions, Catherine had tried to search Jack's social media to see who he was talking to online, but her son had always logged himself out when using the family iPad. The night of the wi-fi outage, however, he hadn't had a chance to do that and what Catherine found made her blood run cold.  'There were photos of Jack sitting smoking with a group and the names seemed familiar. Slowly, the penny dropped this was his birth family.'

In an effort to encourage transparency about a child's origins, today many are given a 'life story book' containing the first names of their blood relations. These were the names Catherine saw dotted across his social media.  Now she read through dozens of messages sent to him from his biological family, who it later transpired had found him via the boys he'd been hanging out with in town.  '"We just want you back, we'll help get you away from that b***h, your real family will look after you."

It was chilling.  'We had taken his phone away from him but in these pictures, he clearly had other phones we'd never seen before.  These were the people who had neglected him so badly as a baby, suddenly wanting him back as a teenager. I felt sick to my stomach.'

Jack was kept in the children's home while Catherine and Henry applied to drop charges against him for attacking his father so he could come back to them but before the application was processed, Jack ran away.  'We got a call saying that Jack had gone to live with his biological grandma. Social services said she was deemed an appropriate guardian because she didn't have a criminal record. Apparently she'd been sending him large amounts of money about £70 every week or so.  She was living in a flat with seven other people, all in and out of prison on drugs offences,' claims Catherine. 'And that was where Jack was staying.'

To her horror, now Jack was 16, he was legally allowed to live wherever he wanted and social services did not apparently see any harm in allowing him to stay with his biological grandmother.  It seemed to Catherine and Henry very likely that Jack was now dealing drugs himself as part of a County Lines operation, where drugs are transported from one area of the country to another.  She later discovered Jack's biological father had died of a drugs overdose and his biological mother was, at that point, in prison. Though social services told her he wouldn't be allowed contact with his birth mum, Catherine discovered he had indeed seen her when she was briefly out of prison.  'It was devastating,' she explains. 'They took my son from me and I couldn't do a thing about it.'

Worryingly, adopted children making contact with their birth families online is on the rise. Sarah Brown, a solicitor who specialises in adoption breakdown proceedings at the Adoption Legal Centre, says social media is playing a bigger role than ever.  Children are either choosing to track down their families themselves, or their biological families go looking for them.  In the cases we see, it's been a catalyst in the breakdown of the original adoption.  We are busier than ever with cases of families who are at their wits' end. Sometimes they are suicidal, or even in fear of their own lives.'

Desperate, Catherine and Henry sought legal advice and applied for mediation with their son through social services, who arranged a meeting with him.  'We sat in a room with a social worker, like a police interview. It was hideous.  I was referred to throughout as "Catherine". I wanted to scream: "I'm not Catherine, I'm his mum!"  Jack looked and sounded completely different there was no inkling of my son. He used to be quite well-spoken, but now, he looked and spoke like a gangster.  I took him a case with his favourite clothes, but he went through it pulling out the designer ones and left the rest in the bag.  He started demanding money from me he shouted that we owed him money for his bed, his bike, his PlayStation.  It took every fibre in my body to remain calm. I told him we loved him and he was welcome to come home any time.  I told him that I felt I had lost my son. "I was never your son to lose," he spat back. That hurt more than anything else.  Jack isn't just a child I'd adopted, I'm not his foster carer I love him the same way any mother would love her son.'

Almost 12 months later, Jack is still living with his birth grandmother and has had no further contact with his adoptive family.  Social workers told Catherine he was doing so well with his biological family, they have decided to close his case. And in what the Taylors regard as the final insult, should Jack ever ask to see Catherine and Henry, their visit will need to be supervised.  When Jack moved out, he made allegations that Henry had attacked him, and although they were investigated by social services and the police and they were cleared of any wrongdoing, the allegation alone means visits cannot now be made without supervision.  'We later found out through speaking to support groups that it's common for adopted children to suddenly make allegations of abuse against adoptive parents once they have made contact with a birth parent,' Catherine says.

'But of course that doesn't make it any less distressing. Neither of us would have ever laid a finger on Jack.'

Official statistics suggest that just over 3 per cent of adoptions break down but campaigners say that's an underestimate. Catherine says she was told their son 'successfully' reuniting with his birth family would not be recorded as an adoption breakdown or disruption.  'It has absolutely broken us,' she says. 'Our daughter is only ten, but she is so angry with him. She also can't understand why the family want Jack back but have no interest in her. She's grieving the loss of him, too.  The pain catches me off-guard at the most peculiar times. Recently, we went away and walked to the local pub for lunch. Poppy and Henry would always walk together and Jack and I would walk behind them that's always the way it was.  But suddenly, I realised I was walking alone Jack just isn't there any more. And my biggest fear is that he never will be. We'll never get him back.'

All names have been changed.

If you have an experience of adoption you'd like to share with readers, please email: femailreaders@dailymail.co.uk

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Articles / Long Lost Family: Adopted woman who spent 40 years searching for her ....

« on: August 09, 2024, 11:41:56 AM »

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-13719265/Long-Lost-Family-Adopted-woman-spent-40-years-searching-biological-sister-having-childhood-shrouded-loneliness-reveals-joy-finally-meeting-sibling.html

Long Lost Family: Adopted woman who spent 40 years searching for her biological sister after having a childhood shrouded by loneliness reveals her joy after finally meeting her sibling

    Liz Allward, 60, from North Somerset, was adopted as a young baby
    SPOILERS AHEAD
    READ MORE: Long Lost Family viewers are left 'broken' and 'sobbing their hearts out' as woman, 71, reunites with her son 55 years after she was forced to give him up for adoption by her ashamed mother

By Alanah Khosla For Mailonline

Published: 15:22, 8 August 2024 | Updated: 17:03, 8 August 2024

A woman who spent nearly 40 years longing to find her biological sister has revealed her joy at finally meeting her, adding that it still feels 'surreal'.  Part-time hairdresser and counsellor Liz Allward, 60, from North Somerset, was adopted as a baby and always had a strong 'intuition' that she had a birth sibling, despite never being told so.  Though Liz had a happy childhood, she always felt a sense of 'loneliness', exacerbated by her adoptive family moving around a lot, making it difficult for Liz to maintain friendships.  It was on her wedding day in 1996 at the age of 23 that her adoptive mother informed her that she had an older biological sister, but with few other details, Liz was unable to locate her.  After years of failed attempts to locate her biological sister, Liz contacted ITV's Long Lost Family on a whim, unexpectedly leading her to the information she had longed to know for years and, most importantly, her biological sister, Deborah.  Talking to FEMAIL, Liz recalled: 'When I was younger I didn't know if it was a brother or a sister; I just knew something was missing.  I was adopted in Leeds at a very young age, and then we moved quickly down to Surrey, then we moved to Bristol.  I had a lovely family and a lovely mother and father, I can't fault them, [they were] very traditional and very honest.'

She added: 'I had a nice life, I was bit lonely during childhood, the moves were difficult for me.'

It wasn't until Liz's wedding day at the age of 23 that her adoptive mother confirmed the intuition she had always had.  Liz recalled: 'When I got married, I asked my mother, I said: '"Am I one of a twin?" She hesitated and told me that there was a daughter born to my birth mother a couple of years before [me]'.

Her instinct was confirmed, but Liz knew nothing more about her biological sister other than her existence.  'I got and married life went on I tried for a quite a few years [to find Deborah], always with the support of friends,' she said.

The mother-of-two sought information online and applied for her adoption papers from North Somerset Council.  It was in the document that Liz discovered the name of her birth sister. She said: 'There was one line that read "Deborah", it was just overwhelming, it was frightening as well'.

When Liz turned 60, she decided enough time had gone by without knowing her biological sister, and with encouragement from her daughter, she sent an application to ITV's Long Lost Family.  'I think after turning 60, I thought: "I've got to do something", my daughter told me to go on Long Lost Family, I thought I'd never get on, but I did'.

'Within two weeks someone replied with the process it was brilliant,' the mother-of-two recalled.

The Long Lost Family team located Deborah, now known as Debbie, and discovered that, unlike Liz, Debbie was adopted within the family by her maternal aunt and that although she knew her birth mother as a child, she had long since lost contact.  Debbie said: 'I was adopted into the family, so I knew a lot of the relatives. Growing up, we didn't have a lot, but we never went without.  We'd had a holiday to the seaside every year and at Christmas, it might have been second-hand things that we got, but we didn't mind, we appreciated everything we got'.

Unlike Liz, Debbie discovered she had a birth sister at the age of eight, explaining: 'I thought about her quite a lot over the years I had never forgotten."

She explained that while she would have loved to find her biological sister, she 'wouldn't know where to start'.  In October last year, she was surprised to come home to a letter from Long Lost Family. 'Everything was going through my head', she recalled.

'It took me all day and I rang the number on it, and that's when I found out that it was real, and I was thrilled to bits'.  There were a few similarities in life along the way, but I think we're both quite sensitive underneath but feisty in other ways.' She added: 'I think we're very similar in lots of ways'.

The mother-of-two continued: 'It filled that hole, and it made me feel complete really, I had this urge to do it at 60, and I acted on it, and it was brilliant, and it's just been a bit of a whirlwind since then it still feels a bit surreal.'

Debbie added: 'It was brilliant, I felt like I had known her all my life'.

The pair are now enjoying getting to know each other and making up for lost time, with the pair chatting weekly on the telephone.  Liz and Debbie are planning on getting to know each other face to face in October, when Liz is planning a visit to Debbie's Yorkshire home.

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Interview/Television/Radio / Long Lost Family: Woman, 74, who spent her whole adult life looking for the ....

« on: July 14, 2024, 02:15:14 PM »

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-13617197/Long-Lost-Family-Woman-74-spent-adult-life-looking-baby-gave-aged-17-strict-parents-says-shes-world-shes-finally-reunited-son.html

Long Lost Family: Woman, 74, who spent her whole adult life looking for the baby she gave up aged 17 because of her strict parents says she's on 'top of the world' as she's finally reunited with her son

    Paula Beer was aged just 17 when she made the decision to part from her baby
    READ MORE: Woman, 76, forced to put her baby up for adoption after becoming pregnant aged just 16 is reunited with her daughter 60 years later

By Jessica Green For Mailonline

Published: 00:01, 14 July 2024 | Updated: 01:39, 14 July 2024

A woman who spent her whole adult life searching for her child after giving him up for adoption has revealed her joy at reuniting with her son nearly 60 years later.  Retired council worker Paula Beer, 74, from Bridgend in Wales, was aged just 17 when she made the heart-breaking decision to part from her baby but spent decades after looking for him.  Frightened of her strict parents’ reaction, she had concealed her pregnancy, working long hours in a grocery store in nearby Porthcawl, and only saw a doctor when she was eight months along.  Paula gave birth to her son, Paul, in February 1967, spending just three days with him in hospital before he was taken away.   But thankfully, the Long Lost Family team located Paula’s son whose name had been changed to Jim, and found him living in the southwest. In emotional scenes, birth mother and son are reunited during episode two of the ITV programme on Monday.  After discovering she was pregnant at the age of just 17, Paula came to the conclusion on her own that she’d have to have her baby adopted.  She told FEMAIL: 'My father would've thrown me out, the shame and all the rest of it.  I made the decision to give [Paul] up for adoption, because he'd have a much better life, he'd have had a very unhappy life with myself and my parents.'

At seven months pregnant, Paula went to stay with a kind aunt in Essex, who helped to arrange the adoption.  'That was a very, very, very bad time in my life. It was the worst thing I've ever had to do in my life,' recalled Paula.

She spent three days with her son before he was taken away to be adopted, 'just looking at him, talking to him, hoping he'd remember my voice, knowing what I have to do and loving him as much as I could you know,' said Paula.

'It was a very, very hard time, and parting with him then was the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life.'

She added: 'From the moment I held him in my arms for the first time, the love I felt for him then was unbelievable. I didn't think I would feel like that. And I knew I had to part with him. So I wanted not to feel like that.'

Paula later went on to marry and have a daughter but didn’t anticipate the pain of giving up her son would cause her, for the rest of her life.   'Every year on his birthday I light a candle for him, and watch the candle burn and say a prayer and ask God: "please, God, let me find him one day",' revealed Paula ahead of finding her son.

The Long Lost Family team eventually discovered Paul’s name had been changed to Jim, and traced him living in the southwest.   It took Jim several months to decide whether he wanted contact with his birth mother, with the happily adopted psychiatric nurse saying on the show: 'It was a mixed range of emotions, from happy to scary you name it.'

But eventually Jim decided that he did want to meet his birth mother, and was delighted to discover she was Welsh, since he's spent lots of time in Wales and loves it.  Paula who also shares a love for music and the outdoors with her son revealed she was 'absolutely over the moon' after discovering Jim.   She recalled: 'The first thing I said to Davina McCall was "Is he OK?" And she said: "Yes, he's very, very happy." And I said: "Oh, thank god for that." And I said: "Does he want to meet me?" That's my second question. She said, "Yes".   My worst fear was that he didn't want to meet me, and that he'd been perfectly happy with his life so far, that he didn't want me in it, or want to meet me. And that does happen.  So I have been so, so lucky. I thank God every single day, get down on my hands and thank God for my son.'

Recalling their emotional reunion with one another, Paula said it was 'wonderful', with the pair sharing an affectionate hug. She even admitted: 'I would have stayed there forever with him in my arms.'

'We sat down and he held my hands the whole time... It was totally, totally amazing. He's the son I would have designed for myself. He's perfect for me, to me, with me in every way.   'He's my personality, a toned down version of me I feel he's been my son in my life, all my life.'

Following their experience on the ITV programme, the two now video call a few times a week.

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Articles / Is this proof that intelligence is 'set' the day we're born? Identical twins....

« on: July 01, 2024, 04:54:12 PM »

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13587493/IQ-intelligence-Identical-twins-separated-birth-study.html

Is this proof that intelligence is 'set' the day we're born? Identical twins separated at birth have near-identical IQs, fascinating study from the world's leading expert in twins reveals

    READ MORE:  Exposure to chemical could cause shrunken heads in newborns

By John Ely Deputy Health Editor For Mailonline

Published: 14:00, 1 July 2024 | Updated: 14:32, 1 July 2024

Identical Chinese twins separated at birth by the nation's draconian one-child policy grew up to have almost identical IQs, a fascinating study reveals.  The research, led by Dr Nancy Segal an expert in psychology from the University of California, considered one of the world's leading experts on twins, examined the intelligence scores of 15 pairs of identical twins adopted by different families.  Fourteen pairs of twins were female due to Chinese culture traditionally favouring male children, a bias which led to female children, including twins, being abandoned by parents during China's one-child policy which ran from 1980 to 2016.  These genetically identical twins were separated and raised in different environments and sometimes even in different countries.  This provided scientists with the rare opportunity to test if nature or nurture was the most important factor for IQ.  The twins underwent IQ tests twice, once when they were, on average, 11-years-old and then again, after some years had passed, when they had an average age of 14.  Comparing the results between the twin pairs over time the researchers discovered their scores were nearly identical.  Publishing their results in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, the authors wrote: 'Despite their different homes, educational experiences, and (in some cases) residences in different countries, the twins appear to have interacted with their environments in ways that aligned with their genetic propensities.  This supports the notion that environments do not act randomly in fashioning developmental outcomes rather, individuals behave selectively and actively with respect to the people, places and events that engage and challenge them.'

