Recent posts
#1
Media / Man who was kidnapped aged 19 ...
Last post by Montravia - May 16, 2024, 01:23 PMhttps://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13424851/Man-kidnapped-aged-19-discovered-26-YEARS-later-minutes-walk-familys-home-time-never-cried-help-convinced-captor-cast-magic-spell-him.html
Man who was kidnapped aged 19 and discovered 26 YEARS later had only been a few minutes' walk from his family's home the whole time but never cried out for help because he was convinced his captor had 'cast a magic spell on him'
By Chris Jewers and Jon Brady and Gerard Couzens
Published: 09:09, 16 May 2024 | Updated: 09:40, 16 May 2024
A man who was kidnapped aged 19 and found 26 years later in Algeria over the weekend had only been a few minutes' walk away from his family the whole time. But the man named as Omar Bin Omran never cried out for help because he was convinced that his captor had cast a magic spell on him, local reports said. Omran vanished during the decade-long Algerian civil war of 1998, leading his family to assume that he was killed in the conflict between the North African nation's government and various Islamist rebel groups. The truth was much closer to home: Now aged 45, he was found amid haystacks in a stable on May 12 just 200 yards away from his family's home in the city of Djelfa. The discovery came after the captor's brother aired grievances on social media, reportedly due to an inheritance dispute. Reports said the post revealed the identity of the victim and his location, and prompted Omran's family to storm the residence. The alleged culprit, a 61-year-old doorman working in the nearby town of El Guedid, was taken into custody after attempting to flee, the Algerian Ministry of Justice said. The ministry said the investigation was still ongoing, adding that the victim was receiving medical and psychological care after the crime it described as 'heinous'. Algerian media reported that the victim said he had been unable to call out for help 'because of a spell that his captor had cast on him'. Footage was shared on social media and broadcast on Algerian television networks of the moment that he was found in what appeared to be a hole in the ground, described by authorities as a sheep pen, within the home of his alleged captor. The blurry video shows torchlights shining into a pit surrounded by hay as Omar furtively looks up, seemingly in shock at the search party surrounding him, stray pieces of straw in his hair. Other images have since been circulated of the bearded man emerging from the hole, thought to be a sheep pen, and of him as a teenager, sitting with a dog and with young children before he disappeared. Reporting from Algerian newspaper El Khabar suggests the dog pined for him close to the spot where he was being held, having recognised his smell. It was alleged in its report that the captor poisoned the dog to ward the family off. A search was launched for Omar in 1998 after he went missing while on his way to a vocational school. According to the newspaper, the inheritance dispute prompted the family to storm the house in a search for Omar. When they found him, his alleged captor attempted to flee before being restrained and then arrested. Tragically, Omar's mother died in 2013 without ever knowing the truth of what happened to her son. She had made pleas on television for information about what happened to her son, according to Algerian newspaper L' Expression. Reports suggest Omar was made aware of his mother's death whilst in captivity. A relative said on Facebook: 'Thank god my cousin was found. Bin Imran Omar is in good health after 26 years of disappearance. Awaiting details of the case and investigations.'
Public prosecutors in Djelfa, a mountain city of around 500,000 people around 140 miles south of coastal capital Algiers, say Omar will receive psychological care after being rescued as they vowed to get him justice. 'The Djelfa Attorney General's Office informs the public that on May 12 at 8pm local time it found victim Omar B, aged 45, in the case of his neighbour, B.A., aged 61,' they said in a statement.
A court official in Djelfa was quoted as saying: 'Two days ago, on 12 May 2024, the Public Prosecutor's Office received, through the regional department of the National Gendarmerie in El Jadid, a complaint against an anonymous person claiming that the complainant's brother, Omar bin Omran, who has been missing for about 30 years, is in the house of one of his neighbours, inside a sheepfold. 'Following this report the General Prosecutor of the Court of Idrisiya in the province of Djelfa ordered the National Gendarmerie to open an in-depth investigation and officers went to the house in question. 'The missing person was found and the suspect, the 61-year-old owner of the house was arrested.'
He added: 'The Public Prosecutor's Office ordered that the victim receive medical and psychological treatment, and the suspect will be presented to the Public Prosecutor's Office immediately after the completion of the investigation.'
Officials have promised the 'perpetrator of this heinous crime' will be tried with 'severity.' The man held is understood to work as a civil servant and lived alone but Algerian media suggested he was regularly seen buying enough food for two people. A neighbour of the man abducted told Algerian TV station Bilad: 'His poor mum died while he was in captivity, without knowing what had happened to him, without knowing that all this time he was really right beside her.'
A statement from the Algerian Ministry of Justice suggested the victim's family had been tipped off about Omar's whereabouts after the alleged captor's brother aired grievances on social media during an inheritance dispute.
The case may be among the world's longest-running kidnapping cases. Eleven-year-old Jaycee Dugard was kidnapped in Meyers, California in 1991 and remained missing for over 18 years after she was captured by Phillip and Nancy Garrido. Dugard was kept in depraved conditions and was subjected to extreme sexual abuse, having two children by Phillip Garrido, and later said she adapted to sympathising with her captors in order to survive.
Man who was kidnapped aged 19 and discovered 26 YEARS later had only been a few minutes' walk from his family's home the whole time but never cried out for help because he was convinced his captor had 'cast a magic spell on him'
By Chris Jewers and Jon Brady and Gerard Couzens
Published: 09:09, 16 May 2024 | Updated: 09:40, 16 May 2024
A man who was kidnapped aged 19 and found 26 years later in Algeria over the weekend had only been a few minutes' walk away from his family the whole time. But the man named as Omar Bin Omran never cried out for help because he was convinced that his captor had cast a magic spell on him, local reports said. Omran vanished during the decade-long Algerian civil war of 1998, leading his family to assume that he was killed in the conflict between the North African nation's government and various Islamist rebel groups. The truth was much closer to home: Now aged 45, he was found amid haystacks in a stable on May 12 just 200 yards away from his family's home in the city of Djelfa. The discovery came after the captor's brother aired grievances on social media, reportedly due to an inheritance dispute. Reports said the post revealed the identity of the victim and his location, and prompted Omran's family to storm the residence. The alleged culprit, a 61-year-old doorman working in the nearby town of El Guedid, was taken into custody after attempting to flee, the Algerian Ministry of Justice said. The ministry said the investigation was still ongoing, adding that the victim was receiving medical and psychological care after the crime it described as 'heinous'. Algerian media reported that the victim said he had been unable to call out for help 'because of a spell that his captor had cast on him'. Footage was shared on social media and broadcast on Algerian television networks of the moment that he was found in what appeared to be a hole in the ground, described by authorities as a sheep pen, within the home of his alleged captor. The blurry video shows torchlights shining into a pit surrounded by hay as Omar furtively looks up, seemingly in shock at the search party surrounding him, stray pieces of straw in his hair. Other images have since been circulated of the bearded man emerging from the hole, thought to be a sheep pen, and of him as a teenager, sitting with a dog and with young children before he disappeared. Reporting from Algerian newspaper El Khabar suggests the dog pined for him close to the spot where he was being held, having recognised his smell. It was alleged in its report that the captor poisoned the dog to ward the family off. A search was launched for Omar in 1998 after he went missing while on his way to a vocational school. According to the newspaper, the inheritance dispute prompted the family to storm the house in a search for Omar. When they found him, his alleged captor attempted to flee before being restrained and then arrested. Tragically, Omar's mother died in 2013 without ever knowing the truth of what happened to her son. She had made pleas on television for information about what happened to her son, according to Algerian newspaper L' Expression. Reports suggest Omar was made aware of his mother's death whilst in captivity. A relative said on Facebook: 'Thank god my cousin was found. Bin Imran Omar is in good health after 26 years of disappearance. Awaiting details of the case and investigations.'
Public prosecutors in Djelfa, a mountain city of around 500,000 people around 140 miles south of coastal capital Algiers, say Omar will receive psychological care after being rescued as they vowed to get him justice. 'The Djelfa Attorney General's Office informs the public that on May 12 at 8pm local time it found victim Omar B, aged 45, in the case of his neighbour, B.A., aged 61,' they said in a statement.
A court official in Djelfa was quoted as saying: 'Two days ago, on 12 May 2024, the Public Prosecutor's Office received, through the regional department of the National Gendarmerie in El Jadid, a complaint against an anonymous person claiming that the complainant's brother, Omar bin Omran, who has been missing for about 30 years, is in the house of one of his neighbours, inside a sheepfold. 'Following this report the General Prosecutor of the Court of Idrisiya in the province of Djelfa ordered the National Gendarmerie to open an in-depth investigation and officers went to the house in question. 'The missing person was found and the suspect, the 61-year-old owner of the house was arrested.'
He added: 'The Public Prosecutor's Office ordered that the victim receive medical and psychological treatment, and the suspect will be presented to the Public Prosecutor's Office immediately after the completion of the investigation.'
