Conversation & discussion on contemporary Adoption & Fostering
Episodes
Thursday Oct 14, 2021
Thursday Oct 14, 2021
As it's #NationalAdoptionWeek next week so we thought we'd speak to Pam Hodgkins, adoptee, retired social worker, founder of NORCAP and MBE. Pam has a wealth of lived and professional experience to share and she kindly did that with us.
Pam shares her personal experiences of adoption and growing up in the 50s and 60s as an adoptee, she then shares her experience of searching for her birth parents and how that lead ultimately to the formation of NORCAP. We chat through the inconsistencies, and injustices, in the legislation and how they impact adopted people. Pam campaigned effectively for change but has returned from retirement to carry the banner again for adopted people. She shares her insightful views on the current campaign for an apology and her hopes that it will open a door to support for the older adoptees and their birth parent who are running out of time.
It's a long podcast so get a brew and a comfy chair, we'd hoped to release it as a prerecorded webcast (get us!) but our technology wasn't quite up to it.
We hope you find it interesting and as always if you’ve experience of adoption, Fostering or special guardianship from any perspective and would like share that on the podcast please get in touch through the Facebook or twitter page or email us at AandFpodcast@gmail.com
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Comments (12)
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Hi Diana, thank you for commenting. I’ll be honest I can’t recall the exact details of the conversation but certainly what you say is a true reflection of many mum’s experiences.
Tuesday Dec 20, 2022
I have had to post in stages, so please read from bottom up!
Sunday Dec 18, 2022
Sorry... Probably illegal. Many weren’t old enough to give legal consent, yet somehow we could be coerced into signing a document with no parent or guardian present. How was any of that acceptable??
Sunday Dec 18, 2022
/2... We were prevented from picking up our babies. Given drugs to stop us best feeding. What this woman says is an insult to all mothers who lost children to adoption. This happened in NHS hospitals. It was brutal, cruel and outbacks illegal
Sunday Dec 18, 2022
I can’t let this slide. Many UK mother’s had their children physically taken from them, I know as it happened to me. Many had nowhere near six weeks with their children, some had just a few days...
Sunday Dec 18, 2022
Hello Shaz78, thank you for taking the time to comment. Al here and I’ll not pretend to speak for Pam or Scott. Your experience sound truly traumatic and given what you’ve experienced an apology from the state would seem wholly appropriate. I can’t revise what was said but it’s a conversation that needs to be continued with voices like yours heard. If you ever felt you wanted to have your say on the podcast you’d be welcome. DM if that would be of interest.
Tuesday May 10, 2022
Please read my comments from the bottom up. Regretfully there is a comment word limit which made it necessary for me to respond in multiple comments instead of one. Thank you for reading.
Saturday May 07, 2022
/continued from previous comment: The nurse had been shocked by practices she observed in nhs maternity wards as a trainee nurse in the 1970’s. For mothers of loss to adoption in the UK, in the 60s, 70s and 80s a government apology is the least they deserve.
Saturday May 07, 2022
/continued from previous comment: Apparently all a government funded court required to approve the adoption of my son was my signature and a justice of the peace as a witness. Duncan Kennedy from BBC recently interviewed a nurse who was shocked at whatobserved
Saturday May 07, 2022
/continued from previous comment: I was advised by a government funded GP and a social worker that my baby would have a better life with a married couple who were on a (government funded) adoption waiting list because they could not have children of their own. On being found sobbing and visibly distressed soon after my sons birth in a government funded nhs hospital I was quickly discharged but not before my signature was obtained on paperwork which I had not had an opportunity to read.
Saturday May 07, 2022
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