Dr Segal said that the older twins got the more their IQ scores seemed to align in the long term.  As genetic factors kick in, the environment drops out. So they become more alike with time,' she told The Times.

She based this finding off another aspect of the study which examined data from nine pairs of Danish identical twins who underwent similar IQ tests as adults.  While the data on this group of twins was more limited that the Chinese cohort, it similarly showed that twin pairs tended to match each other for changes in IQ between the two tests.  Concluding their study the authors said the results suggest that 'twins can be expected to achieve similar results on school tests, whereas unrelated siblings can be expected to achieve different outcomes.'

They continued: 'Knowing this will help parents and educators tailor their treatment, resource provision, and expectations of different children within families.  In doing so, they may avoid the frustration that may come from encouraging and/or expecting outcomes and goals that may be outside the child's inclinations.'

Dr Segal and the other authors acknowledged an obvious limitation of their study is the overall small number of participants, a somewhat unavoidable factor given the rarity of identical twins being separated at birth.  As such they say the results should be interpreted with caution.  Dr Segal added: 'Should parents and educators throw their hands up in despair?  Absolutely not. Everybody can become smarter. But we’re not going to all be the same.'

While the latest study suggested separated twins has similar IQs some case examples have shown the opposite.  Dr Segal has previously reported the remarkable case of two identical Korean twins separated in 1976, one raised in South Korea the other in the US after they went missing.  Tracked down 40 years later, they showed remarkably similar personality traits but differed when it came to IQ with the American twin 16 points behind her genetically identical sibling.  It bears mentioning the American twin had suffered three concussions in life that her South Korean counterpart hadn't, and this may have influenced the results.  Measuring IQ and equating it to 'intelligence' in real life has proved controversial.   For example, some experts highlight that people can score highly on IQ tests which measure logic, abstract reasoning, learning ability and memory, but struggle to apply these day to day.   Identical twins are those born from the same fertilized eggs which then splits into two genetical identical embryos.  They differ from non-identical twins which happen when two separate eggs are released and then fertilised at the same time.   Identical twins have been linked to various have been linked to various shared behaviours before.  Some studies have found twins are likely to share nail biting habits, and reports have emerged that some twins share cancer symptoms even if only one of them is suffering the disease.  Perhaps the most starting twin stories come from pairs who were separated at birth but share remarkedly similar lives.  One of the most famous examples of this are the 'Jim twins' Jim Lewis and Jim Springer who were separated at birth.  Dr Segal, who has written about their case, said that despite being raised in different environments the pair both suffered tension headaches, bit their fingernails, smoked the same cigarette brand, both enjoyed woodworking, and even vacationed on the same Florida beach.  The leading expert on twins also worked with another pair separated at birth Ann Hunt and Elizabeth Hamel who were only reunited at the age of 78.  Ann from Aldershot, Hampshire, didn’t even know she had a sibling until her daughter Samantha Stacey discovered Elizabeth while tracing their family tree.   Whereas Elizabeth always knew she had a twin but had given up hope of ever finding her, and had moved to Portland, Oregon, USA.  They have earned a place in the Guinness Book Of World Records as the longest time apart for reunited twins after their emotional reunion in Los Angeles, California.  The girls were born out of wedlock in 1936 in Aldershot and their mother Alice Patience Lamb couldn’t cope and both were to be adopted.  But domestic servant Alice couldn’t find anyone to adopt Elizabeth, because she had a curvature of the spine so only gave Ann up.  When the pair finally made contact, they both learned they had married men named Jim.  Dr Segal who funded their trip to be reunited said at the time: 'Fascinating work on separated twins shows that here are twins growing up in totally different families, sometimes even totally different cultures, and yet they bring with them similar types of attitudes in politics, religion, social behaviour.  Where do these things come from? It’s difficult to know exactly but it seems that their genes linked to intelligence, personality and temperament just lead them to have similar types of world views.'

Reunited after 78 years: Twins separated at birth in 1936 meet for the first time and discover they both married men called Jim

They were just five-months old when their mother made the heartbreaking decision to put them up for adoption in 1936.  Twins Ann Hunt and Elizabeth Hamel were then separated and faced the prospect of never seeing each other again.  But 78 years later the sisters found each other by chance and have reunited.  Ann from Aldershot, Hampshire, didn’t even know she had a sibling until her daughter Samantha Stacey discovered Elizabeth while tracing their family tree.  During their time apart, they have survived a World War, raised a family and have witnessed the birth of their grandchildren.  Ann said: 'I was over the moon, I couldn’t speak. I let Elizabeth speak mostly, I had to pinch myself because I realised that I’ve got a sibling, a sister.  It’s so wonderful I’m not on my own any more. I’ve got no words to say. I’m so happy I have Elizabeth.'

Elizabeth added: 'I’ve been praying for her for many years. I thought being adopted, she could be anywhere in the world. It was amazing to me that she was still in Aldershot.'

The girls were born out of wedlock in Aldershot and their mother Alice Patience Lamb couldn’t cope and both were to be adopted.  But domestic servant Alice couldn’t find anyone to adopt Elizabeth, because she had a curvature of the spine.  Ann was given up and she stayed in Aldershot all her life - unaware of who her mother was and that she had a twin.   Elizabeth stayed with her mother and later moved to Chester and then to the States when she got married.  Elizabeth, who is older than her twin by 20 minutes, said: 'I had curvature of the spine, which in those days was something which made a person unadoptable.  We were both going to be adopted but when mother found out about the curvature of the spine, she decided to keep me.' 

The pair got in touch after Samantha spent hundreds of hours tracing through birth records trying to find out details about her mum.  Samantha, 43, scoured local records for weeks, until eventually she discovered her grandmother’s name, Alice Lamb.  Last April, she then worked out that Alice had had a daughter, who lived in America, after tracking down her stepson, who lived in Chester.  Ann said: 'Samantha said to me "we’ve found your sister but there’s a bonus she’s your twin sister."'

Samantha added: 'She was overjoyed delighted. She instantly rang my sisters. She’s just very happy about it.'

They could not find a phone number but did have an address and Ann wrote a letter to her long-lost sister.  Elizabeth said: 'When I saw the letter, my eyes popped open. I couldn’t get on the phone to give my long-lost sister a call fast enough.'

After a year of talking over the the phone the pair were reunited.  Their trip was funded by twin expert Dr Nancy Segal, Director of the Twin Studies Center (corr) at California State University.  She is now spending two days studying the pair, who beat the previous world record for separated twins by three years.  Dr Segal said: 'Fascinating work on separated twins shows that here are twins growing up in totally different families, sometimes even totally different cultures, and yet they bring with them similar types of attitudes in politics, religion, social behaviour.  Where do these things come from? It’s difficult to know exactly but it seems that their genes linked to intelligence, personality and temperament just lead them to have similar types of world views.'

While former printer Ann stayed in Aldershot her entire life, Elizabeth joined the Navy, where she met Jim - who sadly passed away in 2012 after 48 years of marriage.  The sisters may have only just met for the first time in decades, but it seems they have formed an unbreakable friendship.  Ann added: 'I feel like I’ve known Liz all my life now.'

Ann raised three daughters, Suzanne Trusler, 51, Sarah, 47, and Samantha Stacey, 43.  Elizabeth Hamel raised two boys, one named Quinton, who both joined the navy like their mum.

WHY IS A MEASURE OF MENTAL ABILITY

IQ stands for intelligence quotient and it is used to measure mental ability.  The score is achieved by dividing a person's mental age, obtained with an intelligence test, by their age.  Test questions focus on abilities such as mathematical skills, memory, spatial perception, and language abilities.  The resulting fraction is then multiplied by 100 to obtain an IQ score.  An IQ of 100 has long been considered the median, or most often achieved, score.  Because of the way the test results are scaled, a person with an IQ of 60 is not necessarily half as intelligent as someone with an IQ of 120.  Although the accuracy of intelligence tests is somewhat disputed, they are still widely used.  To be accepted into Mensa, the 'high-IQ society', a person by score in the top two per cent of the general population.  This currently means having an IQ of at least 132.

Famous people's IQ scores:

Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking - 160

Donald Trump - 156

Emma Watson - 138

Arnold Schwarzenegger - 135

Nicole Kidman - 132

5

Articles / I just found out the man I'm about to marry is my brother and we have three ...

« on: June 18, 2024, 03:22:54 PM »

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/prince-joachim-of-denmark/article-13536565/I-just-man-marry-brother-three-kids-Hes-love-life.html?ito=social-facebook&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR17ea7sCMA6-jEkLTlOVRAwHijaUp1lIimPAUFp8-_U0JKeOs_eovQn7KQ_aem_pENBhdV7khxav3No8brOZA

I just found out the man I'm about to marry is my brother and we have three kids together: 'He's the love of my life'

     A mum-of-three has found out she's related to her long-term partner
     READ MORE: Inside the Colt incest family

By Belinda Cleary For Daily Mail Australia

Published: 03:22, 17 June 2024 | Updated: 08:35, 17 June 2024

A young mother-of-three has been left feeling unwell after finding out the 'love of her life' and father of her kids is also her brother.  Posting to a women's advice group, the Melbourne-based mum said she was adopted at birth but never knew the people who raised her weren't her biological parents.  'I never thought my parents weren't my parents. No one said anything until a few weeks ago when my mum was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer,' the woman revealed.

She 'started digging' and found her birth mother and 'a couple of siblings' including her fiancé who has a different father.  The mum said she and her brother separated immediately and called their wedding off - but don't know how to explain what they've uncovered to their children.  'I just feel sick. They are siblings and cousins. His mum is my birth mother,' she said. 'My world has imploded I'm not okay.'

She added that they 'obviously can't be together' but love each other 'so much'.  The post divided opinion with some claiming it 'must be fake' and others prompting her to 'run'.  'I would feel so sick,' one woman said.

'I can't believe no one ever told you, this is on them,' said another.

'Haven't you met his mum? Surely she would have recognised you,' said a third.

While others questioned 'how small' her town is.  But some people didn't see the problem with the relationship.  'I would see a psychologist and get some counselling but you don't have to call it off. You didn't know you were siblings,' said one woman.

'It isn't the first time something like this has happened I would say keep it to yourselves and be happy together,' said another.

'I don't see why you can't be together,' echoed a third.

Some asked about their children to which she revealed they are all 'developmentally normal'.  'I wouldn't say anything to the kids, it isn't their fault,' one woman advised.

Others said they should wait to tell them until their older - but get testing done to make sure they are as healthy as they seem.  According to Helesnorge the national health service of Norway where inbreeding has been a problem there are key issues with having children with blood relatives.  If you have children with a relative the risk of malformations or medical conditions is 'twice as high' because both parents are likely to have the defective gene.  Close blood relationships also increase the risk of stillbirth and infant death. Children with related parents are also more likely to have a reduced life expectancy.  Conditions inherited due to blood relationship are often serious. Examples include metabolic disorders, skin diseases and blood disorders, physical and mental developmental problems, and damage to hearing and/or vision.

6

Articles / YouTuber Myka Stauffer Said Her Child Was 'Not Returnable' Before Viral ....

« on: June 09, 2024, 03:01:30 PM »

https://people.com/youtuber-myka-stauffer-said-child-not-returnable-before-adoption-dissolution-scandal-8659038?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=social-share-article&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR1ibN1okiBKjZq_Z4ARll5EJSqxjsXaBmXi2osmfpfHn3slD_21CEGTDpQ_aem_AV7iVfqk_c6l31KR3B2DOUJ6DeU953pZV0bG1fs6JZIfe8ve65NHfaf5JekeZntXWMANtYV6pxM20rikhveQG7d4

YouTuber Myka Stauffer Said Her Child Was 'Not Returnable' Before Viral Adoption Dissolution Scandal

Prior to his actual adoption from China, the Ohio mom claimed the child's "only need" was "a nice family that really, truly cares about him"
By Zoey Lyttle
Updated on June 7, 2024 10:08AM EDT

    YouTuber Myka Stauffer re-homed her adopted son in 2020, claiming she and her husband were unable to care for his special needs
    In the docuseries An Update on Our Family, Vox Media Studios included clips from Myka's old vlogs leading up to her family's trip to China to pick up the 2½-year-old, whom they called Huxley
    Myka showed the boy's photos in her pre-adoption videos and explicitly stated that he was "not returnable"

Myka Stauffer spoke confidently about her adoption process well before its unexpected ending.  Vox Media Studios revisited the viral scandal in the new docuseries An Update on Our Family, which explores the family vlogging industry and how Myka and James Stauffer fell from grace in 2020 after they re-homed their adopted son, whom the couple called Huxley. (Huxley has since been renamed by his new family.)  The Stauffers adopted Huxley, who was later diagnosed with autism, from China when he was 2½ and sought adoption dissolution two years later, claiming they were unaware of the extent of his disabilities. Their decision was met with widespread, extreme backlash that eventually drove the Ohio-based family offline.  The Stauffers, as well as Huxley's new family, have not responded to PEOPLE's requests for comment.  The three-part series which was inspired by New York Magazine's 2020 feature on the family includes clips from Myka's since-deleted YouTube videos leading up to their trip to pick up Huxley in Asia. In several snippets, the former nurse claimed she was equipped and willing to learn how to parent a child with special needs.  "We started talking to physicians, we started having meetings, we started doing tons of different things so that we could be really well educated on different conditions," Myka told the camera in one of several videos discussing the adoption process.

"Let’s just say there’s 100 conditions," she continued. "Me and my husband were comfortable with 99 of the conditions. So we were very, very open."

The YouTuber also recorded herself sharing how Huxley's photo stood out to her amongst hundreds of other potential adoptee profiles.  “I have probably seen over 400 kids’ profiles. Not their files, not the reviews, not the referral. Just their little profiles on this site," she said in a video. "His picture spoke to me so much. Like, it gives me chills just thinking about his little picture.”