Officials have promised the 'perpetrator of this heinous crime' will be tried with 'severity.' The man held is understood to work as a civil servant and lived alone but Algerian media suggested he was regularly seen buying enough food for two people. A neighbour of the man abducted told Algerian TV station Bilad: 'His poor mum died while he was in captivity, without knowing what had happened to him, without knowing that all this time he was really right beside her.'
A statement from the Algerian Ministry of Justice suggested the victim's family had been tipped off about Omar's whereabouts after the alleged captor's brother aired grievances on social media during an inheritance dispute.
The case may be among the world's longest-running kidnapping cases. Eleven-year-old Jaycee Dugard was kidnapped in Meyers, California in 1991 and remained missing for over 18 years after she was captured by Phillip and Nancy Garrido. Dugard was kept in depraved conditions and was subjected to extreme sexual abuse, having two children by Phillip Garrido, and later said she adapted to sympathising with her captors in order to survive.
#2
Media / Adoption: 'Our sons' birth fam...
Last post by Topaz - May 14, 2024, 06:48 PMhttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57084243
Adoption: 'Our sons' birth family turned them against us'
12 May 2021
By Joseph Lee
BBC News
Claire and Ed adopted their sons 13 years ago. When the brothers found their biological family on social media aged 15 and 16, it took just three months for them to cut off all contact with their adoptive parents. Claire and Ed say their children were sent "intrusive" messages from their birth family and withdrew from their parents. Both children no longer attend school and there have been reports the older boy is involved in drug dealing. "For us, it's just been devastating to have our family broken," Ed tells BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "But the big tragedy and the big, human cost is theirs. Because they've just been manipulated."
Adoption UK says such complete breakdowns of relationships are rare - but unsupervised contact is becoming more common. The charity's research suggests nearly a quarter of adopted children make direct contact with their birth family often via social media before they gain the right to access information about their origins at the age of 18. Former High Court family law judge Sir Mark Hedley says there are no legal means of preventing young people from using social media to get in touch with their biological family, and banning their relatives from responding could be counter-productive. The situation has prompted a call from Labour MP Rachael Maskell, who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on adoption, for social services to enable safer, supervised contact before the age of 18. Three-quarters of adopted child have experienced neglect or abuse in their birth families, according to Adoption UK, raising concerns that post-adoption contact could be risky in some circumstances. Claire and Ed say despite more than 30 emails and repeated phone calls to social services and their regional adoption agency asking for support, no one intervened. "You just scream into a void for help," says Claire.
In October last year, before the contact happened, Claire says she felt her family seemed happy and settled, perhaps for the first time in years. Their older son was attending a specialist school, having therapies which seemed to be helping him, while the younger boy was in a mainstream school, seemingly a "happy lad" on course for his GCSEs, she says. The couple say their older child had been increasingly curious about his birth family and they had arranged for him to send a note through letterbox contact a system that is used in many adoptions to keep birth families updated as a child grows up, monitored by the local authority. But before that happened, it took him just a "matter of minutes" to look his family up on social media using details he had been given during the adoption process, they say. His birth family welcomed the contact and were "very persistent" in keeping in touch. He began to go missing from home overnight and was found close to his biological family's house. In December, he stopped going to school and Claire says there were allegations he had been dealing drugs. "He was completely knocked off course and started to follow a completely different life trajectory," she says.
Claire says the younger boy had been "resistant" to being introduced to his birth family, but was subjected to "intrusive" contact over phone and Facetime. He withdrew from his adoptive family and from school, began meeting with his birth family, and would return with vapes, clothes and money, she says. Claire says: "Our boys struggled with friendships, they struggled with school, they struggled with attention, they struggled to live within society's boundaries. And then what happens if a group of people come along and say, look, you don't need to go to school, you don't need to live in society's boundaries, we love you no matter what? [They say] 'Your parents are too harsh on you. They're too critical. And this is your escape clause.' I'm sure, you know lots of children, at that stage in their life would be tempted to move away from their families."
Now the couple say they have not had any meaningful contact with their sons for three months. "They no longer live with us or regard as their parents and they don't want us to be their parents going forward. They're quite hostile towards us," Ed says.
He says the boys have blocked their adoptive parents' phone number, and when their sons initiate a call it is "not in a positive way". "There might be a chance of amicable relations sometime in the future, but not as a family," says Ed.
He says they cannot compromise on their values of "hard work, honesty and being law-abiding" but they now think their sons are "in a different world to that".
They feel they cannot be a part of that world and cannot influence the boys back onto the right path, he says. Claire says she felt they were "naive", believing themselves to be a close family unit. Ed says they had not been prepared for the possibility of contact before the boys were 18, and the result was "beyond any worst-case scenario we could ever have contemplated". "You wouldn't believe it was possible for you to try to instil values and raise children for so many years and for it just to be totally wiped out in such a short amount of time," Claire says.
Charlotte Ramsden, president of the Association of Directors of Children's Services, says when children contact birth family through social media and relationships are damaged, it is a "really complex and tragic situation".
Modern adoption needs to recognise that "children have multiple attachments, they have complex identities, they are desperate to be loved and to understand their backgrounds", she says.
But while lifelong support and advice for adoptive families has improved, "it's not at the level we think it needs to be", Ms Ramsden says.
Trying to prevent contact by restricting information is not the answer, she says. "In a sense that's where adoption was a very long time ago, that information wasn't shared with children, but that actually was proved to cause them more difficulties."
Adoption: 'Our sons' birth family turned them against us'
12 May 2021
By Joseph Lee
BBC News
Claire and Ed adopted their sons 13 years ago. When the brothers found their biological family on social media aged 15 and 16, it took just three months for them to cut off all contact with their adoptive parents. Claire and Ed say their children were sent "intrusive" messages from their birth family and withdrew from their parents. Both children no longer attend school and there have been reports the older boy is involved in drug dealing. "For us, it's just been devastating to have our family broken," Ed tells BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "But the big tragedy and the big, human cost is theirs. Because they've just been manipulated."
Adoption UK says such complete breakdowns of relationships are rare - but unsupervised contact is becoming more common. The charity's research suggests nearly a quarter of adopted children make direct contact with their birth family often via social media before they gain the right to access information about their origins at the age of 18. Former High Court family law judge Sir Mark Hedley says there are no legal means of preventing young people from using social media to get in touch with their biological family, and banning their relatives from responding could be counter-productive. The situation has prompted a call from Labour MP Rachael Maskell, who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on adoption, for social services to enable safer, supervised contact before the age of 18. Three-quarters of adopted child have experienced neglect or abuse in their birth families, according to Adoption UK, raising concerns that post-adoption contact could be risky in some circumstances. Claire and Ed say despite more than 30 emails and repeated phone calls to social services and their regional adoption agency asking for support, no one intervened. "You just scream into a void for help," says Claire.
In October last year, before the contact happened, Claire says she felt her family seemed happy and settled, perhaps for the first time in years. Their older son was attending a specialist school, having therapies which seemed to be helping him, while the younger boy was in a mainstream school, seemingly a "happy lad" on course for his GCSEs, she says. The couple say their older child had been increasingly curious about his birth family and they had arranged for him to send a note through letterbox contact a system that is used in many adoptions to keep birth families updated as a child grows up, monitored by the local authority. But before that happened, it took him just a "matter of minutes" to look his family up on social media using details he had been given during the adoption process, they say. His birth family welcomed the contact and were "very persistent" in keeping in touch. He began to go missing from home overnight and was found close to his biological family's house. In December, he stopped going to school and Claire says there were allegations he had been dealing drugs. "He was completely knocked off course and started to follow a completely different life trajectory," she says.
Claire says the younger boy had been "resistant" to being introduced to his birth family, but was subjected to "intrusive" contact over phone and Facetime. He withdrew from his adoptive family and from school, began meeting with his birth family, and would return with vapes, clothes and money, she says. Claire says: "Our boys struggled with friendships, they struggled with school, they struggled with attention, they struggled to live within society's boundaries. And then what happens if a group of people come along and say, look, you don't need to go to school, you don't need to live in society's boundaries, we love you no matter what? [They say] 'Your parents are too harsh on you. They're too critical. And this is your escape clause.' I'm sure, you know lots of children, at that stage in their life would be tempted to move away from their families."
Now the couple say they have not had any meaningful contact with their sons for three months. "They no longer live with us or regard as their parents and they don't want us to be their parents going forward. They're quite hostile towards us," Ed says.
He says the boys have blocked their adoptive parents' phone number, and when their sons initiate a call it is "not in a positive way". "There might be a chance of amicable relations sometime in the future, but not as a family," says Ed.
He says they cannot compromise on their values of "hard work, honesty and being law-abiding" but they now think their sons are "in a different world to that".
They feel they cannot be a part of that world and cannot influence the boys back onto the right path, he says. Claire says she felt they were "naive", believing themselves to be a close family unit. Ed says they had not been prepared for the possibility of contact before the boys were 18, and the result was "beyond any worst-case scenario we could ever have contemplated". "You wouldn't believe it was possible for you to try to instil values and raise children for so many years and for it just to be totally wiped out in such a short amount of time," Claire says.
