In August 2020 I said I was writing an article about Ofsted and the barriers to accessing therapy as an adopted person in the UK.

The response to that tweet confirmed I was not alone in my own confusion around:

Who can offer adoption counselling? Do they need to be registered with Ofsted, and - if so - why?

Does the UK government and Ofsted know that this layer of regulation is adding to the barriers adoptees face in getting support? Some are having to take other routes to therapy, including cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) which can have a neutral or even negative effect when it comes to adoption issues. And even more worryingly, some adoptees said they are at breaking point, they have self-harmed and had suicidal ideations.

Why are non-Ofsted registered therapists required terminate support if they later find out that someone they are treating is adopted? Not nice for anyone, particularly an adopted person who may struggle with trust and making attachments.

When Anitha Clemence was to be adopted from India, she was put to sleep and flown asleep to Sweden. She was 2.5 years old and is unsure of what really happened.

"I had no idea who those people were," says Anitha about the first meeting with her adoptive parents.

Hear her emotional story of how her adoption went and her feelings about it.

Anitha Clemence was adopted from India to Sweden when she was 2.5 years old and is unsure of what really happened. She knows that she was put to sleep in India and flew asleep to Sweden. At Arlanda, she met her adoptive parents for the first time. "Can you do this to a child? It is terrible and I think everyone who has children feels that ", she says.

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The poet explains how researching her history led her to tell the story from three perspectives: the birth mother, the adoptive mother and the daughter

In one way, I’d been writing the poems in The Adoption Papers for my whole life. I’d been making up an imaginary birth mother and father with my adoptive mother for years, since I was a kid. She would say of my birth father: “I’m picturing a Paul Robeson figure, Jackie, perhaps with a bit of Nelson Mandela mixed in.”

In another, I started writing the book when I was pregnant. It’s difficult when your writing infiltrates your life and vice versa, difficult to work out what actually happened and what didn’t. Your imaginative life is your reality.

I remember in 1988, after I attended, for the first time, a Caribbean writers’ conference in central London. I was 26. I lived off West Green Road in Tottenham, with three other lesbians. My housemate Gabriela Pearse, also a budding poet, drove me across London in her red Citroën Diane. I remember arriving at the large, beautifully tiled foyer where the Jamaican poet Jean “Binta” Breeze was performing her astonishing poem about mental illness, “Riddym Ravings”. I was transfixed by her voice and the voice she’d given to the radio, lodged inside her like a baby.

There were academics and writers there from all over the world. Gabriela had told me there was a free spot where anyone could offer to read. I got up on the stage and read two poems called pragmatically, “The Mother Poem One” and “The Mother Poem Two”. One was in the voice of the birth mother and one in the voice of the adoptive mother. Perhaps it was the sight of me stood there with my big pregnant belly, but the poems to my surprise got a wonderful response and people kept coming up afterwards – Italian, French, Trinidadian and American delegates as well as British – asking where they could get them. They couldn’t get them anywhere because they weren’t published.

THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATS have passed a motion to push the government to set out a redress scheme for Mother and Baby Home survivors at its national conference this afternoon.

The motion sets out the party’s plan to call on the government to prioritise measures that address the concerns of survivors, including legislative change around access to personal information and records.

The Social Democrats voted to call on the government to set out “how they will introduce a proper redress scheme, in close consultation with survivors, and ensure the religious order contribute significantly and appropriately”.

The party has also committed to asking the government to set out how it will ensure proper investigations into the issues raised by the Commission of Investigation’s report, protection for burial sites, and the establishment of a dedicated criminal justice unit and human-rights compliant coroner’s inquests and exhumations.

The motion garnered strong support, with 235 members voting to accept it and no votes registered in opposition.

Rasika Bos grows up in Sri Lanka. The family is very poor. When Rasika is three years old, her mother dies. Rasika's father blames her mother's death for reasons that are unclear. From that moment on, she is severely abused by him.

At the age of five, Rasika and her sister Niluka are adopted by the Dutch couple Bos. Everything seems to be changing for the better. But later she learns that her adoptive mother had not wanted her at all. She only wanted the younger sister, who was still a toddler at the time. Because her husband was too old to adopt just the younger sister, she had to take Rasika in.

Strict

Fortunately, Rasika gets along very well with her new adoptive father. But her adoptive mother is very strict and even mean to Rasika. She regularly has to eat with her back to the family because her mother does not want to look at her. Or she is sent to bed without food because her mother thinks Rasika did not try her best in swimming lessons.

Depression

Patrick was taken from Brazil by a newborn, by a Dutch couple who could not have children; 40 years later, Dutch government recognizes mistakes and suspends international adoption

BRUSSELS

Ana Estela de Sousa Pinto(https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/autores/ana-estela-de-sousa-pinto.shtml)

There were so many lies, lucky strikes, setbacks and perseverance that the

story of Patrick Noordoven, 41, will become a book in Holland. This month, two new

Child Focus, the Foundation for Missing and Sexually Exploited Children, is launching the "Everyone a Max" campaign. The organization wants children to choose an adult who they trust 100 percent - a Max - whom they can turn to with all their problems. In this way it can be prevented that children run away or develop psychological problems, for example.

Child Focus is confronted with an average of 3 new disappearances of minors every day, 80 percent of which are runaways. There were also 300 cases of child sexual exploitation last year, both online and in the real world.

The organization is convinced that if children could go to an adult to talk about things that are not going well - for example in the home situation - the step to run away could be avoided.

Children often stand alone

CORONA CRISIS

For the past two days, an interview with Julienne Mpemba has been circulating in the national media space. The aforementioned presents itself as the victim of a monumental instrumentalization. Outraged by this media outlet, Dieu-Merci Kitambo, co-founder of the NGO “Planète Junior – Les Amis de la Paix” came to our editorial office to give a completely different version of the facts.

ABCOMMUNICATION: Hello sir and can you tell us a bit about yourself?

GOD – THANK YOU KITAMBO: My name is Dieu-Merci Kitambo, I am the co-founder of the NGO “Planète Junior – Les Amis de la Paix. »

ABC: How do you know Ms. Julienne Mpemba?

DMK: Mrs. Julienne Mpemba, I know her, since she is the director of the Tumaïni Orphanage, which is here in Kinshasa. She is Congolese naturalized Belgian, for the moment she is in Belgium

When he was eight years old, James Sugrue was fostered out to live on a farm with an elderly couple and their adult son in Kilgarvan, Co Kerry. 

James and his two brothers – Michael and David – had been abandoned by their mother at the County Home in Killarney in 1959. Their father was in London for work.

Over the course of several years, James and Michael were abused, isolated and worked like slaves.

"We are the forgotten children," James, who is now 69 years old, told Prime Time. 

Tens of thousands of children were were fostered out, or "boarded out", in a system arranged by the State, according to Prof Conor O'Mahony, the Special Rapporteur on Child Protection.

‘Long procedure giving rise to grey market’

Lengthy and cumbersome adoption procedures of the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) and the increasing number of childless couples have given rise to a “grey market” for adoption, an NGO told the Delhi High Court on Wednesday.

NGO Yatharatha Foundation told the High Court that as per information on CARA website, around 30,000 couples have registered for adoption. But only 2,989 children are available. Therefore, there was a “huge prospect for grey market of adoption, and which has been thriving due to cumbersome, lengthy, tedious procedure under the CARA”.

A Bench of Chief Justice D.N. Patel and Justice Jasmeet Singh issued notice to the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Delhi government, National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) and CARA seeking their stand on the NGO’s plea seeking simplification of the adoption procedure.

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