In addition to showing Huxley's photo online before the adoption was finalized, Myka also told her subscribers about the child's disability, divulging what information she had.  “I don’t know what his medical diagnosis is gonna look like. How much schooling will he need? Will he need a little bit more hands on? Will he be delayed?" she said in 2017, adding, "But if anything, my child is not returnable.”

The mom of three maintained that she and James were ready to cater to his disabilities: “The only need that our little boy has is a nice family that really, truly cares about him," she told the camera in one vlog post.

After the Stauffers revealed their decision to seek out adoption dissolution, their lawyers spoke to PEOPLE at the time about their ultimate hope to "provide Huxley with the best possible treatment and care."

"We are privy to this case and given the facts at hand, we feel this was the best decision for Huxley," Myka and James' lawyers, Thomas Taneff and Taylor Sayers, told PEOPLE in an exclusive statement issued in May 2020. "In coming to know our clients we know they are a loving family and are very caring parents that would do anything for their children."

"Since his adoption, they consulted with multiple professionals in the healthcare and educational arenas in order to provide Huxley with the best possible treatment and care," Taneff and Sayers continued. "Over time, the team of medical professionals advised our clients it might be best for Huxley to be placed with another family."

The vloggers' legal team noted that the Stauffers followed the advice of medical professionals, which, the lawyers clarified, "did NOT include any considerations for placement in the foster system, but rather to hand-select a family who is equipped to handle Huxley’s needs."

Since the adoption dissolution and resulting backlash, Myka's personal YouTube channel and the family's channel titled "The Stauffer Life" have both been deleted. James' "Stauffer Garage" channel remains online, though he only shares content relating to car flipping, detailing and cleaning, per the page's bio.

7

Articles / ANDREW PIERCE: The bittersweet day I first laid eyes on the mother who left.....

« on: May 18, 2024, 02:39:44 PM »

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13405027/ANDREW-PIERCE-mother-childrens-home-lengths-never-traced.html?spot_im_redirect_source=user-profile&spot_im_comment_id=sp_jhHPoiRK_13405027_c_2gJcIXV2hYw9E8OC3aSl7w6HGPh_r_2gdRFVp7h68xk2PVkunsnbKN2P8&spot_im_highlight_immediate=true

ANDREW PIERCE: The bittersweet day I first laid eyes on the mother who left me in a children's home 45 years earlier and who went to incredible lengths never to be traced

By Andrew Pierce for the Daily Mail

Published: 02:06, 11 May 2024 | Updated: 09:24, 11 May 2024

Was I doing the right thing?

With the help of friends, I'd finally tracked down a woman who'd gone to extraordinary lengths never to be found.  It was a typically autumnal Birmingham day: dreary grey skies overhead and drizzling with soft rain. I arrived in her street in a black cab, but she clearly wasn't in so I settled down in my seat to await her return.  As the minutes ticked by, my stomach started churning with nervous tension and I struggled to contain waves of nausea.  The taxi driver, who'd been glancing at me in his mirror, turned to gaze at me with concern. 'Are you feeling OK, mate? You're looking very pale.'

At that point, I used my newspaper to clear the cab's steamy rear window. And there she was! Although the slight figure walking up the street was still too far away for me to discern either her age or her features, I knew with total certainty that my quest was over.  At the age of 48, I'd finally found my birth mother.  My mum and dad who adopted me when I was three had told me that, at birth, I'd been placed in Nazareth House, a Catholic orphanage in Cheltenham.  I also knew that when they absorbed me into their family, they'd changed my name from Patrick to Andrew.  I was slightly built with dark hair, while my three siblings were all heavily built and fair-haired, but I never had much cause to wonder about my origins. From the start, I was much loved by my adoptive parents, who treated me in exactly the same way they did their other children.  In fact, it wasn't until I'd left home and was working as a journalist that it dawned on me I didn't even know the name of my birth mother.  My parents, both Roman Catholics, lived in a three-bedroomed semi-detached on a council estate in Swindon. One Sunday in late 1962, a priest at their local church had announced there were dozens of babies at an orphanage in Cheltenham who desperately needed good, loving Catholic homes.  He knew money was tight for most of the congregation. But, as he told them: 'Love costs nothing.'

George Pierce, who worked as a spot welder on a car assembly line, and his wife, Betty, began to give serious thought to adopting. Thus they came into my life for the first time in the spring of 1963.  They started visiting the orphanage regularly, taking me out for walks and for lunch in local cafes. I was always dressed in check trousers, like Rupert Bear, and was apparently an unhappy, introverted child who rarely spoke a word.  Noticing I seemed to be constantly scratching my legs, George ducked me behind a tree one day and rolled up my trousers. He was shocked to discover my legs were a weeping and bloody mass of sores and blisters.  George told his wife: 'We've got to get the lad out of here, Bet!'

It would be the best part of half a century before I'd discover the reason why my legs were in such a terrible state.  By the time the adoption was finalised, I was calling Betty 'Mummy' or 'Mum'. Apparently, the word came easily.  After settling in, I had an extremely happy childhood. Like my brother and sisters, I went to Catholic junior and secondary schools. I took part in speech competitions and became the chief altar boy, singing solos in church until my voice broke.  Occasionally, I'd write letters to the Daily Mirror, my parents' newspaper. Once, when I was 14, I found Mum crying over an article supporting the government's decision to allow adopted children to track down their birth parents.  It was the first I'd heard of the change in adoption law, but all I really cared about was that Mum was upset. So I dashed off a letter arguing that 'blood wasn't necessarily thicker than water', and asking why I'd ever want to find my 'birth mother', when I had the mum I loved at home.  To my astonishment, it was the lead missive on the readers' page a few days later. After Mum read it, she dissolved into floods of tears. She even took the rare step of phoning my Dad on the assembly line to tell him to read the letters page and he too started crying.  It was this letter which I showed four years later to the editor of the Gloucestershire Echo that helped land me my first job in journalism. The editor, it turned out, was the father of two adopted kids.  As for Mum, she cherished that letter until the day she died, which is why I could never tell her I'd decided to find my birth mother.  A decade later, by which time I was working in London, my newspaper sent me to do some research at the General Register Office. While there, I thought it might be interesting to find my birth certificate.  The only information I'd ever had from my parents was that I'd been baptised Patrick James and was born at Bristol Southmead Hospital on February 10, 1961. It was enough: suddenly I was looking at the name of my birth mother Margaret Connolly. There was no name given for my father.  But when I called Mum to tell her what I'd discovered, there was no response at the other end of the phone. Total silence.  As I didn't want to do anything to upset her, I immediately dropped any idea of finding Margaret Connolly. Not that I wasn't tempted.  I had an image of her in my mind as a pregnant teenage Irish girl with dark hair, a slim figure and high cheekbones just like myself. She'd have come over to Britain, I guessed, to have the baby far from her disapproving family.  From what I'd read on the subject, she'd almost certainly be tortured with guilt and desperate for news of the child she'd given away.  By the time I was 48, I'd begun to fear that if I delayed looking for Margaret any longer, she might die before we had a chance to meet.  So I turned to my friend Jane Moore, an old colleague and now a regular on ITV show Loose Women. Among her other talents, she's a whizz at tracking people down, and had already found missing birth parents for four other friends.  Jane told me I needed to get hold of my adoption file. Several months after filing a request for it, I was given a date to turn up at my local social services department, and advised to bring a companion so I took my close friend, the Daily Mail columnist Amanda Platell.  A middle-aged social worker placed a thick blue file down on the Formica desk in front of us. With a slight sigh, she said: 'I have to say that this is one of the most complicated files that I've read. Ever. Your birth mother went to quite extraordinary lengths to cover her tracks, to ensure she'd never be found.'

Margaret had omitted her date of birth from any of the paperwork. She'd only given NHS nurses' accommodation it seems she'd been a nurse as her address. She'd omitted her middle name, making her even harder to trace.  I felt crushed. But I asked Jane to continue searching, convinced that Margaret would want to know her lost child was now a healthy, happy and successful middle-aged man.  The file contained a few new clues. For one thing, Margaret had been 29 when I was born (though we subsequently discovered she was actually 34), which now made her around 80.  For another, she'd stayed at a Catholic home for 'fallen women' in Bristol, just before and after I was born though how she managed that when she lived and worked 100 miles away in Birmingham was unexplained.  Other facts: she'd placed me in the orphanage in Cheltenham though she hadn't agreed to me being adopted and had continued visiting me there for two years until finally letting me go. For my board and lodging, she paid ?2 a week a huge chunk out of her earnings of ?8.10 shillings a week as a state-registered nurse.  Intriguingly, she'd told the orphanage she was getting married to my father four months after she deposited me, and would withdraw me then. Of course, this never happened.  My father's name James Coffey also appeared in a couple of documents. Had he subsequently left her in the lurch?

Everything in the file seemed to lead to more questions.  Jane Moore ran out of leads within a few weeks. But on the very day she decided to give up, she had one last trawl through the paperwork and came across an almost illegible letter that had become detached from the others.  It was from Margaret to the nuns at the orphanage, and in it she mentioned a small village where she'd once lived in Ireland, called Carrigeen. There was also a reference to farming.  That was enough for Jane to hit Google and eventually stumble across a list of sheep associations in Ireland. And there in the Carrigeen area was the name Connolly alongside a phone number. Well, it had to be worth a try!  She was lucky. The man who answered the phone was Margaret's nephew and he told Jane she'd married a man called Patrick Lennon and they lived in Selly Oak, a suburb of Birmingham.  I was having dinner with Amanda when Jane rang to say she'd found my birth mother. I remember being speechless: my mouth according to Amanda was opening and closing without any sound, like a stranded fish out of water.  Next came the tricky part. How best to approach Margaret?

I consulted the social worker, and she said it was best if someone neutral, preferably a woman, went to Margaret's home while I waited close by in case she agreed to see me.  Amanda volunteered to make the first approach. It should take place on a weekday morning, we decided, when Margaret's children or grandchildren were likely to be at work or at school. So in 2009, that's how I came to be in a taxi, parked just out of sight from Margaret's little house, when I spotted her walking up the street.  Amanda waited till she'd gone inside, then rang the doorbell. She told me afterwards that Margaret, a sprightly little lady with twinkling blue eyes, had opened the door, calmed down her yappy dog and greeted her with a big smile. But the smile had quickly faded when she learned why this stranger was on her doorstep.  She denied all knowledge of a child who was put up for adoption. It had nothing to do with her, she kept repeating, nothing at all. 'Why are you showing me this?' she demanded as Amanda held up a slightly battered photograph of me in my Rupert Bear trousers and a red duffel coat.

To which Amanda replied: 'You must know why. It's Patrick.'

The woman's face crumpled and she looked stricken. There was a glimmer of tears in her eyes as she took the photograph and began stroking the little boy's face. 'He's so sad. So sad,' she muttered.  'There are tears running down his face. He's crying...'

In fact, I wasn't crying in the photo at all; I was just gazing at a flower bed.  Amanda told her I was up the road in a cab, and desperate to meet her. But Margaret wouldn't budge.  'I'm sorry you've come so far, but it's not me it's not me. It's so cruel. So very cruel!' she repeated, before thrusting the photograph back into Amanda's hands and slamming the door shut in her face.

There was a sudden downpour as Amanda ran back to the cab. My heart sank. She looked grim soaking wet, with all the colour drained from her cheeks.  'Margaret says that it's not her,' she said, confirming my worst fears. 'She says we've got the wrong woman. In fact, she's totally denying all knowledge of Nazareth House or the hospital in Bristol.'

I'd been on an emotional high, but now I felt utterly crushed, as if someone had punched me in the solar plexus.  Yet the more rational part of me had known my birth mother might deny all knowledge of me, given she'd gone to such great lengths to cover her tracks.  So, on Jane's advice, I'd prepared in advance a short letter, telling Margaret my name was now Andrew, that I'd grown up in Swindon and had enjoyed a very happy childhood with my adoptive family. I didn't want to cause her any unhappiness, embarrassment or harm, I wrote; she'd already suffered enough when she'd had to walk away from me.  Jumping out of the cab, I ran through the rain to push my note though her letterbox, then asked the driver to take Amanda and me to the nearest pub.  It wasn't even 11am but we managed to find somewhere open and demolished a vile bottle of ros? in about 30 minutes flat. While we were tossing alcohol down our throats, Jane called.  When I told her what had happened, Jane's advice was succinct and blunt. 'She is definitely your birth mother. I'm 100 per cent certain. You have to send Amanda back to see Margaret.'

Amanda let out a heavy sigh, dreading the thought of another rebuff. Grimacing as she took a large gulp of the rough wine, she said: 'I'll have to do it. After all, we've come this far and I'm damned if I'm going to give up now.  Besides,' she added, 'you and Jane are right. I've no doubt that it is Margaret. Frankly, Andrew, she looks just like you!'

As the taxi took us back towards Margaret's house, I slunk down on the back seat, trying to keep well out of sight of the neighbours. Not very successfully, as it turned out, because I could see net curtains twitching all over the street.  Full of Dutch courage from the unpleasant ros?, Amanda strode up the road again. It felt like she was gone for an eternity. No more than four minutes later, she was back with tears streaming down her face. Alarmed, I threw open the door and rushed towards her.  'It's her. It really is her!' Amanda blurted out, her voice cracking with emotion. 'Margaret has admitted she's your mother and wants to see you. She was smiling. Beaming. Her eyes were glistening.'

Margaret must have panicked, we decided, when Amanda first turned up.  But the combination of my note and having a bit of time to think had done the trick.  Over the continual yaps of her dog, Margaret had said to Amanda: 'From the moment you left, I have been praying to Our Lord. Praying for you to come back. Praying for forgiveness. It is me! He was my child.  Tell him that I'll see him.'

Still on the doorstep, Amanda told her I was in a taxi only 300 yards away, adding: 'Why don't you walk to the car to see him, or I'll call him and ask him to come here?'

But Margaret was having none of it. 'No, not here,' she said firmly. 'I can't possibly see him here. Someone may see us. I have grown-up children. I also have grandchildren.  I really can't take any chances. They wouldn't understand.  'No one... No one...' she continued, anxiously clasping her hands together, 'no one knows about the baby. I will see him. But well away from the house.  'Ask him to write to me and we will arrange it. I promise you that I definitely will see him.' When she'd finished telling me all this, Amanda's eyes were glinting with tears again. 'I can hardly believe it but we've done it! We really have found Margaret. At last!'

We hugged each other. 'Do you believe her?' I asked. 'Do you really think she'll see me?'