Charlotte Ramsden, president of the Association of Directors of Children's Services, says when children contact birth family through social media and relationships are damaged, it is a "really complex and tragic situation".
Modern adoption needs to recognise that "children have multiple attachments, they have complex identities, they are desperate to be loved and to understand their backgrounds", she says.
But while lifelong support and advice for adoptive families has improved, "it's not at the level we think it needs to be", Ms Ramsden says.
Trying to prevent contact by restricting information is not the answer, she says. "In a sense that's where adoption was a very long time ago, that information wasn't shared with children, but that actually was proved to cause them more difficulties."
#3
Media / Threesomes with servants, accu...
Last post by Cocobean - May 12, 2024, 07:03 PMhttps://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13409007/Threesomes-servants-accusations-STDs-jury-ordered-peek-aristocrats-keyhole-check-butler-REALLY-saw-incredible-salacious-tales-Britains-divorce-court.html?login¶m_code=rflge67xubptofgjati7¶m_state=eyJyZW1lbWJlck1lIjpmYWxzZSwicmFuZG9tU3RhdGUiOiI0MTdjYTlkMS1lMjE3LTQxYjMtOTIwYS1lZmRjNGFhMmNlNmUifQ%3D%3D¶m__host=www.dailymail.co.uk¶m_geolocation=row&base_fe_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailymail.co.uk%2F&validation_fe_uri=%2Fregistration%2Fp%2Fapi%2Ffield%2Fvalidation%2F&check_user_fe_uri=registration%2Fp%2Fapi%2Fuser%2Fuser_check%2F&isMobile=false
Threesomes with servants, accusations of STDs and a jury ordered to peek through an aristocrat's keyhole to check what the butler REALLY saw the incredible salacious tales from Britain's first divorce court
By Margarette Driscoll
Published: 12:08, 12 May 2024 | Updated: 16:34, 12 May 2024
What an extraordinary sight it must have been the day Belle Bilton, a 'much-photographed music hall artiste', stepped out from the Royal Courts of Justice. Lord Clancarty, her father-in-law, had done everything in his power to get rid of her, yet here she was, triumphant. The singer had just been found not guilty of adultery in London's divorce court. To Clancarty's horror, and despite his best efforts, she was still married to his son, Viscount Dunlo Traffic came to a standstill on the Strand as hundreds gathered to see her: men clambered on top of the omnibus just to catch a glimpse. Hats and handkerchiefs were waved and cheers of 'Bravo, Lady Dunlo!' rang out.
It was the culmination of six days of jaw-dropping evidence that held outwardly staid Victorian society spellbound in July 1889 as Belle's rackety past was raked over. Hers was one of many cases pored over at the Royal Courts of Justice newly minted to hear divorce trials that made headlines day after day in a heady mix of celebrity, salaciousness and intrigue. And they are, as social historian Ruth Derham shows in her new book, Decadent Divorce: Scandal And Sensation In Victorian England, a fascinating insight into how British society was changing. Indeed, the fortunes of supposedly disreputable Belle Bilton spun on a sixpence when she gave a stellar turn in the witness box. Belle one half of the Sisters Bilton, a duo whose cultivated innocence on stage was encapsulated in the chorus 'We're fresh, fresh as the morning, sweeter than new mown hay' had met the young Viscount Dunlo, just 20 years old, at London's Corinthian Club in April 1889.
The club, just off St James's Square, offered its clientele 'fun in the early hours' and 'a delightful absence of ceremony with respect to both sexes'.
Dunlo was instantly smitten and Belle, a couple of years his senior, equally so. Three months later, they married in secret. The first the 4th Earl Clancarty knew of it was a report in the Pall Mall Gazette. To describe Clancarty's reaction as volcanic is an understatement. He was already afraid his son was falling into bad company but the thought of a showgirl parading around as Lady Dunlo was intolerable. He was determined to put a stop to it. Dunlo crumbled in the face of his father's wrath and agreed to abandon his wife: he was sent to Australia, while Clancarty instructed a solicitor to have Belle's every move watched by detectives. Under the law, a man could petition to divorce his wife for one simple act of adultery. Clancarty soon heard, to his satisfaction, that Belle was 'daily in the company' of a Mr Isidor Wertheimer. Convinced they were having an affair, he persuaded Dunlo to sue for divorce. But the ensuing trial spectacularly backfired. Before a packed court, the sad story of Belle's life unfolded. The daughter of a staff sergeant in the Royal Engineers, she had taken to the stage aged 14, and in 1887, just before she turned 21, had met an older, married man, by whom she had become pregnant. Seemingly respectable, he turned out to be a thoroughly bad lot and was convicted soon afterwards of being party to misappropriating £50,000 nearly £5million in today's money and jailed. Wertheimer was Belle's saviour. They met first at the Trocadero Club and she confessed to him she was pregnant. He took a house for her in Maidenhead, where she lived under his protection until her baby was born (Belle named him Isidor, after her benefactor, but what happened to him is unclear). She later met Dunlo but kept up her acquaintance with Wertheimer. No one disputed that Wertheimer was in love with Belle but the jury believed him when he said that he had only once so much as put his arm around her waist 'much to her annoyance'. They were adamant they had not had any romantic encounter and, though grateful for his kindness, she kept him at arm's length. The charm that had won Belle her following on stage was put to full use in the witness box. The press marvelled at her pretty gown 'with corrugated flummery on the arms'. Her dignified manner held the court in thrall. When she was asked why she'd allowed Wertheimer to 'dangle' at her heels she replied: 'My husband did not look after me, so what was I to do?'
The jury took just 15 minutes to find Belle not guilty and the petition was dismissed. Having entered court as a showgirl, Belle left as a star. The Trocadero, London Pavilion and Royal Theatre vied to sign her at £100 (£11,000 in today's money) a night. That people took Belle's side rather than her aristocratic father-in-law's indicates how society was changing. The arrogance, entitlement, faults and foibles of the aristocracy exposed in such divorce cases eroded respect among working class newspaper readers, eager for scandal. The sating of their appetites had been a long time coming. Before, divorce had been possible but rare, as an Act of Parliament was required. But in 1857, a new law came into force allowing couples to divorce under strict conditions most usually proof of adultery and Britain's first dedicated divorce court opened its doors in 1883. And it soon became a forum in which couples, mostly the aristocracy and the very wealthy who could afford the top lawyers, aired their dirty linen in public. Couples unhappy enough to risk social ostracism by divorcing accused each other of cruelty, infidelity and sexual deviancy. The more lurid details were gleefully reported by Fleet Street's eager press, with much of the evidence coming from servants claiming to have seen 'goings-on' through bedroom keyholes. There was high drama and laughs aplenty as reputations and careers went up in smoke, but the workings of the divorce court tell us more than just what it takes to destroy a marriage they shone a light on shifting attitudes in society. The 'double standard' inherent in the law, for instance, caused outrage. Today, a consenting couple can opt for a DIY divorce online for a £593 fee, but in the 1800s a petitioner had to show fault and the system was very much weighted in men's favour. A husband could divorce his wife for one, simple act of adultery a 'fair suspicion' was enough. A woman could only divorce her husband for 'aggravated adultery'. He had not only to be unfaithful, the infidelity had to be accompanied by cruelty, desertion, bigamy or incest. In all but exceptional circumstances, the husband had to name the man who had 'defiled' his wife and could claim damages from him. A wife had no such claim on her husband's alleged mistress. Divorce was still rare and it was thought that the open invitation to the Press to report matters in the court would act as a deterrent. So the authorities were shocked to see petitions 'flood' in at a rate of 300 a year, more than half of them filed by women. The veil of Victorian respectability was pulled back in 1886 with two great causes celebres, described by the author George Moore as notable for their 'animal uncleanliness, foul and sardonic vice or stupendous revelations of mean hatreds and meaner vanity'.
The cast included aristocrats, the nouveau riche, professionals and politicians in the most compromising situations. The first concerned Donald Crawford, secretary to the Scottish Lord Advocate and soon-to-be MP for Lanarkshire North-East. At 44, he had married 18-year-old Virginia Smith, daughter of the MP for Tyneside North-East, a wealthy shipbuilder. Virginia did not love him the match had been made by her parents, who considered her wilful and in need of a firm hand. Virginia was desperately unhappy. In London, during the parliamentary term, she spent as much time as possible away from home, allegedly doing charity work in the East End. Crawford began to receive poison pen letters accusing his wife of affairs. At first, he burnt them but, eventually, overcome with suspicion, Crawford forced a confession from her: 'The real man with whom I have been guilty is Charles Dilke,' she said.
