General Chat

In 1991 I started an Ombudsmans case against B'ham Social services for the loss of my adoption files. By 1993 I was awarded compensation for suffering caused , and some costs. Adoption records have to be protected for 75 years in a secure metal cabinet - that was the law at the time.

I was adopted in 1960 at the age of 6 . I just want to say I do not use my adoptive name online (no way) I use my birth name. The first access I had to my files was in 1988 and I was never handed any paperwork or copies of the Guardian Ad Litem/Children's Officer's accompany report but I wrote down like lightning what I was told by a Social Worker about my birth father having another child by a new wife .

By 1990 I discovered my half sister . Then I asked for further, more extensive access to my adoption file . I was told they were lost. So I went mad with investigative energy and taped everyone's phonecalls from and to Social Services and discovered more adoption files had been lost and also a diary/logbook which recorded internal movements of files.

The Report which is public domain [ 91/B/1262] that was issued by the Ombudsman in 1993 confirmed on page 8 other files were missing ... I have copies of that report in PDF .

However I realised that Adoption Files held by Social Services are not the only document-store after the adoption . I realised Court papers exist in a different archive but are rarely accessed by many people . So I enlisted an M.P. and asked for access to the relevant court papers on the grounds that my original files had gone missing and I needed to see further information .

The issue was then given to a Birmingham County Court Judge by the Lord Chancellors Office who after examination said I could have access to the records and write down what I wished but take no copies of the court papers .

I took along a Social Worker who had been supportive to me right through the lost files conflict of nearly 3 years . I discovered pure gold . The Children's Officer's report had been duplicated and was attached to the court papers. Thus there was 6 pages of my early life story and what my birth mom had implemented by some dodgy omissions of facts. She'd missed out another sister and I were in care in Swansea in Wales under the National Children's Homes. Missed out as soon as she got custody she dumped me and was sadly a personality disordered lady who then made two more children. There was so much missed out it's been difficult to not see it as an injustice and mistreatment.

You see I also discovered Children's Homes files too from the Swansea time of my sister and I were in a form of care - so I could see what my birth mom was like.

I am summarising quite a lot . But the point is research for some adoptees can be like finding a soul mirror when you realise all you have sometimes is the paper-soul, flapping around in front you in your hands that is the final sole witness to your tears ..

But at least recorded tragedy gives back a sense of something to be processed. To be held by oneself .

Welcome to the board Paul, may I suggest that you post this on the Find Living relatives board as adoptees are probably more likely to see it there :-) ( that's not to say that people on this board won't find it relevant also of course ).

Okay RR ,

I have only just got here as it were ..

I 'll bang it over there too . But I would say this story of mine was also aided by geneological research later since when I looked into my birth mom's background and her mom , and her mom before her, I found documents supporting a lot of childhood separations and tendency for a recreation of them in my family . The past and the futures of it were incredibly linked in my family .

I recall out came all the information on Workhouse admission and lost kids, and kids in homes. I used that information to track down adoptees (some of my kin) and aided one to re-unite to her more immediate relatives and her true story . Even in 1946 a Birmingham Workhouse used as a then short stay place for homeless mothers had her mom listed and I got the notes for her . I used to trace missing stories but often found people attached to them .. :))

Geneology thus was a tool for family understanding but also tracking people who could give me family stories from the past and to make those serve the illumination of understanding in the future ..There's always a bigger story ..

Are you reunited with your birth mother?

She died in 1986 . It's a complicated story because I was adopted "into the family" backwards a generation to my birth grans half brother but really was exiled from it and my birth mother since no-one bothered with him that much . I was cut off , and I knew it .

People often consider adoptions to be complete separations and so they are mostly but some are more complicated . For me looking into the adoption files and my Children's homes papers served to gauge the truth about what happened to my sister and I in our distressing early experiences.

The genealogy I did too on the family of my birth mother showed earlier patterns in her mom's history of childhood Workhouse displacements. I was looking for a story that accounted for all sorts of oddities about the family and how unempathic it was . Why it would choose to behave as it did . I found my answers and geneology aided that too ..

.

Just one slight observation and comment (and believe me, I do have great sympathy and empathy for your story) - you admit that you are using your birth name (your full name is there for all to see) so be careful about some of the things you say. That aside, I wish you all the best in your ongoing quest for truth, answers etc and well done with your fight against the SS.

Although painful, I hope your search for answers has given you some peace and a way to move forward. I was saddened to hear that files had been negligently lost/ hidden/ misplaced and your search had been such a struggle, but I also hope your story inspires others that wish to know their background to keep fighting for knowledge. It will certainly be helpful to some to know that, in some cases, court papers can also be viewed to gain information. Thankyou

Everyone deserves to know who they are.

eRRolSheep : Yes indeed, my full pre adoptive name is there for all to see because I do not use it for official purposes but use it informally .