'Oh, yes!' Amanda reassured me, adding: 'You're so like Margaret. With the same high cheekbones and the same infectious smile.'

To say I was elated is a complete understatement. Finally, I was going to see the woman who'd given birth to me and visited me as often as she could at Nazareth House Orphanage until for some unknown reason she'd given me up.  Where would we meet?

Certainly not in her home Margaret had made it quite plain she didn't want her family to know about me. So I decided to leave it up to her to choose somewhere she'd feel comfortable and relaxed.  After I'd written to her a couple of times, she'd asked me to phone her. I was uncharacteristically nervous before I made the call. What would she sound like? Would she be friendly? Would she call me Andrew? How should I react if she called me Patrick?

She answered the phone quickly, saying 'Hello' in an unmistakably Irish voice.

'It's Andrew,' I said. 'You were expecting me to call...?'

'Oh, yes,' she replied. 'How are you?'

That was it. Margaret's first words to her eldest child, whom she hadn't seen for almost 50 years, were extraordinarily prosaic.  Had I expected her voice to be racked with emotion?

Well, rationally, I knew that was a scenario for the story books.  She was friendly and matter-of-fact. After a bit of small talk about her dog, Bobby, and of course, the weather, I asked where she wanted us to meet up. 'Let's meet in the Home Store in Birmingham city centre. There's a very nice cafe,' she said. 'Everyone knows it.'

I asked if she'd like to make it lunch, but she insisted she couldn't be away from home for too long because of Bobby. We agreed on a time and date.  Just as I was about to wind up the call, she said: 'Oh, there is just one thing. I do want to say...' She paused, shyly adding: 'I do think you have a lovely voice.'

Then, with a sharp click, she hung up.  A search on Google failed to produce a 'Home Store' anywhere in Birmingham. Where could it be?

She'd said everyone knew it.  Then the penny dropped: BHS or British Home Stores. It was big, it would be busy and there was a large cafe. And it was a clever choice because she'd be far less conspicuous there than in a chic little restaurant.  Well, BHS was fine with me. In fact, it would give us something less emotive to talk about, as I'd had a Saturday job in Swindon's BHS when I was in the sixth form. I'd worked in the cafe, clearing tables, before reaching the dizzy heights of being assigned to the enormous commercial dishwasher.  Telling her about this, I hoped, would show Margaret I came from an ordinary family background, and make her feel more comfortable.  Anyway, roll on a month and I was again on a fast train from London to Birmingham, accompanied as before by Amanda.  My excitement at the prospect of finally meeting my birth mother was tempered by distinct feelings of nervousness and unease.  What if she didn't like me?

What if she resented my totally unexpected appearance in her life?

And what if she didn't show up at all?

Adapted from Finding Margaret: Solving The Mystery Of My Birth Mother by Andrew Pierce (Biteback, ?20) to be published 23 May. To order a copy for ?18 (offer valid to 25/05/24; UK P&P free on orders over ?25) go to www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.

8

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

« 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.'

9

Books / Coming home to Self: The Adopted Child Grows Up

« 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.

10

Books / Dear Son / Moving On

« 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.

11

Books / Philomena ? review

« on: March 31, 2024, 02:07:56 PM »

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/oct/31/philomena-review

Philomena ? review

Judi Dench is effortlessly moving as an Irish woman seeking to learn about the fate of her baby boy and Steve Coogan, playing the journalist who helps her, has found a new direction

Philomena is something yearned for and lusted after by film-makers and journalists alike a really good story. It's a powerful and heartfelt drama, based on a real case, with a sledgehammer emotional punch and a stellar performance from Judi Dench, along with an intelligently judged supporting contribution from Steve Coogan. Yet the film's apparent simplicity and force come to us flavoured with subtle nuances and subtexts, left there by the people who brought this story to the public.

At its centre is a tough-minded, elderly Irish woman, Philomena Lee (Dench), and her battle to find out what happened to the baby boy taken away from her in the 1950s. As a teenage unmarried mother, she had been forced to put up her child for adoption, while working in one of the Irish Republic's penitential Magdalene laundries, which survived until the 1980s. These cottage industries of shame and self-hate were run by nuns and priests who had a nasty secret of their own: they discreetly accepted substantial sums of money from America's childless Catholic couples. It was a baby-farm business model that ran on cruelty and hypocrisy. Peter Mullan's 2002 film The Magdalene Sisters was a memorably fierce denunciation.

But the film is also about a former media apparatchik's personal need for a redemptive act of goodness after being mired in the shabby and inglorious world of political spin. And at a level below that, the film could also be about a comedian and actor working through his own strong feelings about what he feels to be two malign institutions: the Church and Fleet Street.

Coogan is the producer and co-writer of Philomena, and he plays Martin Sixsmith, the former BBC correspondent turned New Labour political adviser who, in 2002, was ousted from his job in an unedifying row over smear allegations and a leaked email. (The film is adapted from Sixsmith's own book.) Unhappily returning to work as a freelance journalist, he chances across the extraordinary story of Philomena, played by Dench with such effortless poise, serio-comic charm and heart-tugging potency. Sixsmith takes Philomena to America on a mission to track down her lost son.

Such a savvy operator as Sixsmith must surely have been aware of the case of Labour frontbencher Clare Short, who in 1996 was sensationally reunited with the son she had given away 31 years earlier: a well-publicised good news story for New Labour in opposition. That is not mentioned here. This movie puts party politics to one side to concentrate on what Coogan's Sixsmith is shown initially deriding as a "human interest" story: mid-market newspaper slush. Yet he takes it on and they make the oddest of couples. Martin is the high flyer who has risen in the amoral worlds of politics and the media. Philomena is the working-class woman who holds on to one clear moral fact: what the church did to her was wrong, but she doesn't want revenge, only the truth.

The story of Philomena's teenage self she is played as a young woman by Sophie Kennedy Clark is gruelling. We are used to Dickensian images of destitute old married couples in the 19th century being separated for ever at the doors of the English workhouses: for men and for women. There's similar agony and lump-in-the-throat desolation in seeing the teenage mums having their babies taken away from them. And all of it sanctified in the name of Mary Magdalene, who received from Christ a compassion that is nowhere visible now.

What Sixsmith and Philomena discover in the US is gripping. Dench shows how Philomena is scared, but has reserves of humour and courage that Sixsmith, for all his sophistication, can't match. There is a touch of Crocodile Dundee in Philomena's wide-eyed presence in the big city, of course, but it is great stuff from Dench.

Coogan's performance is more opaque. To some extent, his Sixsmith can never overtly seek redemption, since he never concedes he did anything wrong. But quite aside from this consideration, Coogan keeps everything pretty low key, even his anger, though there is one Partridgean moment as he savours the fruited bread the nuns give him for tea. Coogan is an excellent actor, but rarely has the chance to show it. With great restraint, he doesn't really give himself the opportunity here, leaving the dramatic and moral focus with Dench. Director Stephen Frears guides this arrangement with a sure hand.

Coogan has spoken publicly of his atheism and Catholic background. But what is really interesting is how his character adopts, and even embraces, the tactics of popular journalism. In pursuit of an interview, his Sixsmith literally shoves his foot in the door. But this kind of "human interest" journalism does real good: it gets at the truth and gives people closure, justifications of which the public has grown suspicious. Could it be that Coogan, the great accuser and challenger of the press, is conducting a creative thought-experiment?

Turning the journalists into the good guys?

At any rate, the result is a moving and exhilarating film, and the strange chemistry between Dench and Coogan ferments into a 120-degree proof emotional drama.

12

Politics / Speech by Sir Andrew McFarlane: Adapting Adoption to the Modern World

« on: November 16, 2023, 02:57:24 PM »

https://www.judiciary.uk/speech-by-sir-andrew-mcfarlane-adapting-adoption-to-the-modern-world/#:~:text=Secondly%2C%20to%20suggest%20that%20there,their%20birth%20family%20after%20adoption.

November 10, 2023

Speech by Sir Andrew McFarlane: Adapting Adoption to the Modern World

The Mayflower Lecture 2023

Adapting Adoption to the Modern World

Thursday 9 November 2023

It is a true honour to be giving this year?s Mayflower lecture. I am most grateful to the Plymouth Law Society for their kind invitation, and to the City of Plymouth and to the University of Plymouth who also co-hosts of tonight?s event.

The focus of my address is upon the adoption of children. In giving it, I am conscious that I am speaking to a number of audiences in addition to those of you who have been kind enough to gather this evening. Although many of you are lawyers, and what I say may be read by a good number of Family lawyers, I also hope that my words may be of interest to the wider public. With that in mind, I will take some time in setting out matters of history and context to assist ?new readers?, as it were, without, I hope, boring those for whom that information may be well known.

What follows is not a conventional ?law lecture?, and you will find only passing reference to case law within it. My purpose is twofold. Firstly, to raise public awareness of the fact that the Family Court is regularly making orders which will have a profound impact throughout their lives on those who are adopted and their families. Secondly, to suggest that there is a pressing need for courts and those who advise them in these matters to modernise the approach that is taken to supporting a young, adopted person by enhancing the degree to which they may maintain some form of relationship with their birth family after adoption.

It is the case that adoption, and the issue of contact on which I will focus, have been the subject of a number of recently published reports to which I will make appropriate reference in what follows.

The thought that the wider public may be interested in how the law and the courts currently approach issues of adoption is not an idle one. It is common place for the Press or media to carry stories of celebrities and others who were adopted long ago and who are now speaking out about their experience. Many of you will be familiar with TV programmes such as ?Long Lost Family?, in which researchers trace blood relatives, often decades after the event, and reunite brothers, sisters and other family members of individuals who were adopted in infancy. Not infrequently the adopted person will not even know if they have a brother or a sister until they are told of them, on camera, and shown a photograph. It is plainly ?good telly?, and the show has already run for 13 series. I suspect that, in part, it hooks the viewer because, on one level, it seems incredible that someone can live a long life, yet have no awareness of, let alone contact with, their mother or father or other close blood relatives.

In another, grimmer, context, there is clear public interest in the practices of the, now infamous, ?Magdalene Laundries? or ?Magdalene Asylums? active in Ireland from the 18th to the late 20th century. Although predominantly run by the Roman Catholic church, these institutions were operated by both protestant and catholic churches in both the north and south of Ireland. The laundries have recently been depicted in an award winning novel ? ?Small Things Like These? ? by Claire Keegan and a TV drama ?The Woman in the Wall?. In all it is thought that some 30,000 ?fallen women? were confined in Magdalene Laundries. Reasons for admission were broadly spread and were by no means confined to young women who had become pregnant out of wedlock. Once contained in a laundry, a woman might stay there for life. If she gave birth, her children went on to be adopted, as depicted in the book and film, ?Philomena?, by journalist Martin Sixsmith. It is a striking fact that it was only in 1996 that the last Magdalene Laundry closed.

In 2013, following the report of a government inquiry, the Taoiseach issued a formal apology for the hurt done to every woman who had spent time in a Magdalene Laundry.

My reason for taking time in a lecture about adoption in England and Wales, to tell you about these shocking, but historic, practices in a different country is that, whilst of a wholly different order to Ireland, the treatment of young women here who became pregnant out of wedlock in the middle of the 20th century is also deeply shameful.

In 2022, the Joint Committee of the Commons and Lords on Human Rights published a report on ?The Violation of Family Life: Adoption of Children of Unmarried Women 1949?1976? [JCHR]. It makes for grim reading. Its contents are important. It describes practices which provide a context in which it is possible to understand how the stories covered in Long Lost Family began.

The report covers the period from the Adoption Act 1949 to the Adoption Act 1976. Its summary describes how, during that period

??thousands of children of unmarried women were adopted even though their mothers did not want to let them go. Many of those affected, both mothers and children, have faced life-long suffering as a consequence of this separation.?

The inquiry sought to consider whether the treatment of these women and children respected their right to family life, as we understand it today, and how they were affected by the severing of that crucial bond between mother and child.

?The experiences of the mothers and their children are at the centre of this inquiry. They did not, as is often said, give their children away. Unmarried women who found themselves pregnant during this period faced secrecy and shame from the earliest stages. Those who would have seized the chance to keep their sons and daughters with them and brought them up themselves did not have the opportunity to do so. Societal and familial pressures, and the absence of support, contributed to thousands of children being taken from loving mothers and placed for adoption.?

The committee estimated that around 185,000 babies of unmarried mothers were adopted during this 27 year period ? that is nearly 7,000 per year. The report records:

?Many young women were sent away from home to conceal their pregnancy, and many spent their final weeks of pregnancy and weeks after the birth in mother and baby homes. Some of our witnesses recounted the abuse they faced whilst away from home. We were struck by descriptions of the ways in which the women were being ?punished? for what was seen as a transgression. There was an overwhelming feeling amongst the mothers we heard from that their treatment during and after giving birth was deliberate punishment for their pregnancy while unmarried.

We also heard about the continuing impact of the adoption of their baby on the mothers with many recounting ongoing mental health difficulties, others telling us the impacts on their family lives for decades. As one mother told us, ?53 years later and here I am, a wreck because of what happened to me and my daughter.? The mothers we heard from were subjected to cruelty because they were considered to have transgressed. Their treatment stands as an important reminder that human rights should be protected for all, including those who at any particular time are regarded as transgressors.?

The adoption orders that were made at that time, with respect to these women, were made ?by consent?, with the mothers signing away their rights, and the court simply acting upon the basis of that apparent consent in subsequently making an adoption order. The report describes the overwhelming culture amongst professionals, whether they be medical or social work practitioners, and voluntary adoption agencies, many of which were run by religious organisations, which was that there was no question of the mother caring for her child as a single parent and the only option was that of adoption. As a result, adoptions achieved in this way are, correctly, labelled as ?forced adoption?, rather than, as is often the case, ?relinquished children? ? a phrase which wrongly suggests that these mothers had some choice in the matter.

The report justifies reading in full. One aspect that it highlights is the difficulty that adopted adults encounter in accessing information about their birth family, despite now being entitled to do so.

To give one illustration of the finality of this form of adoption, in 1995 I had the privilege of representing a woman whose baby daughter had been adopted in 1960. All this lady wanted was simply to be told how things had turned out and if her daughter was well that this was so. She did not want to trace her or be put in touch. The application was refused and my appeal against the refusal was dismissed with the Court of Appeal holding that truly exceptional circumstances were required to justify disclosure of information in the official adoption registers. As far as I know, that mother may have gone to her grave not knowing anything about the life of the child she had given birth to. To my mind at the time, and at all times since, that outcome seemed cruel in the extreme to me. The same strict regime would not apply to modern adoptions, but that it was still applied to these forced adoptions only 25 years ago is striking.