This was astounding. Dilke was a Liberal MP, tipped to take over the party leadership from Gladstone, and therefore likely to be the next Liberal prime minister. Even more surprisingly, Dilke had already had an affair with Virginia's mother, an art collector and society hostess. His brother was married to one of Virginia's sisters. So matters were already complicated even before Crawford sued for divorce. Virginia said Dilke had visited her six months after her marriage, spoken seductively, and kissed her. During the next parliamentary session, in 1882, they first had sex. Their affair lasted for more than two years: in February 1883 they had two whole nights together when she came up to town before Crawford returned. She got home just in time to bathe and dress before he arrived. Then, the bombshell: he had coerced her into a menage-a-trois. She blurted out: 'He made me go to bed with Fanny' (one of Dilke's servants and alleged mistresses).
Crawford petitioned the court, naming Dilke as co-respondent. The Pall Mall Gazette reported events as they unfolded under the headline 'The Great Social Scandal'. More about what Virginia had to say about the threesome came out in court. 'I did not like it at first but I did so because he wished it,' she had told her husband. 'I would have stood on my head in the street if he had told me to do so. He used to come to bed beside us. He taught me every French vice. He taught me all I know. He used to say that I know more than most women of 30. He said he took me first because I was so like my mother.'
For the masses, this was top-class entertainment. But what happened next turned the case from a hiccup in the career of a politician to the means of its destruction. Dilke's lawyer declared that, as the prosecution's case relied solely on Virginia's confession, there was no case for Dilke to answer. The Judge, Mr Justice Butt, agreed. He would give Crawford his divorce but dismiss Dilke from the case. The press was astonished: the judge had effectively ruled that Virginia had committed adultery with Dilke but Dilke had not committed adultery with her! The fact that Butt had been a Liberal MP before he was raised to the bench and was an old friend of Dilke's gave the impression that it had all been 'squared' beforehand. Dilke chose not to speak in his own defence. The Pall Mall Gazette speculated on how bad Dilke's other 'indiscretions' must be to have kept him out of the witness box. The press continued asking awkward questions for weeks until the Queen's Proctor, appointed to prevent miscarriages of justice in divorce suits, stepped in. Dilke had encouraged this, believing that his best shot lay in being exonerated again. It was a disastrous misjudgment. This time, Dilke denied adultery. His footmen denied having let Virginia into the house; his servant Sarah denied getting Fanny into the house and up to Dilke's bedroom. But Virginia's cool, shameless account of every detail how she, Dilke and Fanny had gone to bed together, how she had lied to her husband was compelling. A respectable young lady would never blacken her name with false testimony, the Victorians believed, so Dilke must be a liar. There were calls for him to be prosecuted for perjury. He escaped that fate but had to leave Parliament for a time and never again rose above being a backbencher. And just four months after the divorce court doors closed on Dilke, the papers' presses were at it again, churning out copious reports of the next sensation. When Lord Colin Campbell, son of the Duke of Argyll, encountered Gertrude Blood, it was love at first sight. Three days after they met, they got engaged. But three months into their marriage the idyll was shattered. Campbell, MP for Argyllshire, infected his wife with a sexually transmitted disease. Gertrude, now Lady Colin Campbell, applied for a judicial separation. Campbell argued that he had followed doctors' advice and that his wife had been aware of his condition. He lost and was ordered to pay her alimony of £225 (£25,000 today) a year.
Two years later, in 1886, both parties sued for divorce. 'Happy lawyers!' wrote the South London Chronicle: it promised to be 'a great entanglement!' And so it was. Campbell accused his wife of adultery with four men: Captain Eyre Massey Shaw, Chief of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade; Brigadier General Sir William Francis Butler, serving in the Sudan; Dr Thomas Bird, her physician; and George Charles Spencer-Churchill, Marquess of Blandford at the time of the alleged adultery and Duke of Marlborough when it came to court. By comparison, the allegation in Gertrude's petition was trivial: one act of adultery with a maid, Amelia Watson. Campbell claimed it was only after he had accused his wife of adultery that she and her lawyer concocted the charge of venereal infection to distract from her guilt. His case began with a flourish: a doctor had examined Amelia and pronounced her a virgin. 'Sensation!' cried the press. But that did not preclude a guilty verdict if there had been 'overfamiliarity'. Gertrude's cousin, Frances, claimed to have heard Campbell tell Amelia she had 'very pretty hair' which he liked to take down and play with. She had spied on the pair one evening in and said she saw Campbell 'sitting on the edge of the bed in his nightshirt with his arms around [Amelia's] neck and she leaning against his knee'.
James O'Neill, the Campbells' butler, gave evidence against Lady Campbell. He said when Gertrude was at home he had frequently answered the door to Shaw and Marlborough and on one occasion, when he took tea up to the drawing-room, he found the door locked. When he returned ten minutes later it was unlocked, the sofa and cushions were disarranged and Gertrude's face flushed. On another occasion, he heard noises coming from the dining room and peered through the keyhole. O'Neill said he saw Gertrude lying on the dining room floor with Shaw on top of her. The couple were 'in a position that would admit of but one construction'.
'Sensation!' once again.
Gertrude's lawyer tried to undo O'Neill by questioning his ability to hold a tea-tray balanced on his knee with one hand as he crouched to look through the keyhole. So crucial was this point that the jury ended up travelling across town to look at the keyhole themselves. Campbell was said to have become 'suspicious, morbid and jealous' through unwisely listening to servants' gossip. It was suggested he had included Gertrude's doctor in the list of lovers to avoid paying his bill. The jury found both parties not guilty so the petitions were denied and they were obliged to stay married. At 18 days, the trial was the longest in the divorce court's history and cost £18,000 (nearly £2million today). Campbell was ruined in every respect. The following year he went bankrupt. While Gertrude embarked on a career as a journalist and playwright, her husband fled to India. And what of Belle Bilton, the showgirl who took on an earl?
She and Dunlo were reconciled but Lord Clancarty hadn't finished. Less than two weeks after the trial, he rewrote his will. He could do nothing to prevent his son inheriting his title and his 27,000-acre estate in Ireland but he cut him from his personal estate, valued at more than £50,000. In the fullness of time Belle did become a countess but, sadly, it was not to be a happy experience. Her marriage may have started in a blaze of fervour but she allegedly struggled to adapt to her new role. Despite her triumph in court, she had borne an illegitimate child by a convicted criminal. She was never really accepted by Ireland's ruling class. More used to London's glittering theatreland, she was bored by life at the vast but remote family estate in Galway. Ample opportunity then, to reflect on the old adage marry in haste, repent at leisure.
Decadent Divorce: Scandal And Sensation In Victorian England by Ruth Derham (Amberley, £22.99) is published May 15. To order a copy for £20.69 (offer valid to 25/05/24; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.
Threesomes with servants, accusations of STDs and a jury ordered to peek through an aristocrat's keyhole to check what the butler REALLY saw the incredible salacious tales from Britain's first divorce court
By Margarette Driscoll
Published: 12:08, 12 May 2024 | Updated: 16:34, 12 May 2024
What an extraordinary sight it must have been the day Belle Bilton, a 'much-photographed music hall artiste', stepped out from the Royal Courts of Justice. Lord Clancarty, her father-in-law, had done everything in his power to get rid of her, yet here she was, triumphant. The singer had just been found not guilty of adultery in London's divorce court. To Clancarty's horror, and despite his best efforts, she was still married to his son, Viscount Dunlo Traffic came to a standstill on the Strand as hundreds gathered to see her: men clambered on top of the omnibus just to catch a glimpse. Hats and handkerchiefs were waved and cheers of 'Bravo, Lady Dunlo!' rang out.
It was the culmination of six days of jaw-dropping evidence that held outwardly staid Victorian society spellbound in July 1889 as Belle's rackety past was raked over. Hers was one of many cases pored over at the Royal Courts of Justice newly minted to hear divorce trials that made headlines day after day in a heady mix of celebrity, salaciousness and intrigue. And they are, as social historian Ruth Derham shows in her new book, Decadent Divorce: Scandal And Sensation In Victorian England, a fascinating insight into how British society was changing. Indeed, the fortunes of supposedly disreputable Belle Bilton spun on a sixpence when she gave a stellar turn in the witness box. Belle one half of the Sisters Bilton, a duo whose cultivated innocence on stage was encapsulated in the chorus 'We're fresh, fresh as the morning, sweeter than new mown hay' had met the young Viscount Dunlo, just 20 years old, at London's Corinthian Club in April 1889.
The club, just off St James's Square, offered its clientele 'fun in the early hours' and 'a delightful absence of ceremony with respect to both sexes'.