As for my birth parents they are both dead . Adoptive parents too . I am aware of implications of law and defamation , libel etc ... I am free now though in my 60's to talk as I wish and many others are dead in my birth family that were involved .

However through the rather dark valleys of what passed for childhood I have explained through research and certainly geneology what a devastating trail our family travelled . And the impact on some of us .

Over the past few days I picked information on yet another (dead) relative who was a serial philanderer , and his son as an older man I finally found was homeless and dead in Alcester .

Gritty : Well I am old now and thankfully the dreamtime box is not very far away . I look back over 30 years of searching and resolving various matters caused through painful adoption and I ask myself : "Was it worth it?"

Yet the answer is without a mirror of reflection and proper parents to explain to oneself what happened fully to explode our lives apart long ago one is left all too often with the paper-soul (files) but I was fierce in my struggle for records and found original letters in my parents writing , on the Children Homes files..

That hit me like a form of light lifting from documents into my soul . Strange experience and yet liberating .. History , geneology and re-empathising the Self to understand one's forbears and their flaws is a very powerful trail ..

Paul,

Thanks for the insight into an adoptee's quest to get to the truth of your adoption.

I just wish my uncle had a good life after his adoption.

Thanks so much..
And Good Luck for the future.

Sue : There are as many tales about adoption as there are adoptees and some are extremely sad . Some not so, but a lot involve a degree of injury to a sense of primal identity which can be and is ameliorated by good adoptive parents .

I was unlucky and some people are . Your uncle is not alone but I guess he would have felt that. It's hard to be an unhappy kid with no-one to hear you out. I often think that some of us adoptees have such different experiences of life that later we need our own culture of healing and validation ..

I knew one man ( a friend of mine) that searched electoral lists nearly every night for 8 years in London in order to track down his birth mother . When he found her she rejected him again ! ... I used to see his pain and listen to it ... People need that .. And of course ways to research out their own lost stories or wider family stories .... Thanks Sue for your kind remarks

My husband also applied to the court for some paperwork that was missing from his archived by SS,,,,,,,,also there is a clause that -if its deemed not in your best interest as an adoptee that information can be withheld from a file!

Kay that is right -

But that is for each case to be determined after a County Court Judge looks at the file if a person takes it to that level. Social Services decisions which are at a lower bar could be challenged more easily now since after my "case" there has been a Freedom of Information act too come into being and thus there may well be an extra avenue of recourse to the Information Commissioner and making an appeal through that process.

But you know Kay the first thing I would do is ask them for confirmation that a file exists at all !

A fair number have gone missing in Birmingham and also alongside that so has some Children Homes files . Kid's files went missing too in Gloucester (70+ I think) and that was unearthed by the Fred West case . I worry about file keeping practices and sloppy bureaucracy. .

When I made my arguments both to the Social Services and the Court Archive I already carried with me my Children Homes files (which preceded my adoption) and a clear trackway of some other facts I had gathered. I also went to neighbours of my birth parents who had lived in the same area to check on a story about my birth father's suicidality ....

Some adoptees though may be the product of terrible events that occured to the birth mother . There is also the consideration that some adoptees may need genetic information for health purposes to be weighed in . There is at least one case of an adoptee being denied all access to his early story too because of being deemed a danger to his birth mother ...

For most people though these dramatic scenarios will not fit . Most will get some form of file access but there again often they will not see the full file . The whole process is mediated by the Social Worker and sometimes team involved

I saw everything in the end . Then went on to act as a record agent for someone else and tore a strip of Bham SS once again because whereas a Social Worker had deigned to give her 2 pages of information I got her back about 60 pages and original writing by her mother.

I do known why SS ( I have had Social Worker colleagues) feel they have to be cautious but frankly in some cases there are way overcautious to a fault and there is a failure to be able to challenge that by the timorous adoptees that sit in front of them with a degree of adult vulnerability that simultaneously opens up the inner child in the process .. It's hard , I have been there slushing around in tears and feeling like I was a walking aquarium .

I have seen or heard of so many people that have been disenfranchised informationally by the State. That's been so tragic .

I was a foundling and not being to access any details of my origins is both frustrating and sad not just for myself but my daughters too. Over the years my attempts to obtain my files have come to a dead end due to them having been destroyed wilfully by the County Council due to reorganisation or lost in a fire with another relevant organisation. Such records that so affect peoples lives should be kept for at least 75 years as someone else suggested.

http://www.adoptionsearchreunion.org.uk/search/righttosearch/accessrecords.htm

Go there Marian - read and I hope it helps .. It's sharp information ..