For those who are interested, a recent ?File on Four? documentary by Jon Holmes describes his quest for information about the circumstances of his own adoption during that period. The programme shows that even for the adopted person, the task of tracing your own records is not made easy.

There is a group known as the ?UK Adult Adoptee Movement? , which believes that, despite the JCHR Report, there is still insufficient understanding of the impact of forced adoption on adoptees and their families. The group campaigns to raise awareness of the lifelong trauma adoptees face and to ensure appropriate support is available for all those involved. They state that:

?The impact of being adopted, does not magically disappear when you become an adult. Different life events, such as relationships, careers, healthcare and menopause are greatly affected by our adoption experiences ? yet this is completely ignored by society.?

Inquiries similar to those of the JCHR have been undertaken in Scotland and N Ireland into forced adoption. In Scotland and in Wales, the respective governments have issued a formal apology for the state?s knowledge of and involvement in this practice. The UK government has concluded that a formal apology with respect to England would not be appropriate.

The practice of ?forced adoption? ended in the 1970?s. My purpose in highlighting it today is to draw attention to the Joint Committee?s report, which did not receive wide media coverage on its publication last year. I believe, that, just as is the case with the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland, there is a legitimate public interest in knowing how the authorities in our jurisdiction approached the problem, as they saw it, of pregnancy out of wedlock in the middle of the last century. As a judge it is certainly not my place to comment on whether a public apology should, or should not, be made. There is, in any event, a legitimate debate to be had with respect to such apologies, and I do not intend to enter into it. I do, however, believe that many, if not all, in this room this evening will share my own sense of astonishment and shame that this practice was being undertaken in our country not so long ago, and that you may also share my profound sorrow for the women who were so clearly harmed by it.

My reason for referring to this, now historical, model of adoption is, in part to draw attention to what many will regard as a shocking practice, but also because, I believe, some elements of the culture surrounding it still remain in the modern approach to adoption, in particular with regard to the primary focus of this lecture, which is on the approach to what contact, if any, there should be between an adopted child and their birth family.

Until the 1970s adoption largely involved the relinquishing of young babies by a parent or parents with no expectation of any future contact. Children placed under this arrangement were usually very young and had no attachment or memory of their birth family. The stigma attached to illegitimacy and infertility meant that the decision not to promote contact was considered to be a protective factor for the adopter, the adopted child and the birth family. There was thus little call for post-adoption contact.

Against that background, and before turning to the modern law and practice, it is helpful to stand back and remind ourselves of what is meant by ?adoption? in English law.

An adoption order is an order giving parental responsibility for a child to the adopters. At the same time an adoption order operates to extinguish permanently the parental responsibility which any person had for the child immediately before the order was made . An adoption order is irrevocable (save in very restricted circumstances) and the child will be deemed in law to be the adopters? legitimate child, as if he or she had been born to them . The legal relationships within the child?s natural family cease to exist.

When a court or an adoption agency is coming to a decision relating to the adoption of a child, its paramount consideration must be the child?s welfare ?throughout his life? . This life-long lens is of a different order to that which applies in all other decisions a court may make concerning the upbringing of a child, where the paramount consideration is simply the child?s welfare. This distinction is important. It points up the essential difference between a decision focussed on ?the upbringing of a child? (to use the words of s 1 of the Children Act 1989) and one for adoption, which is a life-changing and permanent change of status. An adopted child is not only such during their minority, they are an adopted person throughout their adult life and forevermore.

Following the end of the days of ?forced adoption? or ?relinquished babies? reforming legislation in the 1970?s, adoption is now largely used for children who have been protected from child abuse by removing them from the care of their natural family. Such children are likely to require continued protection in the years to come, but, one may ask, how bad must the home circumstances be to justify not merely keeping the child safe during childhood, but legally removing her from her family forever and grafting her permanently into another family for the remainder of her life. The answer to that question, established by a decision of the UK Supreme Court , is that adoption will only be the proportionate remedy when it is necessary to meet the child?s welfare needs throughout their life and ?nothing else? (meaning no less intrusive arrangement) ?will do?.

The court must look at the realistic options for the child?s future care and must, in particular, consider the relationship that she has with any person and the impact of ceasing to be a member of the birth family and becoming an adopted person.

It is right to record that the change in the model of adoption from one which sought to remove many children born out of wedlock from their mothers, to one which aims to find permanent homes for abused children who cannot return to their family has had a radical impact on the volume of adoption applications which have fallen from a peak of around 25,000 in the 1960?s to below 5,000 children adopted from care in 2010 and again to around 2,950 in 2022.

An adoption order, or an order authorising a local authority to place a child for adoption, can only be made if each parent who has parental responsibility for the child either consents to the order, or the court has dispensed with the need to obtain their consent. Where consent is given, it must be unconditional and with full understanding of what is involved . Where a parent does not agree to the order, a court can only dispense with their consent where, either:
(a) The parent cannot be found or lacks capacity (within the meaning of the Mental Capacity Act 2005) to give consent; or
(b) The welfare of the child requires the consent to be dispensed with.

It is this latter requirement upon which, as I have already trailed, the Supreme Court focussed in Re B (A Child) in 2013. The judgments variously stressed that adoption should be seen ?as a last resort ? when all else fails? and where ?the court must be satisfied that there is no practical way of the authorities or others providing the requisite assistance and support? for the child and where ?nothing else will do?. The test is very strict with adoption only being ordered ?in exceptional circumstances? and where motivated by overriding requirements pertaining to the child?s welfare.

Finally, in this whistle-stop introduction to adoption law for newcomers, it is necessary to describe two other elements of the legal process. Firstly, in a change introduced by the Adoption and Children Act 2002 [?ACA 2002?], where a local authority intends to place a child who is in their care for adoption, they can only do so with the consent of both parents or where a court has made a ?placement for adoption? order. Such an order may, itself, only be made with consent, or where the court dispenses with parental consent on the basis that I have explained. Once a placement for adoption order has been made, the adoption issue is considered to be finalised so far as the parents are concerned and they can only apply to reopen the plan for the adoption for further court scrutiny if there has been a change in the circumstances underpinning the order and it is in the child?s interests to reopen the issue ? this is a high, and usually insurmountable, hurdle in most cases.

The importance of determining the issue of parental consent and for the court to endorse the plan for adoption before any adoptive placement takes place is that the child and the potential adopters will proceed into the placement knowing that, if it works out between them, an adoption is likely to follow without a further contested court hearing. Under the previous law, the parents were able to challenge the whole plan in a head-to-head trial with the adopters after the child had made his or her home with them and had settled down; that was, as you will imagine, often a most unsatisfactory and unsettling experience for the adopters. It was also less than fair to the parents who were facing a fait accompli, where it was hard to contemplate that a court would now remove their child from the adopters.

The second and final element of the legal structure that I need to paint in relates to ?contact?. As will become clear, it is this element that I consider needs to be developed in order to adapt adoption more suitably to the modern age.

Once a placement for adoption order has been made, all previous orders or arrangements for a child and his or her natural family to have contact with each other come to an end. When making a placement order, the court has the power to make a further order under ACA 2002, s 26 requiring the person with whom the child lives, or is to live, to allow him to visit or stay with the person named in the order, or for them otherwise to have contact with each other. Unless such an order has been made, there is no legal requirement for the local authority to arrange any contact with the child?s natural family.

Although s 26 speaks of a child being allowed to visit or stay with another person, such arrangements will be very rare given that the plan is for the child to cut all legal ties with his natural family. The normal arrangement, after a short interim period in which existing contact arrangements are run down and cease with a ?farewell? visit, is for a minimal link to be established via what is called ?letterbox contact?. The details will vary from case to case, but normally involve each side of the divide, namely the adopters and the natural parents, communicating with each other by a short letter or report once each year. These communications might, or might not, contain photographs and would give a brief update.

It is obviously important, as an adopted child grows up and comes to terms with who they are and what adoption means, for them to have some knowledge of their natural family. Adopters are taught and encouraged to maintain a ?Life Story Book? and undertake regular Life Story work with their child. In this context, the information gained through letterbox contact will be important and, minimal though the level of connection with the child might be, its value is not to be under-estimated.

The report in 2013 of a House of Lords Committee on Adoption Legislation quoted from two authoritative sources on the relevance and importance of contact post-adoption for the children who were now being adopted in saying that

?It was important to remember that contact should be for the benefit of the child, not for the parents or other relatives. The reasons why a child might benefit from contact were spelled out in evidence from After Adoption: ?it is not about maintenance of the relationships as they were with the birth family . . . what [children] like is to have some continuity that enables them to integrate the past with the present, and obviously then the future. I think contact can play a very useful role for the child in helping them understand their world and their life history.?
Helen Oakwater described the role that facilitated contact could play in assisting a child to ?integrate their past, allowing them to form a coherent narrative and more robust sense of self.??

Turning, at last, to the title of this address, ?Adapting Adoption for the Modern World?, what do I mean by the ?modern world? and why does adoption need adapting?

I suspect that I only need to begin to sketch out the ?modern world? point for you to understand the need for some form of rethink.

Picture the scene, the primary means by which an adoption might achieve the goal of creating an entirely new life for a child was hitherto to establish a largely imperviable wall around them, with little detailed knowledge of or contact with their natural family. Going back decades and decades, this is manifest in the extreme situations that are played out in ?Long Lost Families?, but still in relatively recent times a child, who might even live in a neighbouring town to his previous family, would be unlikely to know them or know much about them. In a world where communication was confined to letters and landline telephones, and a photograph was always a physical thing, it was possible, indeed easy, to maintain an adopted child in an hermetically sealed environment of this nature into adulthood unless the adopted person actively sought to trace their original family. Should they wish to do so, the process of giving them the identifying information was, for their own benefit, carefully controlled and supported by trained post-adoption counsellors.

You will now be ahead of me ?. With the explosion of digital communication in the past two decades it is possible for an adopted child, quietly, alone in their bedroom, without the knowledge of their adopted parents, to trace and find their family. The temptation to do so, and then to make contact with them, must be almost irresistible. But the dangers of doing so, and the potential for significant emotional harm to result, are easy to contemplate. Unlike the babies taken at birth of yesteryear, today?s adoptees have normally been removed from their family because they have experienced, or were likely to experience, significant harm there; harm of a nature and degree that justified permanent life-long placement as part of another family.

It is, sadly, now a not uncommon experience, despite the best efforts of adopters who have made a full, lifelong and loving commitment to their child, to experience the breakdown of that relationship during the teenage years with, in some cases, the young person moving with their feet and trying to rejoin their birth family. Such attempts often fail, or are a cause of further harm to the child. Fresh child protection procedures may be commenced between local authority social services with the adopters, as the child?s parents.

Even where events do not take such an extreme course, the task of bringing a young person up through the teenage years, never an easy one, must be all the more complicated where the child has been adopted and has had some experience, which may have been deeply traumatic, of their natural family. Gaining a sense of one?s own identity, where we come from, where we fit in and who we are, is a journey each of us will have undertaken during our adolescence. It was not easy was it, even if, like me, you had the security of a nuclear family that had been solidly consistent throughout your early years. Imagine how much more difficult it may be for one who has experienced a dysfunctional and abusive start in life, followed, probably, by a series of foster carers before becoming permanently part of your adoptive family only a few years before the onset of puberty.

That these difficulties exist is made evident by the fact that there is an active support group for adopters. It is called the ?Potato Group?, standing for ?Parents of Traumatised Adopted Teens Organisation? . Potato describes itself in these terms:

?We are a group of around 400 parents of adopted teenagers and post teens from all over the UK.

Collectively we parent young people who have suffered early, repeated trauma and continue to face difficulties in their teen and young adult years.

Our purpose is to provide a peer based service for families with teenagers who hurt and help them access support, information, resources and friendship from people who are living it and truly understand.?

This is a lecture about the law rather than social policy. It is in no manner the place of a judge to pontificate on the latter. That is so not only in constitutional terms, but also because, as a lawyer, I am not qualified to do so. These are matters, ultimately, for government and Parliament and it is welcome news that the Department for Education, which has responsibility for adoption, has commissioned a wide-ranging study about the lives of teenagers and young adults in adoptive, or alternatively ?special guardianship? families. A special guardianship order [under CA 1989, s 14A], which is intended to endure throughout childhood, is made to secure the placement of a child in the care of someone who is not their parent, but is often a close family member (for example a grandparent, aunt or uncle). Such placements, often referred to as ?kinship care?, have a sense of permanence, but allow the child to remain within the birth family.

In announcing the current project Sarah Jennings, Deputy Director at the Department for Education said
?This ground-breaking research will inform future government policy and delivery of both adoption and kinship care support. ? This research will inform our thinking on how to further improve the support provided to adoptive and kinship care families.?

The central question from my perspective is to ask whether the law, and the manner in which it is currently applied by the courts, continues to be fit for purpose, or whether it requires adapting to meet the changing needs of adopted children in the modern world.

To focus on the question, it is necessary to look in more detail at why contact is so important an issue. What follows is my own understanding after some 40 years, but that understanding has been greatly enhanced by recent discussion (for which I am most grateful) with Dr John Simmonds of Coram BAAF, with whom I am in agreement on many of these issues.

The first point to make is that the term ?contact? is itself unhelpful in this context. To lawyers, and no doubt to birth parents, it is likely to mean direct communication, and/or meetings, with the child. Such a narrow, or functional, view is unhelpful as it can obscure one of the core features of adoption, namely the severing of the child?s relationship with their birth parents and the establishment of a new set of relationships with the adopters. The consequences of the breaking and making of relationships is significant for all those involved including a profound sense of loss for the birth parents, a sense of confusion for the child/adolescent/adult and a source of anxiety for the adoptive parents. Any attempt to re-build these relationships in a meaningful and safe way through contact must take into account the needs of the individuals in a more comprehensive way than that provided by annual ?letterbox? messages.

To give an indication of the degree of sophistication required in developing a bespoke plan for contact for an individual adopted child, it is likely that the following factors will be relevant in most cases:

    Age of the child at removal from the parents.
    Age of the child at placement with approved adopters.
    The impact of genetic factors on the child?s development.
    The impact of risks to the child in the womb ? Foetal Alcohol Syndrome, or drug use by the mother.
    The lived experience of the child ? domestic abuse, poor feeding and hygiene, comfort, sensitivity, playfulness and relationships
    Tracking the child?s health ? weight, growth, sight, hearing.
    A range of health factors which impact on the child such as a named developmental condition.
    Parental neglect when evidenced by a significant failure to exercise parental responsibility as set out in law.
    Significant risk and harm that fall within the experience of abuse ? the direct actions of the parents that directly harm the child ? physical violence and assaults, sexual abuse.