Dunlo was instantly smitten and Belle, a couple of years his senior, equally so. Three months later, they married in secret. The first the 4th Earl Clancarty knew of it was a report in the Pall Mall Gazette. To describe Clancarty's reaction as volcanic is an understatement. He was already afraid his son was falling into bad company but the thought of a showgirl parading around as Lady Dunlo was intolerable. He was determined to put a stop to it. Dunlo crumbled in the face of his father's wrath and agreed to abandon his wife: he was sent to Australia, while Clancarty instructed a solicitor to have Belle's every move watched by detectives. Under the law, a man could petition to divorce his wife for one simple act of adultery. Clancarty soon heard, to his satisfaction, that Belle was 'daily in the company' of a Mr Isidor Wertheimer. Convinced they were having an affair, he persuaded Dunlo to sue for divorce. But the ensuing trial spectacularly backfired. Before a packed court, the sad story of Belle's life unfolded. The daughter of a staff sergeant in the Royal Engineers, she had taken to the stage aged 14, and in 1887, just before she turned 21, had met an older, married man, by whom she had become pregnant. Seemingly respectable, he turned out to be a thoroughly bad lot and was convicted soon afterwards of being party to misappropriating £50,000 nearly £5million in today's money and jailed. Wertheimer was Belle's saviour. They met first at the Trocadero Club and she confessed to him she was pregnant. He took a house for her in Maidenhead, where she lived under his protection until her baby was born (Belle named him Isidor, after her benefactor, but what happened to him is unclear). She later met Dunlo but kept up her acquaintance with Wertheimer. No one disputed that Wertheimer was in love with Belle but the jury believed him when he said that he had only once so much as put his arm around her waist 'much to her annoyance'. They were adamant they had not had any romantic encounter and, though grateful for his kindness, she kept him at arm's length. The charm that had won Belle her following on stage was put to full use in the witness box. The press marvelled at her pretty gown 'with corrugated flummery on the arms'. Her dignified manner held the court in thrall. When she was asked why she'd allowed Wertheimer to 'dangle' at her heels she replied: 'My husband did not look after me, so what was I to do?'
The jury took just 15 minutes to find Belle not guilty and the petition was dismissed. Having entered court as a showgirl, Belle left as a star. The Trocadero, London Pavilion and Royal Theatre vied to sign her at £100 (£11,000 in today's money) a night. That people took Belle's side rather than her aristocratic father-in-law's indicates how society was changing. The arrogance, entitlement, faults and foibles of the aristocracy exposed in such divorce cases eroded respect among working class newspaper readers, eager for scandal. The sating of their appetites had been a long time coming. Before, divorce had been possible but rare, as an Act of Parliament was required. But in 1857, a new law came into force allowing couples to divorce under strict conditions most usually proof of adultery and Britain's first dedicated divorce court opened its doors in 1883. And it soon became a forum in which couples, mostly the aristocracy and the very wealthy who could afford the top lawyers, aired their dirty linen in public. Couples unhappy enough to risk social ostracism by divorcing accused each other of cruelty, infidelity and sexual deviancy. The more lurid details were gleefully reported by Fleet Street's eager press, with much of the evidence coming from servants claiming to have seen 'goings-on' through bedroom keyholes. There was high drama and laughs aplenty as reputations and careers went up in smoke, but the workings of the divorce court tell us more than just what it takes to destroy a marriage they shone a light on shifting attitudes in society. The 'double standard' inherent in the law, for instance, caused outrage. Today, a consenting couple can opt for a DIY divorce online for a £593 fee, but in the 1800s a petitioner had to show fault and the system was very much weighted in men's favour. A husband could divorce his wife for one, simple act of adultery a 'fair suspicion' was enough. A woman could only divorce her husband for 'aggravated adultery'. He had not only to be unfaithful, the infidelity had to be accompanied by cruelty, desertion, bigamy or incest. In all but exceptional circumstances, the husband had to name the man who had 'defiled' his wife and could claim damages from him. A wife had no such claim on her husband's alleged mistress. Divorce was still rare and it was thought that the open invitation to the Press to report matters in the court would act as a deterrent. So the authorities were shocked to see petitions 'flood' in at a rate of 300 a year, more than half of them filed by women. The veil of Victorian respectability was pulled back in 1886 with two great causes celebres, described by the author George Moore as notable for their 'animal uncleanliness, foul and sardonic vice or stupendous revelations of mean hatreds and meaner vanity'.
The cast included aristocrats, the nouveau riche, professionals and politicians in the most compromising situations. The first concerned Donald Crawford, secretary to the Scottish Lord Advocate and soon-to-be MP for Lanarkshire North-East. At 44, he had married 18-year-old Virginia Smith, daughter of the MP for Tyneside North-East, a wealthy shipbuilder. Virginia did not love him the match had been made by her parents, who considered her wilful and in need of a firm hand. Virginia was desperately unhappy. In London, during the parliamentary term, she spent as much time as possible away from home, allegedly doing charity work in the East End. Crawford began to receive poison pen letters accusing his wife of affairs. At first, he burnt them but, eventually, overcome with suspicion, Crawford forced a confession from her: 'The real man with whom I have been guilty is Charles Dilke,' she said.
This was astounding. Dilke was a Liberal MP, tipped to take over the party leadership from Gladstone, and therefore likely to be the next Liberal prime minister. Even more surprisingly, Dilke had already had an affair with Virginia's mother, an art collector and society hostess. His brother was married to one of Virginia's sisters. So matters were already complicated even before Crawford sued for divorce. Virginia said Dilke had visited her six months after her marriage, spoken seductively, and kissed her. During the next parliamentary session, in 1882, they first had sex. Their affair lasted for more than two years: in February 1883 they had two whole nights together when she came up to town before Crawford returned. She got home just in time to bathe and dress before he arrived. Then, the bombshell: he had coerced her into a menage-a-trois. She blurted out: 'He made me go to bed with Fanny' (one of Dilke's servants and alleged mistresses).
Crawford petitioned the court, naming Dilke as co-respondent. The Pall Mall Gazette reported events as they unfolded under the headline 'The Great Social Scandal'. More about what Virginia had to say about the threesome came out in court. 'I did not like it at first but I did so because he wished it,' she had told her husband. 'I would have stood on my head in the street if he had told me to do so. He used to come to bed beside us. He taught me every French vice. He taught me all I know. He used to say that I know more than most women of 30. He said he took me first because I was so like my mother.'
For the masses, this was top-class entertainment. But what happened next turned the case from a hiccup in the career of a politician to the means of its destruction. Dilke's lawyer declared that, as the prosecution's case relied solely on Virginia's confession, there was no case for Dilke to answer. The Judge, Mr Justice Butt, agreed. He would give Crawford his divorce but dismiss Dilke from the case. The press was astonished: the judge had effectively ruled that Virginia had committed adultery with Dilke but Dilke had not committed adultery with her! The fact that Butt had been a Liberal MP before he was raised to the bench and was an old friend of Dilke's gave the impression that it had all been 'squared' beforehand. Dilke chose not to speak in his own defence. The Pall Mall Gazette speculated on how bad Dilke's other 'indiscretions' must be to have kept him out of the witness box. The press continued asking awkward questions for weeks until the Queen's Proctor, appointed to prevent miscarriages of justice in divorce suits, stepped in. Dilke had encouraged this, believing that his best shot lay in being exonerated again. It was a disastrous misjudgment. This time, Dilke denied adultery. His footmen denied having let Virginia into the house; his servant Sarah denied getting Fanny into the house and up to Dilke's bedroom. But Virginia's cool, shameless account of every detail how she, Dilke and Fanny had gone to bed together, how she had lied to her husband was compelling. A respectable young lady would never blacken her name with false testimony, the Victorians believed, so Dilke must be a liar. There were calls for him to be prosecuted for perjury. He escaped that fate but had to leave Parliament for a time and never again rose above being a backbencher. And just four months after the divorce court doors closed on Dilke, the papers' presses were at it again, churning out copious reports of the next sensation. When Lord Colin Campbell, son of the Duke of Argyll, encountered Gertrude Blood, it was love at first sight. Three days after they met, they got engaged. But three months into their marriage the idyll was shattered. Campbell, MP for Argyllshire, infected his wife with a sexually transmitted disease. Gertrude, now Lady Colin Campbell, applied for a judicial separation. Campbell argued that he had followed doctors' advice and that his wife had been aware of his condition. He lost and was ordered to pay her alimony of £225 (£25,000 today) a year.
Two years later, in 1886, both parties sued for divorce. 'Happy lawyers!' wrote the South London Chronicle: it promised to be 'a great entanglement!' And so it was. Campbell accused his wife of adultery with four men: Captain Eyre Massey Shaw, Chief of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade; Brigadier General Sir William Francis Butler, serving in the Sudan; Dr Thomas Bird, her physician; and George Charles Spencer-Churchill, Marquess of Blandford at the time of the alleged adultery and Duke of Marlborough when it came to court. By comparison, the allegation in Gertrude's petition was trivial: one act of adultery with a maid, Amelia Watson. Campbell claimed it was only after he had accused his wife of adultery that she and her lawyer concocted the charge of venereal infection to distract from her guilt. His case began with a flourish: a doctor had examined Amelia and pronounced her a virgin. 'Sensation!' cried the press. But that did not preclude a guilty verdict if there had been 'overfamiliarity'. Gertrude's cousin, Frances, claimed to have heard Campbell tell Amelia she had 'very pretty hair' which he liked to take down and play with. She had spied on the pair one evening in and said she saw Campbell 'sitting on the edge of the bed in his nightshirt with his arms around [Amelia's] neck and she leaning against his knee'.
James O'Neill, the Campbells' butler, gave evidence against Lady Campbell. He said when Gertrude was at home he had frequently answered the door to Shaw and Marlborough and on one occasion, when he took tea up to the drawing-room, he found the door locked. When he returned ten minutes later it was unlocked, the sofa and cushions were disarranged and Gertrude's face flushed. On another occasion, he heard noises coming from the dining room and peered through the keyhole. O'Neill said he saw Gertrude lying on the dining room floor with Shaw on top of her. The couple were 'in a position that would admit of but one construction'.
'Sensation!' once again.
Gertrude's lawyer tried to undo O'Neill by questioning his ability to hold a tea-tray balanced on his knee with one hand as he crouched to look through the keyhole. So crucial was this point that the jury ended up travelling across town to look at the keyhole themselves. Campbell was said to have become 'suspicious, morbid and jealous' through unwisely listening to servants' gossip. It was suggested he had included Gertrude's doctor in the list of lovers to avoid paying his bill. The jury found both parties not guilty so the petitions were denied and they were obliged to stay married. At 18 days, the trial was the longest in the divorce court's history and cost £18,000 (nearly £2million today). Campbell was ruined in every respect. The following year he went bankrupt. While Gertrude embarked on a career as a journalist and playwright, her husband fled to India. And what of Belle Bilton, the showgirl who took on an earl?
She and Dunlo were reconciled but Lord Clancarty hadn't finished. Less than two weeks after the trial, he rewrote his will. He could do nothing to prevent his son inheriting his title and his 27,000-acre estate in Ireland but he cut him from his personal estate, valued at more than £50,000. In the fullness of time Belle did become a countess but, sadly, it was not to be a happy experience. Her marriage may have started in a blaze of fervour but she allegedly struggled to adapt to her new role. Despite her triumph in court, she had borne an illegitimate child by a convicted criminal. She was never really accepted by Ireland's ruling class. More used to London's glittering theatreland, she was bored by life at the vast but remote family estate in Galway. Ample opportunity then, to reflect on the old adage marry in haste, repent at leisure.
Decadent Divorce: Scandal And Sensation In Victorian England by Ruth Derham (Amberley, £22.99) is published May 15. To order a copy for £20.69 (offer valid to 25/05/24; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.
#4
Media / Re: I Was Told My Parents Were...
Last post by Cocobean - May 08, 2024, 10:53 AMSo sad she didn't know the truth right from the beginning.
#5
Media / I Was Told My Parents Were Dea...
Last post by Montravia - May 06, 2024, 12:02 PMhttps://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/lifestyle-buzz/i-was-told-my-parents-were-dead-38-years-later-i-got-an-email-that-changed-everything/ar-AA1hhzYL?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3sfqAGrv_fEFnNNEW__fKItAmXEGWwhzgM9_5TE64T87sHNrI8d94LXlY_aem_Af4IcWF0Fm8KomYf1INkvl4OAmtHRuNMRUPc7ALd_4h2FeE_a5YK5shHTPh62sAFrcsYwFqelj5yIecmEnP0Hufb
I Was Told My Parents Were Dead. 38 Years Later, I Got An Email That Changed Everything.
Story by Cat Powell-Hoffmann
In early June 2011, I opened an email that changed my life. It was sent by a woman who worked at the adoption agency that rehomed me when I was a newborn. She was looking for someone with my maiden name who'd been orphaned in South Korea 38 years ago and shipped overseas wearing a onesie with tiny red hearts printed on its front. She was looking for someone like me. I was impatient at first I wanted to know who was searching for me. Was it a long-lost uncle or a third cousin?
Maybe it was a step-sibling?
It couldn't possibly be a biological parent, because my adoption records noted that I'd been "abandoned at birth with no living relatives."
My parents were told that my biological mother was likely destitute or young, maybe both. She might have been a shamed high school student or a sex worker. These were common assumptions when a baby was orphaned in South Korea at that time. After confirming my identity, the woman from the adoption agency wrote one last email. "You are the person I've been searching for. Do you have time for a phone call next week?"
I insisted we speak that same day, because I have never been one for suspense, much less surprises. I'm the kind of person who looks up how a movie ends before I've finished it, or buys a book and reads the last chapter first. When the woman from the adoption agency called, she asked: "Are you sitting down?"
"Yes," I answered.
"You're not driving a car?"
"No."
"OK, good. Well, I'm happy to tell you that you have family in South Korea. Your mother is alive and well," she said. "I'm so sorry, but your father passed away from lung cancer. You have two younger brothers, and..." She paused. "You have a twin sister."
"Oh my God," I heard myself say. "Oh my God."
After we hung up, I wilted literally and found myself sitting on the hardwood floor. Breathless. Unable to move. I suddenly felt more alone now that I knew I wasn't. The storms inside me teetered from numbness to grief to thrill. I caught myself replaying old footage in my head of when I was 5 and 8 and 11 years old, all those summers I spent sprawled out in the backyard or curled up in my bedroom, struggling to push down the loneliness twisting inside. I was never really alone I had parents hovering over me, siblings to bug me, and lots of friends, wonderfully needy friends calling me on rotary phones, barking, "I know you're at home! Come out and play!"
But still, the loneliness gnawed at me. Later that day, the woman from the adoption agency forwarded two letters, one from my twin sister and one from my birth mother. I read my mother's first. She addressed me by my orphan name, Yi Soon, and ended with "From, your mom."
This made me cry. Her words were tender and fragile, almost as if she were balancing snowflakes on the page. It made me cry even more when I read the last line: "I can't believe this is real."
My twin's letter was even more moving. She spoke of familiar things like being a mother and a fine artist just like me. She spoke of illustrating my favorite book series, "Anne of Green Gables," for a Korean publisher. She spoke of her dislike of seafood and her love of beer more similarities. It was like we were living distant but parallel lives, which made me feel giddy and pained at the same time. Most of all, it saddened me to have spent so many precious years without her. Was this why I could never shake that lonely gnawing in my belly when I was growing up?
Was she the reason?
Those letters created a moat around me, a giant circular ditch deep enough to drown in. I felt trapped by my own emotion, by my mother's, by my twin's. Two months later, a reunion was set up by the woman from the adoption agency. She mentioned something about meeting my birth family at the agency's Seoul office, but later scratched that plan because she said she realized it would be easier for me to digest my new reality on American soil. She was probably right. It reminded me of a time in high school when my teacher asked me to tell the class what car I drove and my favorite meal. He was attempting to teach the class about cultural differences in America, but I failed him. "I drive a 1983 Ford Taurus and my favorite meal is a Big Mac," I told him.
"Never mind, she's all American," he replied.
In August, I flew to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the adoption agency's corporate headquarters were located. I brought the only loved ones who could make the trip with me: my son and two close friends. I had invited my parents, but my mom needed to stay close to my 80-year-old father, whose health was declining. On the day of the reunion, the woman from the agency greeted us as soon as we arrived. She gave us a tour, introduced us to the CEO, and then divided the four of us into two groups. My friends were directed to an elaborate-looking conference room. My son and I were asked to wait while my friends met and settled in with a wary search party: my birth mother and twin sister. The silence in the conference room was as dense as a stick of butter only for a second, but that second stretched for miles and miles. Then I heard gasps, which made me gasp, and two women raced toward me with their arms outstretched and tears in their eyes. The only thing I could do was place my hand over my heart in hopes of keeping it anchored in my chest. I recognized myself in my twin immediately. She had the same features as me, the same hand gestures, and even the same laugh that I have. It was like looking at a stranger wearing my face and using my voice but one of us spoke Korean and the other did not. It was disorienting and bizarre to think I'd shared a womb with another human being and now I was meeting her again 38 years later. My birth mother had a timeless look to her. Her black, curly hair was cropped short, typical for an ajumma, but she didn't look like one. She was humble but spirited, almost as if she were trying to hide her power. When she smiled, I saw my son in the corners of her mouth and the curvature of her eyes. The very first words my birth mother said to me were "Mianhae," which means "I'm sorry" in Korean. Then she said "Saranghae," which means "I love you."
My birth mother then turned to my twin sister and told her that she loved her too. With the help of a translator, I learned a lot during our family reunion so much that it made my brain hurt. I learned to call my birth mother "Omma" and my birth father "Appa." I learned that my twin sister was born 15 minutes earlier than me. I learned that my orphan name was actually my birth aunt's name, Soon Yi, but reversed. I learned that twins were considered bad luck in Korea in 1973. I learned that my aunt had demanded Omma choose which newborn to keep and which newborn to forget. I learned that Appa cried out for me right before he died. I learned that when Omma turned and told my twin "I love you," it was the first time my twin had ever heard those words, because Omma refused to say those three words to one daughter and not the other. That broke my heart.