All of these issues underpin the significance of avoiding any delay in agreeing the plan and solution for the child. We know that what every child needs throughout their life is a stable, loving family life that is or becomes their secure base. As a part of this, the child?s curiosity about their past including their birth family and other people who were important to them such as foster carers must be acknowledged and accommodated. The experience of feeling connected and having a personal narrative that is meaningful to the child/adolescent/adult is a core part of the recovery from an early life that was traumatic.

I am not alone in considering letter-box contact to be outdated and no longer apt to meet the more sophisticated understanding that now exists of a young adopted person?s needs. One particular deficit of letter-box communication is that it is typically only sent to the birth mother, and rarely to the father or, of great importance, to any siblings who may be separated from the adopted child. In addition, the model would seem to be based upon a fear of contact with the natural family destabilising the adoptive placement, when more modern thinking indicates that maintaining some continuing relationship with the natural family can assist the child.

Earlier, when looking at the historical context, I described the strong element of secrecy and lack of any contact which was a feature of forced adoption. Whilst that model has now been abandoned, it may be that its legacy continues to be played out in the approach to contact.

Drawing together these various strands, it is clear to me that a bespoke plan for future contact between a child and their birth family should be developed at an early stage and well before that child moves on to be placed for adoption.

In preparing this address, I have been greatly assisted by the fact that the report of a working group that I established some 18 months ago has recently been published and I intend, if I may, to spend some short time setting out its main conclusions before offering my own observations. The group, which is the President?s Public Law Working Group, Adoption Sub-Group (we are very inventive in the matter of group names), was made up of lawyers, judges, social work professionals and others who were all specialists in adoption work with Mrs Justice Frances Judd as its chair. Its report was published for consultation in September.

The report noted how adoption had adapted and changed down the years, but was clear that it needed to continue to do so saying:

?First and foremost, we recommend that there needs to be a greater focus on the issue of contact with the birth family as long as it is safe and for adopted adults to have more straightforward access to their records.?
Although the report ranges far and wide, for the purposes of this lecture I intend to take up its lead and focus in on contact after adoption. An opening paragraph summarises the group?s approach:

Whilst there has been a great deal of research in recent years as to the potential advantages to adopted children of maintaining some sort of face-to-face contact with the birth family, it remains unusual for the care plan for children who are going to be placed for adoption to propose more than indirect or letterbox contact. The House of Lords Children and Families Act 2014 Committee, which reported in December 2022 , concluded that the current system of letterbox contact was outdated and warned that the failure to modernise contact threatened to undermine the adoption system.

The group suggests a change in social work practice and training for all involved in the process (including prospective adopters) to give more focus to contact and the benefits that it can bring for many (although not all) adopted children.

The first chapter, on Adoption and Contact, opens with this statement:
Our main recommendation is that there should be a tailormade approach to the issue of contact for each adopted child which includes and promotes face-to-face contact with important individuals in that child?s life if it can be safely achieved. The issue of contact needs to be actively considered throughout the child?s minority, not only before the adoption order is made. The other recommendations are intended to support this overarching aim.
The PLWG report goes on to quote from the December 2022 House of Lords report:

?Contact, where safe, appropriate and properly managed, can be valuable for an adoptive child, their new family and their birth family, including siblings and other relatives. However, contact orders and support can vary, and the current system of letterbox contact is outdated. The failure to modernise contact threatens to undermine the adoption system.?

They reference a 2019 lecture that I gave to a Coram BAAF conference in which I said ?that any move towards greater openness and flexibility in post-adoption contact must come on a case-by-case basis, in a manner that brings prospective adopters along on a consensual basis. At each stage the court must give consideration to the issue of long-term contact, relying on advice from well-informed social workers and guardians as to the benefits (or otherwise) of contact in the particular case.?

The PLWG summarises the key messages from recent research:
i. There is considerable evidence that transparency and openness around the circumstances and experiences of the adoptee?s birth family is beneficial to an adopted child.
ii. The purpose of contact post-adoption is for the adoptee about enabling a process to help them understand their experiences and develop a sense of identity. Existing relationships with birth parents must change to take into account their different role as a result of the legal process of adoption.
iii. Separating siblings can lead to an enduring sense of loss.
iv. There are strong indications that face-to-face contact helps adoptees develop a sense of identity, accept the reasons why they were adopted and move forward with their lives.
v. However, ensuring that contact is safe for the child is pivotal to positive outcomes.
vi. Communication with and understanding from the parties involved in contact (birth parents or other relatives/adoptees/adopters) is an important component in its success.
vii. Despite the research indicating the benefits of face-to-face contact, where it can be safely managed, the overwhelming majority of cases continue to recommend only letterbox contact. Where direct contact does occur it often happens without any formal agreement being in place.
viii. Letterbox contact can prove problematic. A high number of arrangements stall as a result of one (or both) parties failing to maintain the arrangement. This leaves many adoptees without any effective contact from birth families.
ix. The experience in Northern Ireland tends to suggest that a shift in mindset by professionals involved in the process of adoption and strong guidance from the judiciary can bring about a change in approach to post adoption contact without the need for changes in primary legislation.
The group also recommends greater support and counselling for birth parents and that the full range of contact options, including digital options, should be actively considered by the professionals and the court during care and placement proceedings. They do not suggest that contact orders should routinely be made in the face of opposition from adoptive parents, whether at the time of the adoption itself or later, but it is believed that opposition is much less likely where adoptive parents are given a thorough understanding of the child?s needs right at the start and are given the right support.

A similar perspective is provided by another recent report. It is from the Consortium of Voluntary Adoption Agencies ?A home for me?? (November 2022) . It is a comparative review of different forms of permanence for children through adoption, SGO?s and fostering and it opens with the following sentence:
?The adoption system in the United Kingdom is not working well for children?

In the body of the CVAA report (p 13) the authors state that:
?? it should be recognised that birth family contact can be preserved and facilitated within adoption. Our research, and that of others, recognises that the awareness of birth family contact within adoption helps to facilitate it, and ongoing support for it within adoption ? needs to be improved. Realistically, in this age of social media, children are able to locate birth family and vice versa; therefore, earlier strategies of separating children from their birth family are no longer realistic. If this issue were to be addressed and there was recognition that adoption could support birth family contact, this could increase the likelihood of social workers recommending children and young people for adoption.?

Finally, before moving towards the recommendations made by the group, I wish to quote from oral evidence given to the Lords Children and Families Act 2014 Committee on 4 April 2022 by Al Coates who is a very experienced adoptive parent, former foster carer and a social worker as Mr Coates captures the essence of the thrust of each of these recent reviews and delivers it with the authority of one who has experienced the playing out of these issues first hand.

?We have a system that was developed in the 1950s, before computers were even invented. We are asking people to write letters. I do not know about you, but I do not write letters. We are asking vulnerable people and adult adoptive parents to write letters. We live in a social media age, and yet our feet are firmly stuck in the last century. We need a flexible, intuitive, risk averse but appropriately safe system that allows for meaningful support for lifelong contact with safe members of birth families.

I was recently given information from a freedom of information request across all RAAs in the UK. The amount of birth parents writing to adopters and not getting responses is amazing; it is in the hundreds. Once the adoption order is made, adopters do what they want.
The needs of five-year olds in relation to contact are very different from the needs of 10 year-olds. Then children become adolescents.

Twenty years ago, you would have had to go to the library and look through a microfiche?if you can remember what those are?to find someone. Now, if you give me three minutes with a mobile phone, I can find you. We need to have a flexible approach and to find an antidote to what are, as we have all been, angry teenagers acting impulsively. We find lots of families really struggling to support their children. We have a system that works on the worst-case scenario and presumes that all birth parents are dangerous and unsafe.

Do we need social workers who do an annual review and ask, ?What are your contact needs?? ? When children are young adults, physical contact might be appropriate, because we know that the physical risks to a three year-old are not present for a 15, 18 or 22 year-old. Those relationships cannot be restored. You cannot get time back. If we can keep a thread going through, let us do it with ongoing reviews.?

It is now time to draw this address to a close. After such a long run up, you are entitled to anticipate a number of punchy ?conclusions? and guidance for future practice. Timing is not, however, favourable in that regard. The recommendations of the PLWG Adoption group are currently out for consultation until 30th November. After that date, and taking account of the consultation responses, the group will submit its final report and it will then be for me, as President, to consider the detail and indicate whether or not any final recommendations are accepted and are to be followed.

I therefore need to hold back and do no more than I have done by describing the current landscape around the issue of contact and by, now, summarising the PLWG group?s key recommendations, together with some comments of my own.

Currently, in many cases, when the court makes a placement for adoption order consideration of contact may be confined to the immediate cessation of the current arrangements, with little or no thought being given to the medium and long-term support that can be given to the child prior to, during and after placement for adoption. My own view is that there is a need for a radical departure from that model. It should be the responsibility of the court, at this key stage when it has determined that a child is to be adopted, but before the adoptive placement has been identified, to establish the basis and structure for any continuing relationship with the birth family. This may require looking beyond the birth parents to other members of the child?s wider family to see if there is someone, for example an aunt or a cousin, with whom the child may have an intermittent, safe, but real, relationship down the years. The ?Lifelong Links? model, operated by the Family Rights Group, for contact to children in long-term care may provide an example of how such a link might be established and maintained for an adopted child.

It is that approach which lies behind a key recommendation of the PLWG group which is that the full range of contact options (including digital options) should be actively considered by professionals and the court during care and placement proceedings rather than being dealt with by an assumption that contact will be via letterbox only.

The group goes on to recommend that courts should consider how they can use the jurisdiction to make contact orders under s 26 of ACA 2002 to set out clearly the assessed needs of the child to stay in touch with relevant members of their birth beyond the point of the placement order (where prospective adopters may or may not yet be identified), particularly in cases where it would be detrimental for the child to have contact cut off at this stage. Any such orders end when the adoption order is made, but they may set the tone for what the court determines should happen after the adoption order.

It may be said that, for the court to act in this way, might hinder the task of finding prospective adopters, who may be deterred by the idea of the child having some continuing contact with the birth family in the future, or that it may compromise the autonomy normally afforded to adopters. I do not agree that this should be an inhibiting factor in the court making an order where that is justified. The court?s focus is solely on the best interests of the child, not on those of potential future adopters. Where, for the reasons that I have attempted to set out in this lecture, the court considers that there should be continuing contact up to and after adoption it should establish this by a court order at the time of making a placement order. The contact regime will be reviewed at any subsequent adoption hearing at which the adopters can be heard.

At that later stage, the group recommends that courts should consider, in the right case, the use of section 51A ACA 2002 which contemplates the making of a contact order now or at any time after the making of an adoption order. In some cases, that provision may be used to facilitate a review of contact by the court at a suitable time after the making of the adoption order, for example where direct contact is not appropriate at the time of the order but may be indicated at a time in the foreseeable future.

The group recognise that imposing an order on unwilling adopters is a very serious matter, but they consider that, if the other recommendations in their report are accepted, there is hope that, with greater support and training for all concerned, decisions about contact are overwhelmingly likely to be made by consent. In this regard, they also recommend that consideration should be given in every case to a meeting between the adopters and members of the birth family.

Finally, in this selection of highlights, the group recommend that after the adoption order is made, periodic reviews of contact plans should be offered by the adoption social worker to ensure the plan is still meeting the child?s needs and to consider any changes to the contact or support for contact that might be needed. Such a change would indeed be a radical departure from current practice, but, with the words of Mr Al Coates fresh in your minds, you will not be surprised to hear me say that, subject to the consultation process, I consider that this suggestion is well founded.

I would conclude by stressing that adoption is a life changing and life enhancing process. Making an adoption order is one of the most significant decisions and actions the State can take. The plan for any adopted child is to ensure that they become settled on a pathway similar to any child whose life is centred around their birth parents and family, with provision for day to day care, a secure base, stimulation, connection and identity. In addition, an adopted child has needs beyond the ?typical child and family experience? that are stimulated by curiosity and the need to know about family history, relationships, and their past circumstances. The term ?open? is often used to give recognition to these issues in modern adoption ? the modern approach is fundamentally different to the evidence and conclusions explored by the Joint Parliamentary Committee in pre-1970?s adoption, where secrecy, denial and condemnation were prevalent. What we now know is that the concept of modern adoption needs to be developed further, so that services are improved, in particular with regard to provision for a continuing relationship with and knowledge of the birth family, with the child?s needs being at the centre of all that we do. Every adopted child has a right to no less.

13

Articles / Ireland's mother and baby homes explored in powerful new documentary

« on: November 03, 2023, 03:25:18 PM »

https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/stolen-documentary-mother-baby-homes?utm_campaign=IC%20Daily%20-%203%20Nov%20-%202023-11-03&utm_medium=Email&_hsmi=281072162&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_ZybIzAgaUWo1F2ORazZqbxszUU9hA1manSvCLrTdvG3sPnh4gEdzzvFo4_Bll9OE2LiHZtIHGB1iznVJhVZL3JXFWsNwqlRau-Y_csYW7wJJakiI&utm_content=Story1&utm_source=HubSpot

Ireland's mother and baby homes explored in powerful new documentary
"Stolen" explores how over 80,000 unmarried mothers were incarcerated in religious institutions where children were often adopted within Ireland and abroad.
IrishCentral Staff
@IrishCentral
Nov 03, 2023

Margo Harkin's "Stolen" explores how over 80,000 unmarried mothers were incarcerated in religious institutions run by nuns, shining a light on a period of Irish history when children were often adopted within Ireland and abroad unaware of their birth story or the identity of their birth mother.  Other children were fostered out as cheap labor after they turned six, while over 9,000 babies and young children died in the institutions between 1922 and 1998 at a rate that was five times the national average.  The new two-hour documentary allows survivors to give their own accounts of life in the institutions, detailing their experiences of cruelty and loss. It also explores survivors' ongoing campaign for the truth, including a demand for DNA testing of remains to allow families to identify their loved ones and find closure.  Others, in the absence of burial records, are seeking to find the location of their relatives' final resting place, while some survivors still hold out hope of finding a long-lost sibling, with the film investigating allegations that some children's deaths were fabricated to facilitate their adoption to the United States.   "Stolen" will additionally explore how the history of religious institutions was largely ignored until historian Catherine Corless uncovered that there were 796 babies and young children buried in an underground sewage plant at the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, County Galway.  The documentary will also examine the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation, which was established by the Irish Government following the discovery in Tuam and other mother and baby homes around the country.  The Commission published its report in 2021, confirming reports of infant mortality, poor hygiene, and misogyny. Then-Taoiseach Miche?l Martin issued a State apology following the publication of the report.  However, the film explores how survivors are not satisfied with how the report found that there was no evidence that women were forced into the institutions, with the report additionally stating that there was no evidence of forced adoptions.  The report also proposed a payment scheme for survivors but excluded anyone who spent less than six months in an institution.  Colleen Anderson, who was born in the Sean Ross Abbey mother and baby home and features in the documentary, said the report could have shown more empathy to survivors.  "Whether it?s six months or nearly three years like me, the outcome of these adoptions were not often happy," Anderson told the Irish Independent.