I left that conference room born again. At birth, Omma was not allowed to name me, but 38 years later, she finally could. I was given the name Jinah, and my son was given Jin-Yeong. My adoptive family had just gained more relatives. It felt good to belong, or so I thought. Omma tried hard to recapture my lost childhood, but the cultural differences were rapidly poking holes in our bubble. We didn't understand each other, and we were accustomed to living very different lives. In Korea, there is an unspoken rule that one must always respect their elders. I realized this quickly when my son, my friend and I traveled to Seoul for the first time. Once there, I offended Omma by not eating seafood, by being tardy, by posting a photo of her on social media, and by drinking a beer in her presence. She became chilly and distant, and then withdrew her affection from me altogether for a few days, leaving us to fend for ourselves in an unfamiliar city where we couldn't speak or read the language. I wanted to kick myself for being careless, for being casually outspoken, and for not researching my birth country's traditions before I arrived. By the time Omma returned for the three of us, it was me saying, "Mianhae! Mianhae, Omma!"
I wanted to explain to my Korean family that after I turned 18, I was my own boss and I had been making my own decisions for a long time. I wanted to tell them that I was an idiot and I'd be a good daughter, if they'd just be patient with me. I wanted to tell them that I wanted to change I just needed some time to adjust to this new life. After all, they had known about me years prior to our reunion, and I had only known about them for a few months. But because of our language barrier, we were mostly forced to play charades to communicate, and I could barely get across the most basic sentiments, much less hold the heart-to-heart conversation I so desperately wanted to have with them. Meeting my biological family has been both a painful and beautiful gift. It sent me on a journey of self-discovery I never expected I would go on and one I wasn't prepared to take. It made me question who I was, where I came from, what "family" means, and how I want to move forward. It also gave me and my son a lineage and a history to claim as our own. It's been two years since I last had contact with my Korean family. We had discussed things like dual citizenship and housing and Hangul lessons before COVID upended the world. We wanted to be a part of each other's lives however hard that might be but then our lives blew up in a million different ways. The pandemic struck, my son returned from his service in the Marine Corps, Omma's second husband died, my dad died shortly after that, and I married the love of my life. Everything was difficult or exhausting or scary or strange or brand-new, and attempting to forge our path together just didn't feel possible. I'm not sure when I'll see my birth family again, but I want to. Omma hasn't met her new son-in-law, and my husband hasn't met the other me. Now that I know they're out there, I don't want to lose them.
Cat Powell-Hoffmann is a published fine artist and writer from the Pacific Northwest. She is a Moth Mainstage storyteller and has been featured in numerous art and literary journals. Cat's art has been exhibited in galleries up and down the West Coast. She is working on a book of essays about adoption, love, midlife hiccups, retail sales and motherhood. When she's not painting, writing or singing backup vocals for the post-punk band Princess Ugly, you can find her binge-watching Netflix with her husband, son, and fur baby in their Portland, Oregon, home.
I Was Told My Parents Were Dead. 38 Years Later, I Got An Email That Changed Everything.
Story by Cat Powell-Hoffmann
In early June 2011, I opened an email that changed my life. It was sent by a woman who worked at the adoption agency that rehomed me when I was a newborn. She was looking for someone with my maiden name who'd been orphaned in South Korea 38 years ago and shipped overseas wearing a onesie with tiny red hearts printed on its front. She was looking for someone like me. I was impatient at first I wanted to know who was searching for me. Was it a long-lost uncle or a third cousin?
Maybe it was a step-sibling?
It couldn't possibly be a biological parent, because my adoption records noted that I'd been "abandoned at birth with no living relatives."
My parents were told that my biological mother was likely destitute or young, maybe both. She might have been a shamed high school student or a sex worker. These were common assumptions when a baby was orphaned in South Korea at that time. After confirming my identity, the woman from the adoption agency wrote one last email. "You are the person I've been searching for. Do you have time for a phone call next week?"
I insisted we speak that same day, because I have never been one for suspense, much less surprises. I'm the kind of person who looks up how a movie ends before I've finished it, or buys a book and reads the last chapter first. When the woman from the adoption agency called, she asked: "Are you sitting down?"
"Yes," I answered.
"You're not driving a car?"
"No."
"OK, good. Well, I'm happy to tell you that you have family in South Korea. Your mother is alive and well," she said. "I'm so sorry, but your father passed away from lung cancer. You have two younger brothers, and..." She paused. "You have a twin sister."
"Oh my God," I heard myself say. "Oh my God."
After we hung up, I wilted literally and found myself sitting on the hardwood floor. Breathless. Unable to move. I suddenly felt more alone now that I knew I wasn't. The storms inside me teetered from numbness to grief to thrill. I caught myself replaying old footage in my head of when I was 5 and 8 and 11 years old, all those summers I spent sprawled out in the backyard or curled up in my bedroom, struggling to push down the loneliness twisting inside. I was never really alone I had parents hovering over me, siblings to bug me, and lots of friends, wonderfully needy friends calling me on rotary phones, barking, "I know you're at home! Come out and play!"
But still, the loneliness gnawed at me. Later that day, the woman from the adoption agency forwarded two letters, one from my twin sister and one from my birth mother. I read my mother's first. She addressed me by my orphan name, Yi Soon, and ended with "From, your mom."
This made me cry. Her words were tender and fragile, almost as if she were balancing snowflakes on the page. It made me cry even more when I read the last line: "I can't believe this is real."
My twin's letter was even more moving. She spoke of familiar things like being a mother and a fine artist just like me. She spoke of illustrating my favorite book series, "Anne of Green Gables," for a Korean publisher. She spoke of her dislike of seafood and her love of beer more similarities. It was like we were living distant but parallel lives, which made me feel giddy and pained at the same time. Most of all, it saddened me to have spent so many precious years without her. Was this why I could never shake that lonely gnawing in my belly when I was growing up?
Was she the reason?
Those letters created a moat around me, a giant circular ditch deep enough to drown in. I felt trapped by my own emotion, by my mother's, by my twin's. Two months later, a reunion was set up by the woman from the adoption agency. She mentioned something about meeting my birth family at the agency's Seoul office, but later scratched that plan because she said she realized it would be easier for me to digest my new reality on American soil. She was probably right. It reminded me of a time in high school when my teacher asked me to tell the class what car I drove and my favorite meal. He was attempting to teach the class about cultural differences in America, but I failed him. "I drive a 1983 Ford Taurus and my favorite meal is a Big Mac," I told him.
"Never mind, she's all American," he replied.
In August, I flew to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the adoption agency's corporate headquarters were located. I brought the only loved ones who could make the trip with me: my son and two close friends. I had invited my parents, but my mom needed to stay close to my 80-year-old father, whose health was declining. On the day of the reunion, the woman from the agency greeted us as soon as we arrived. She gave us a tour, introduced us to the CEO, and then divided the four of us into two groups. My friends were directed to an elaborate-looking conference room. My son and I were asked to wait while my friends met and settled in with a wary search party: my birth mother and twin sister. The silence in the conference room was as dense as a stick of butter only for a second, but that second stretched for miles and miles. Then I heard gasps, which made me gasp, and two women raced toward me with their arms outstretched and tears in their eyes. The only thing I could do was place my hand over my heart in hopes of keeping it anchored in my chest. I recognized myself in my twin immediately. She had the same features as me, the same hand gestures, and even the same laugh that I have. It was like looking at a stranger wearing my face and using my voice but one of us spoke Korean and the other did not. It was disorienting and bizarre to think I'd shared a womb with another human being and now I was meeting her again 38 years later. My birth mother had a timeless look to her. Her black, curly hair was cropped short, typical for an ajumma, but she didn't look like one. She was humble but spirited, almost as if she were trying to hide her power. When she smiled, I saw my son in the corners of her mouth and the curvature of her eyes. The very first words my birth mother said to me were "Mianhae," which means "I'm sorry" in Korean. Then she said "Saranghae," which means "I love you."
My birth mother then turned to my twin sister and told her that she loved her too. With the help of a translator, I learned a lot during our family reunion so much that it made my brain hurt. I learned to call my birth mother "Omma" and my birth father "Appa." I learned that my twin sister was born 15 minutes earlier than me. I learned that my orphan name was actually my birth aunt's name, Soon Yi, but reversed. I learned that twins were considered bad luck in Korea in 1973. I learned that my aunt had demanded Omma choose which newborn to keep and which newborn to forget. I learned that Appa cried out for me right before he died. I learned that when Omma turned and told my twin "I love you," it was the first time my twin had ever heard those words, because Omma refused to say those three words to one daughter and not the other. That broke my heart.