"To be robbed of a part of your life ? it touches everybody. There could have been more empathy and sympathy from the government. To this day, we?re being ignored or put on the back burner."

14

Articles / Secrets and lies

« on: October 13, 2023, 11:43:43 AM »

https://perspectivemag.co.uk/secrets-and-lies/?fbclid=IwAR1glJnp3BrygczH-jrUJjRREWt5oeQLbhAH8_cFpSHjHQ11JL2ke8WnJOQ

Secrets and lies
Why a full government apology is needed for the victims of forced UK adoptions
15 August 2023, 12:41pm

I was on the District Line when I saw my Dad for the first time. Coming home from an event, a bit tipsy, and suddenly there he was. He has my slightly wonky but mischievous eyes, luxuriant shoulder-length dark hair, and looked like a member of the Bay City Rollers, dolled up for a wedding. He never knew I existed.  When I’d first got in touch, my new-found uncle had taken a lot of convincing that his brother had fathered a child before dying of cancer, aged twenty. No one including my birth parents had known I was his. I’m the result of a fleeting teenage fling, and even my birth mother had always thought her steady boyfriend was responsible. But eventually, after matched DNA results proved my lineage, my uncle emailed a photo. Aged 50, I finally saw my Dad. Late night, alone, on a tube train.  I am one of the victims of the forced adoption scandal in the UK, for which, in March, Nicola Sturgeon, then first minister of Scotland, issued a formal apology on behalf of the Scottish government. In an emotional speech, she talked of “a level of injustice which is hard now for us to comprehend” and that it was time to “acknowledge the terrible wrongs that have been done”.

More recently, the Welsh government followed suit, with Julie Morgan, deputy minister for social services, addressing mothers and adult adoptees, saying: “I would like to convey my deepest sympathy and regret that due to society failing you, you had to endure such appalling historical practices. For this I am truly sorry.”

    My adoptive parents had put together a checklist of character traits they wanted

By contrast, the UK Government – which, let’s remember, was responsible for adoption policy across all home nations at the time – responded to a separate parliamentary report by admitting that adoptees born between 1949 and 1976 had been subjected to a breach of their human rights, but stopped short of issuing a full apology, instead opining that: “We are sorry on behalf of society for what happened.”

For those of us caught up in this, that’s not nearly enough. In short, they passed responsibility for their mistakes to us, by saying: “It was just what happened in those days.”

Many have questioned why an apology is important, given these practices ended in the mid-1970s. This is why.  Mothers were forced to give up their children shortly after birth. Largely young and unmarried often with the collusion of their families, and always with input from social workers or church groups they were told there was no state support available. They were unfit to be mothers. There’s more than a whiff of Mary Whitehouse-like moral judgement in what happened to them. Their stories are heartbreaking.  Forcibly removed from my mother, I was in the care of the state for the first few weeks of my life. I wish I could tell you that someone loved me, touched me, kept me safe in those formative days, but no one can find my records.  The state orphaned me. It took my identity without my consent. Think a witness protection programme, imposed against my will. The crime I’d “witnessed” was a seventeen-year-old girl giving birth. Her crime began in a one-night stand with the guitarist in her brother’s band. For that, she needed to be punished. It started with nurses deliberately withholding all pain relief.  But that’s her story, not mine except I’ve come to realise that I barely have a story of my own. As with many adoptees, cover stories were created to make this seem a plausible and desirable option for both my mother and me. “She was too young; she couldn’t have given you the things we can; she wanted you to have a better life.”

Information about birth parents is scant and often completely fabricated, meaning adoptees cling to slivers to help make sense of their genetic make-up. My adoptive parents were told by social services that my father was a musician in the armed forces, so I found watching Trooping the Colour unbearable; have you ever looked at sixteen horn players marching in formation while thinking “Which one of you bastards is my father?”

The recent coronation was the first state occasion I had ever watched without breaking out in a cold sweat, since I now know that military bands played no part in my history.  My adoptive parents had put together a checklist of character traits they wanted: girl, CHECK; musical or artistic, CHECK. I was a commodity, an innocent child, ready for them to mould. As they always told me, I was more special than my classmates because they chose me. Society lauded them for doing a good thing, giving an unwanted child a home and a good start in life.  Except this child came preloaded with her own thoughts. With a burning sense of fairness, with a need to build her own safe space, with ruthless resilience. No one knew from where such radical beliefs had come: she was meant to be a blank slate. Hadn’t the reboot worked?

That’s often the thing with adult adoptees. We fight hard to establish our own identity without having any of the normal prompts. The longstanding discussions of nature vs nurture have particular resonance for us, because we’re only privy to the second part of that puzzle. It’s very easy to understand that your sense of humour comes from your dad, or love of art from your mother, if you have them, or wider family, around to tell you. But what if all that information has been deliberately withheld?

You feel you don’t quite fit in, anywhere, because you can’t pin your values, interests, physical attributes and talents to anything, or anyone.  In time as you emerge from the fear, obligation and guilt that so often partner the narrative of being saved by a nice middle-class family you begin to realise you were trafficked, and that the state facilitated that.

    In time, you begin to realise you were trafficked, and the state facilitated that

Adoptees will find that their original birth certificates have been voided, reissued under a new name. That, on adoption, they were gifted a new NHS number, so that it was near impossible to trace birth families. They begin to realise they were entered into a lifelong adoption contract without any legal representation, and with no break clause.  It gets wearing that every time they visit a GP, they go through the rigmarole of explaining that no, we don’t have any family medical history, and then watch while the doctor looks awkward, shrugs and says: “So, no pre-existing conditions. We’ll put you down as no risk.”

They also find that life assurance companies take the opposite view, penalising with exorbitant premiums, specifically because they don’t have any family medical history and are therefore high risk.  For those who persist in trying to find genetic families, they might seek medical records from their birth, only to be told they can be accessed only with the permission of the mother yes, the one you can’t find. If records haven’t been conveniently lost in a fire/flood/office move (delete as applicable), some lucky few are provided with adoption files with so much information redacted that they are literally not worth the paper they were written on. Others are told their own birth records have been sealed for a hundred years, but provided with no reason.  Increasingly, it’s transpiring that some adoptive families have been told their children’s birth names but choose to withhold this information from their adoptees, despite assurances that they’ve passed on everything they know. These transgressions are often discovered only on the death of adopters, secreted in family documents like little hand grenades that detonate alongside grief. The lies and manipulations that sit, on some level, behind all adoptions are breathtaking.  Unsurprisingly, many adoptees find this difficult to process and seek counselling, only to uncover another hurdle: we are able to be supported only by counsellors registered with OSTED, despite being adults. Unsurprisingly, very few bother so there’s a massive shortage of adoption-informed therapists to support us. I know of only two north of Watford. Providing a recommended reading list to a potential counsellor prior to starting therapy is the norm in the adoptee community. Yet again, we do both the emotional labour and the pragmatic administration in our bid to find our roots. It’s as if the government deliberately overlooks the fact that children become adults, keen to keep us infantilised.  The advent of home DNA-testing kits has been a game-changer. If the authorities won’t help, science will. But going from tiny scraps of (mis)information to a worldwide network of people who share your blood line is utterly overwhelming. Sadly, not all relatives are accepting, as adoptees are usually the dirty secret of the family tree, so the happy-ever-after moments so beloved of TV programmes are the exception. Only one in ten reunions are positive.  What do I know of mine?

My birth mother and grandmother are both alive, and we have met. This is not a happy-ending story, since although my mother and I are building a relationship, nothing can ever make up for her missing my first day of school, my fifty birthdays, and being in my wedding photos. Few people will have had the experience of finally meeting the grandmother who signed them away to a parallel life with another family, against their own daughter’s wishes, and had to sit smiling throughout the meeting.  There are positives, and amusing coincidences, such as finding that my mother and I had exactly the same photo of an unlikely pin-up in our teenage bedrooms: Glaswegian architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh. There are also huge sadnesses, such as discovering I have cousins on my father’s side who either do not want to meet me, or don’t know of my existence, since all contact is gate-kept by the eldest uncle, a man untroubled by emotional intelligence. I suspect my own comes down the matriarchal line.  So, back to the apology. Yes, it would make a difference to me and to the quarter of a million other adoptees from that period because it legitimises the trauma of being parted from your mother, and the lifelong impact of adoption – the primal wound. Under UK Law, puppies cannot be separated from their mothers until they are eight weeks old because scientific research says it risks behavioural and health problems in later life. Join the dots.  Many surmise that the lack of a formal apology is because the admission of liability would prompt reparation claims. Yes, it probably would. The government knew everything all along, so perhaps could cover some of the costs. Aside from any compensation for the wrongs done, it’s taken me thousands of pounds to date to try and find out who I am: subscriptions to ancestry sites, DNA testing, counselling, certified copies of documents to unlock further secrets and lies. Adoption is state-mandated identity stripping. An apology is the very least the adoptee community deserves.

Arwen Noble is a nom de plume, but also the author’s birth name. The child left floating in the ether who has a birth certificate but then disappears

15

Politics / Adoption in England and Wales - the twentieth century

« on: July 30, 2023, 04:35:05 PM »

https://www.historyandpolicy.org/docs/dfe-jenny-keating.pdf

Adoption in England and Wales - the twentieth century
Dr Jenny Keating
Senior Research Fellow Institute of Historical Research

• Adoption ‘classic adoption’ the popular picture of a childless married couple adopting an unknown baby really only existed for 50 years 1920s - 1970s
• Even then it was never as simple as that. Pre 2WW a substantial minority of single people even some men adopted children.
– And in the 1950s, a third of illegitimate children being adopted were adopted by their mother or father on their own or by their birth parent with a new partner.
– And another group of adoptions during this period were of children being adopted by their divorced parent’s new partner.

Before this ‘classic era’ there was a form of adoption in the early 20C probably closer to what happens now Poor Law adoption
• Poor Law Guardians –precursors of local authority social services could take over parental rights for children who were ‘deserted’ or orphans or whose parents were disabled or judged impaired or unfit to have control of them. It could be revoked.
• There has been little research on this but it appears that ‘parental neglect’ was the reason most children were ‘adopted’ in this way
• Most of these children would be fostered out with long-term foster parents but in theory they remained under care of the Guardians who were meant to visit them at least twice a year.
• By the 1920s it appears that Poor Law adoption was in decline. As the Clerk to Southwark Guardians reported in 1920, this was because of “the difficulty of
finding really suitable foster parents” even though the Ministry of Health had relaxed the regulations.

• No adoption legislation in the UK until 1926
• Unlike most English speaking countries in the British Empire and former colonies
•First adoption legislation in the UK was the Adoption of Children Act 1926 which covered England and Wales
•It was followed by the Adoption of Children (Northern Ireland) Act 1929 and the Adoption of Children (Scotland) Act 1930.

Why did the legislation happen then?
• Growth of organised adoption and adoption societies during and after the First World War
• Pressure from adoption societies, adopting parents and children’s charities and the NCUMC for the legalisation of adoption
•The 1920s were an era of domestic legislative reform divorce and guardianship reform , opening up the professions to women, more sympathetic treatment of infanticide etc  and finally giving women the vote on the same basis as men in 1928. Adoption legislation could be seen as part of this.

What did the legislation say?
• Not a great deal it was an enabling Act. For the first time it gave all adopting parents the right to go to a court to get a secure legal entitlement to keep their adopted child.
• It laid down that adopters must not be under 25 years old or less than 21 years older than the child
• Married couples could make a joint application to adopt but otherwise applications must be in one name only. Single men could not adopt female children except in ‘special circumstances’.
• If adoptive parents died intestate their adopted children would have no rights to inherit from their estate too big an encroachment on ancient property rights.
• It didn’t make adoption completely secret so that relinquishing parents and adopted children could never trace each other, as adoption societies wanted but it made it hard for them to do so.

What did the legislation not say?
A great deal
• There was no compulsion on adopters to legally adopt their child so informal adoption could continue
• Apart from a ‘guardian ad litem’ report for the court which was often scanty there was no regulation of the adoption process either before or after the legal proceedings

After the 1926 Act what happened?
• The Act proved popular by the mid 1930s over 5000 children were being legally adopted every year
• But concern grew about the way adoptions were carried out, eg:
• everything was very casual and haphazard even the most reputable adoption societies rarely interviewed prospective adoptive parents or looked at their homes, and they sometimes made only the most rudimentary checks with referees.
• notorious maternity homes passed babies on to adoptive parents taking fees from both parents and the birth mother
• children were shipped overseas, without any checks or safeguards, particularly to the Netherlands where adoption was frowned on by the authoristies

This concern, led by organisations like the NSPCC and the NCUMC  resulted in the setting up of a Departmental Committee to look at the whole issue of how adoption was being carried out in England and Wales.  It was chaired by Miss Florence Horsbrugh MP who was later the first Conservative woman to be a member of the Cabinet. It presented its report in 1937, citing numerous examples of poor practice and making a number of recommendations which eventually resulted in the Adoption of Children (Regulation) Act 1939. The implementation of this was delayed by the onset of war.  But by 1942 there were so many stories of malpractice of babies being swapped around on railway stations and given away through newspaper adverts that an exception was made and the law was brought in, in June 1943.

The Sunday Dispatch’s correspondent, ‘Elizabeth Ann’ claimed to organise at least two adoptions a week through the ‘Sunday Dispatch Wartime Aunts Scheme’.
She wanted to free up adoption still further. One of her articles in August 1942 was headlined:  “If You Want to Adopt a Baby—You Will Find a Lot of Red Tape in the Way”.
It continued:  “I am looking for someone with a pair of shears sharp enough to cut through a tangle of red tape that is threatening the lives of hundreds, probably thousands of future citizens of Britain the red tape is that concerned with the business of adoption.” (Sunday Dispatch, 23 August 1942)

The Adoption of Children (Regulation) Act 1939 began the process of regulating adoption and giving local authorities much of the responsibility for this although very few were directly involved with organising adoptions.

Measures included:
• adoption societies would have to register with local authorities. The societies would now have to have proper procedures for approving adopters and organising probationary periods and other safeguards.
• financial inducements around adoptions were banned, as were personal adoption adverts
•Informal (ie unlegalised) adoptions were to be regulated by local authorities

Post 2WW
• Immediately post-war, the Curtis Committee findings led to the Children Act 1948 which reorganised children’s services into the care of local authorities. It praised adoption as a possible method of dealing with children in care but considered ‘boarding out’ (fostering) as a more realistic option for children who still had parents living.
•Interviewing the Home Office representative in August 1945 they asked why there were more parents wishing to adopt than children available “considering how many destitute children there are..?”
• The gist of his reply is not utterly dissimilar from what might be said now: “There are a large number of factors that contribute to that. One of them is that there are a large number of quite unsuitable people always wanting to adopt children.  Then of course there are a great many destitute children who are not available for adoption [because] either their parents are not willing to agree, or their state of health is not suitable. I think mostly the people who want to adopt children want them under the age of two, and I understand from the Societies that the very great majority want girls”.

The 1950s
•More legislation at the end of the 1940s meant that the adoption process was a more streamlined process; the relinquishing parent now had no way of finding out who was adopting her child.
•However it did not alter the rather chaotic way adoptions were arranged only an estimated quarter of adoptions were carried out by registered adoption societies. Apart from the London County Council very few local authorities were involved with arranging adoptions on any significant scale so all the rest were mainly informal arrangements by friends and acquaintances, or individual professionals like doctors and matrons.
• The Hurst Committee, another Departmental Committee on adoption in 1954, recommended greater involvement of local authorities in adoption and also suggested that almost any child was adoptable, even if disabled up to now only healthy white children had been seen as possible adoption material.
• The number of legal adoptions had risen in 1946 to over 21,000 but during the 1950s there were around 13,000 a year.
• Adoption ‘classic adoption’ the popular picture of a childless married couple adopting an unknown baby really only existed for 50 years 1920s - 1970s
• Even then it was never as simple as that. Pre 2WW a substantial minority of single people even some men adopted children.
– And in the 1950s, a third of illegitimate children being adopted were adopted by their mother or father on their own or by their birth parent with a new partner.
– And another group of adoptions during this period were of children being adopted by their divorced parent’s new partner.

Before this ‘classic era’ there was a form of adoption in the early 20C probably closer to what happens now Poor Law adoption
• Poor Law Guardians precursors of local authority social services could take over parental rights for children who were ‘deserted’ or orphans or whose parents were disabled or judged impaired or unfit to have control of them. It could be revoked.
• There has been little research on this but it appears that ‘parental neglect’ was the reason most children were ‘adopted’ in this way
• Most of these children would be fostered out with long-term foster parents but in theory they remained under care of the Guardians who were meant to visit them at least twice a year.
• By the 1920s it appears that Poor Law adoption was in decline. As the Clerk to Southwark Guardians reported in 1920, this was because of “the difficulty of finding really suitable foster parents” even though the Ministry of Health had relaxed the regulations.
• No adoption legislation in the UK until 1926
• Unlike most English speaking countries in the British Empire and former colonies
•First adoption legislation in the UK was the Adoption of Children Act 1926 which covered England and Wales
•It was followed by the Adoption of Children (Northern Ireland) Act 1929 and the Adoption of Children (Scotland) Act 1930

Why did the legislation happen then?
• Growth of organised adoption and adoption societies during and after the First World War
• Pressure from adoption societies, adopting parents and children’s charities and the NCUMC for the legalisation of adoption
•The 1920s were an era of domestic legislative reform divorce and guardianship reform , opening up the professions to women, more sympathetic treatment of infanticide etc and finally giving women the vote on the same basis as men in 1928. Adoption legislation could be seen as part of this.

What did the legislation say?
• Not a great deal it was an enabling Act. For the first time it gave all adopting parents the right to go to a court to get a secure legal entitlement to keep their adopted child.
• It laid down that adopters must not be under 25 years old or less than 21 years older than the child
• Married couples could make a joint application to adopt but otherwise applications must be in one name only. Single men could not adopt female children except in ‘special circumstances’.
• If adoptive parents died intestate their adopted children would have no rights to inherit from their estate too big an encroachment on ancient property rights.
• It didn’t make adoption completely secret so that relinquishing parents and adopted children could never trace each other, as adoption societies wanted but it made it hard for them to do so.

What did the legislation not say?
A great deal
• There was no compulsion on adopters to legally adopt their child so informal adoption could continue
• Apart from a ‘guardian ad litem’ report for the court which was often scanty there was no regulation of the adoption process either before or after the legal proceedings

After the 1926 Act what happened?
• The Act proved popular by the mid 1930s over 5000 children were being legally adopted every year
• But concern grew about the way adoptions were carried out, eg:
• everything was very casual and haphazard even the most reputable adoption societies rarely interviewed prospective adoptive parents or looked at their homes, and they sometimes made only the most rudimentary checks with referees.
• notorious maternity homes passed babies on to adoptive parents taking fees from both parents and the birth mother
• children were shipped overseas, without any checks or safeguards, particularly to the Netherlands where adoption was frowned on by the authorities

From John Bull,, 4 June 1932.
This concern, led by organisations like the NSPCC and the NCUMC , resulted in the setting up of a Departmental Committee to look at the whole issue of how adoption was being carried out in England and Wales. It was chaired by Miss Florence Horsbrugh MP who was later the first Conservative woman to be a member of the Cabinet. It presented its report in 1937, citing numerous examples of poor practice and making a number of recommendations which eventually resulted in the Adoption of Children (Regulation) Act 1939. The implementation of this was delayed by the onset of war. But by 1942 there were so many stories of malpractice of babies being swapped around on railway stations and given away through newspaper adverts that an exception was made and the law was brought in, in June 1943.  The Sunday Dispatch’s correspondent, ‘Elizabeth Ann’ claimed to organise at least two adoptions a week through the ‘Sunday Dispatch Wartime Aunts Scheme’. She wanted to free up adoption still further. One of her articles in August 1942 was headlined:  “If You Want to Adopt a Baby You Will Find a Lot of Red Tape in the Way”.

It continued:  “I am looking for someone with a pair of shears sharp enough to cut through a tangle of red tape that is threatening the lives of hundreds, probably thousands of future citizens of Britain the red tape is that concerned with the business of adoption.” (Sunday Dispatch, 23 August 1942)

Egs of classified ads in local papers:
“Wanted—some baby-lover to adopt baby girl; love only—Alderson, Flat 3, 182
Lavender Hill, Enfield, Middx”. (Kentish Independent, 22 August 1941)
“Offered for Adoption, 4 months old baby girl, all rights forfeited—Write P7428,
‘Guardian’ Office, Warrington”. (Warrington Guardian, 16 August 1941)
The Adoption of Children (Regulation) Act 1939 began the process of regulating adoption and giving local authorities much of the responsibility for this although very few were directly involved with organising adoptions.

Measures included:
• adoption societies would have to register with local authorities. The societies would now have to have proper procedures for approving adopters and organising probationary periods and other safeguards.
• financial inducements around adoptions were banned, as were personal adoption adverts
•Informal (ie unlegalised) adoptions were to be regulated by local authorities

Post 2WW
• Immediately post-war, the Curtis Committee findings led to the Children Act 1948 which reorganised children’s services into the care of local authorities. It praised adoption as a possible method of dealing with children in care but considered ‘boarding out’ (fostering) as a more realistic option for children who still had parents living.
•Interviewing the Home Office representative in August 1945 they asked why there were more parents wishing to adopt than children available “considering how many destitute children there are..?”
• The gist of his reply is not utterly dissimilar from what might be said now:  “There are a large number of factors that contribute to that. One of them is that there are a large number of quite unsuitable people always wanting to adopt children.  Then of course there are a great many destitute children who are not available for adoption [because] either their parents are not willing to agree, or their state of health is not suitable. I think mostly the people who want to adopt children want them under the age of two, and I understand from the Societies that the very great majority want girls”.

The 1950s
•More legislation at the end of the 1940s meant that the adoption process was a more streamlined process; the relinquishing parent now had no way of finding out who was adopting her child.
•However it did not alter the rather chaotic way adoptions were arranged only an estimated quarter of adoptions were carried out by registered adoption societies.  Apart from the London County Council very few local authorities were involved with arranging adoptions on any significant scale so all the rest were mainly informal arrangements by friends and acquaintances, or individual professionals like doctors and matrons.
• The Hurst Committee, another Departmental Committee on adoption in 1954, recommended greater involvement of local authorities in adoption and also suggested that almost any child was adoptable, even if disabled up to now only healthy white children had been seen as possible adoption material.
• The number of legal adoptions had risen in 1946 to over 21,000 but during the 1950s there were around 13,000 a year.

Child migrants
•The emigration of UK children to British colonies goes back several hundred years but in this context it is most relevant that in the 1950s and 1960s between 3,000-7,000 children were hipped to Australia and a combined total of over 1000 were sent to New Zealand, Rhodesia and Canada statistics are incredibly vague and for a long time the British Government denied the post-war programme had happened. The final party arrived in Australia in 1970.
• The reasoning behind this was that countries like Australia needed “good, white British stock” as opposed to the Italians and Greeks who were beginning to migrate there in large numbers in the 1950s. And for the children it was meant to be the chance for a better life.
• In Australia their treatment in large remote institutions in the 1950s is now particularly notorious and the Australian PM Kevin Rudd made a much-publicised apology for it in November 2009. Gordon Brown made a similar but much less publicised apology in February 2010.
• Most of the children involved were in children’s homes or foster care in the UK but in many instances their parents were still alive, if unable to care for them. Many parents were not told their children were being sent overseas; some were told their children had died or been adopted in the UK. Similarly many of the children were told their parents were dead only to find, 40 or 50 years later that they had not been.

The 1960s
• 1968 saw the peak number of adoptions in England and Wales over 24,800.
• Official statistics were never very detailed (minimal before the 2WW) but it appears that during the 1960s efforts were made to facilitate Black, mixed race and disabled children being adopted. Some of the adoption societies were completely unprepared to do this but others did so.
•Throughout this immediate post-war period almost 40% of children were adopted by one of their own natural parents. Just over 60% were adopted by other relatives and non-related people and over 90% of these non-parental adoptions involved illegitimate children.
• After 1968 a decline began in the number of illegitimate children offered for adoption as abortion and contraception became more available and as society’s attitudes to unmarried mothers changed. The stigma continued but limited levels of social security, childcare and housing were increasingly available so that more and more unmarried mothers could keep their children.

The 1970s
1972 the Houghton Committee reported on adoption. Its recommendations were incorporated in the Children Act 1975 and Adoption Act 1976.
•Aimed to ‘professionalise’ and regulate adoption work.
•This would be part of a “well-integrated and integrated childcare service” in which local authorities would be central.
•Adoption societies (still carrying out majority of stranger adoptions although already declining in influence as fewer babies available for adoption) would have to work closely with local authorities and would be subject to much more stringent approval criteria but those that were approved would have greater autonomy.  Indeed many small ones subsequently closed down but the survivors became large and professional.
• Other recommendations which were implemented included the introduction of “freeing a child for adoption”, if necessary by court order against parental wishes.
• And most famous and most controversial giving adopted adults in England and Wales the right to obtain a copy of their original birth certificate.

1980s onwards
• Rapid decline in adoption from the 1960s. By 1980 registered adoptions had more than halved (10,600) then halved again to 1998 (4,300). In the years since then it has gone up and down but the total is always between just over 4000 to just under 6000.
•In the 1950s over a third of adoptions involved babies by 1980 it was 24%, by 1998 4%. In 2011 it was 2%, but more children aged 1-4 years were being adopted (62% cf 34% in 1998).
• Decrease in available babies has changed the nature of adoption. Most adoptions are now about children being adopted out of local authority care.
•In 1952 these were only 3.2% of all adoptions;
•In 1968 they were 8.7%.
• In the 1990s they were a third or more of all adoptions.
• In 2011-12, 3,695 (3,450 in England and 245 in Wales) children were adopted from care out of the total 4,777 adoptions in England and Wales, (77.3% of the total).

The 1960s
• 1968 saw the peak number of adoptions in England and Wales over 24,800.
• Official statistics were never very detailed (minimal before the 2WW) but it appears that during the 1960s efforts were made to facilitate Black, mixed race and disabled children being adopted. Some of the adoption societies were completely unprepared to do this but others did so.
•Throughout this immediate post-war period almost 40% of children were adopted by one of their own natural parents. Just over 60% were adopted by other relatives and non-related people and over 90% of these non-parental adoptions involved illegitimate children.
• After 1968 a decline began in the number of illegitimate children offered for adoption as abortion and contraception became more available and as society’s attitudes to unmarried mothers changed. The stigma continued but limited levels of social security, childcare and housing were increasingly available so that more and more unmarried mothers could keep their children.

The 1970s
1972 the Houghton Committee reported on adoption. Its recommendations were incorporated in the Children Act 1975 and Adoption Act 1976.
•Aimed to ‘professionalise’ and regulate adoption work.
•This would be part of a “well-integrated and integrated childcare service” in which local authorities would be central.
•Adoption societies (still carrying out majority of stranger adoptions although already declining in influence as fewer babies available for adoption) would have to work closely with local authorities and would be subject to much more stringent approval criteria but those that were approved would have greater autonomy. Indeed many small ones subsequently closed down but the survivors became large and professional.
• Other recommendations which were implemented included the introduction of “freeing a child for adoption”, if necessary by court order against parental wishes.
• And most famous and most controversial giving adopted adults in England and Wales the right to obtain a copy of their original birth certificate.

1980s onwards
• Rapid decline in adoption from the 1960s. By 1980 registered adoptions had more than halved (10,600) – then halved again to 1998 (4,300). In the years since then it has gone up and down but the total is always between just over 4000 to just under 6000.
•In the 1950s over a third of adoptions involved babies by 1980 it was 24%, by 1998  4%. In 2011 it was 2%, but more children aged 1-4 years were being adopted (62% cf 34% in 1998).
• Decrease in available babies has changed the nature of adoption. Most adoptions are now about children being adopted out of local authority care.
•In 1952 these were only 3.2% of all adoptions;
•In 1968 they were 8.7%.
• In the 1990s they were a third or more of all adoptions.
• In 2011-12, 3,695 (3,450 in England and 245 in Wales) children were adopted from care out of the total 4,777 adoptions in England and Wales, (77.3% of the total).