I left that conference room born again. At birth, Omma was not allowed to name me, but 38 years later, she finally could. I was given the name Jinah, and my son was given Jin-Yeong. My adoptive family had just gained more relatives. It felt good to belong, or so I thought. Omma tried hard to recapture my lost childhood, but the cultural differences were rapidly poking holes in our bubble. We didn't understand each other, and we were accustomed to living very different lives. In Korea, there is an unspoken rule that one must always respect their elders. I realized this quickly when my son, my friend and I traveled to Seoul for the first time. Once there, I offended Omma by not eating seafood, by being tardy, by posting a photo of her on social media, and by drinking a beer in her presence. She became chilly and distant, and then withdrew her affection from me altogether for a few days, leaving us to fend for ourselves in an unfamiliar city where we couldn't speak or read the language. I wanted to kick myself for being careless, for being casually outspoken, and for not researching my birth country's traditions before I arrived. By the time Omma returned for the three of us, it was me saying, "Mianhae! Mianhae, Omma!"
I wanted to explain to my Korean family that after I turned 18, I was my own boss and I had been making my own decisions for a long time. I wanted to tell them that I was an idiot and I'd be a good daughter, if they'd just be patient with me. I wanted to tell them that I wanted to change I just needed some time to adjust to this new life. After all, they had known about me years prior to our reunion, and I had only known about them for a few months. But because of our language barrier, we were mostly forced to play charades to communicate, and I could barely get across the most basic sentiments, much less hold the heart-to-heart conversation I so desperately wanted to have with them. Meeting my biological family has been both a painful and beautiful gift. It sent me on a journey of self-discovery I never expected I would go on and one I wasn't prepared to take. It made me question who I was, where I came from, what "family" means, and how I want to move forward. It also gave me and my son a lineage and a history to claim as our own. It's been two years since I last had contact with my Korean family. We had discussed things like dual citizenship and housing and Hangul lessons before COVID upended the world. We wanted to be a part of each other's lives however hard that might be but then our lives blew up in a million different ways. The pandemic struck, my son returned from his service in the Marine Corps, Omma's second husband died, my dad died shortly after that, and I married the love of my life. Everything was difficult or exhausting or scary or strange or brand-new, and attempting to forge our path together just didn't feel possible. I'm not sure when I'll see my birth family again, but I want to. Omma hasn't met her new son-in-law, and my husband hasn't met the other me. Now that I know they're out there, I don't want to lose them.
Cat Powell-Hoffmann is a published fine artist and writer from the Pacific Northwest. She is a Moth Mainstage storyteller and has been featured in numerous art and literary journals. Cat's art has been exhibited in galleries up and down the West Coast. She is working on a book of essays about adoption, love, midlife hiccups, retail sales and motherhood. When she's not painting, writing or singing backup vocals for the post-punk band Princess Ugly, you can find her binge-watching Netflix with her husband, son, and fur baby in their Portland, Oregon, home.
#6
Media / Seoul Searching
Last post by Cocobean - May 04, 2024, 05:47 PMhttps://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-02/south-korean-adoptees-search-for-answers-over-identity/103694806?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR3P6_OrFKCBu-eWSzLEBs6dfxfZzkUunqYz-WrcQpOIzv8VboM33jueDXU_aem_AcSpivtgG2dbZ_UT7miK6z1mYJfkb3LSULchxOsJMgx6nXeQ68_7VKRGBXRCyhDWwFe3SNtYWEgsZN5MvtqyD6qH
Seoul Searching
After being 'sold off' as babies, South Korea's adoptees are searching for answers about their identity.
By Mazoe Ford, Matt Davis and Victoria Allen in South Korea
Foreign Correspondent
Published 1 May 2024, 7:52pm
When Peter reached out to his Korean adoption agency for the first time about 13 years ago to search for his roots, he soon discovered things didn't add up. "My social history actually says two things," Peter told ABC's Foreign Correspondent.
"One, that I'm an orphan, which means that my parents are dead, but my documents also describe my biological mother. So when we looked at the documents my first question was, 'How can you both be an orphan, having no parents, and then have your biological mother described?'."
Peter said his adoption agency, Holt Children's Services, also gave him two different city names as his place of birth and there was conflicting information about his date of birth. "How is this possible?" the Danish lawyer asked himself.
As that question played on his mind, Peter also began to wonder whether any other adoptees had noticed similar document discrepancies. With time on his hands during the pandemic, he reached out to the Danish Korean adoptee community. Some social histories "were like a copy-paste" while others had dates that did not line up, he said.
There were also cases where adoptees were listed as orphans but later discovered their parents were very much alive. "Everything looked very strange, so we began to question, 'How come these stories don't fit?'," Peter said.
"We collected all the stories and then we decided to go to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in Korea [and make] a formal complaint in the hope that they would investigate the case."
'We are adults and we have the right to know'
South Korea's TRC is tasked with investigating historical human rights violations. It agreed to take on the adoptees' cases. The Danish Korean Rights Group (DKRG), which Peter co-founded, initially presented the commission with 51 Danish cases. Then word spread. "The day after, we received hundreds of emails from all over the world, so we decided to open up our complaint to the commission to have as many adoptees as possible," Peter said.
"We also saw American cases, cases from other places in Europe, from Australia."
Peter, who now lives in Seoul, ended up coordinating 375 cases to be submitted from Korean adoptees in 11 countries. He said he also continued to try to get information from the adoption agency, Holt, about his own case, but got nowhere. "Of course, I think most adoptees would respect if it is the wish of the birth family not to be contacted what we actually challenge is whether our private, intimate information can be the private property of adoption agencies," he said.
"It's very important for us to know our true identity and for people to know where do I come from? We are adults, and we have the right to know."
Babies: Supply and demand
Since the end of the Korean War 71 years ago, about 200,000 children have been adopted from South Korea to families around the world. Following The Korean Armistice Agreement in 1953, orphanages were full of thousands of war orphans and babies fathered by foreign soldiers. South Korea's leaders saw this as a social welfare problem, so the children were sent abroad. Interest surged after Harry and Bertha Holt, a Christian couple from the US, adopted eight babies in 1955. The Holts then continued to make headlines as they set up what would become Korea's biggest adoption agency. In the following decades, more agencies were set up and international adoption became a lucrative business for them. At the same time, South Korea had little social welfare support unwed mothers were shamed into handing over their newborns and poor families had little choice. There is also evidence that some children were stolen. Figures from the South Korean government show adoption peaked in 1985 when there were 8,837 children sent abroad an average of 24 a day. The turning point came during the 1988 Seoul Olympics when the world's media took notice, describing babies as Korea's "primary export". Numbers have fallen most years ever since. In 2022, 142 Korean children were adopted overseas.
'Nothing is verifiable'
Later in life as adults, many adoptees feel a pull to South Korea and make the journey back. They want to connect with a country they have never really known. Not every Korean adoptee feels compelled to search for their birth family, but many do. Mary Bowers was adopted as a baby in 1982 to a small town in Colorado, in the United States. Curious about what living in Korea would be like, she moved to Seoul in 2020. "It's definitely been a roller coaster," Mary, 42, said.
"I have good days where I feel like I've learned a lot and I've made lots of connections and I feel pretty great. But there are also days where I'm just flat on the floor, I can't breathe, I can't move, I can't handle anything."
Mary said her adoptive parents were told her birth mother was a single mother who was too poor to raise her. However, after Mary moved to Seoul and went to look at her file at the Eastern Social Welfare Society adoption agency, she discovered "conflicting information". Mary said she went back to Eastern multiple times over the past few years to try to clarify the discrepancies but was never offered an explanation. She said staff eventually told her they had tried but failed to contact her birth mother, and that her case was now closed. "Now that I've realised that my documents have two names listed for my mother, who did they contact? I have no idea," Mary said.
"Or if I'm listed as an orphan, what parents are there to even send a letter to?
"I asked for proof that they sent the letters, but they wouldn't send me any kind of receipts, and I asked them for redacted receipts and they wouldn't send redacted receipts nothing is verifiable."
'Alarming patterns' in adoption stories emerge
Mary got on with her life in Seoul, but she continued to grapple with the confusion surrounding her identity. When she heard about Peter Møller and the TRC complaint case, she knew she had to submit her story too. She joined a group called the Australia-United States Korean Rights Group (AUSKRG), a group of adoptees from America and Australia who were adopted through Eastern. "To find other people who have had similar experiences and to have my experience validated as, 'Wait, this happened to me too'," Mary said.
"You're not losing your mind. You're not going crazy. This is something that was pervasive. That makes me feel more self-assured and sane."
The AUSKRG formed in late 2022 after hearing the TRC had accepted the Danish cases and was open to receiving more submissions from around the world.
'More questions than answers' for Australian adoptee
Over the decades, 3,600 adoptees have been sent to Australia. Australian adoptee Chae is one of the AUSKRG members who submitted his case to the TRC. Chae's adoption file lists two conflicting stories: one was that he was born to a single mother, and the other was that his mother was married but had fallen pregnant while having an affair and was pressured to give the baby up. "When you're trying to understand where you come from and trying to find your family it's quite difficult to reconcile that you have two different leads to go on," Chae said.
When Chae travelled to Seoul in 2023 to do his birth family search, he went into his adoption agency, Eastern, to try to look at his file. He said staff brought a large folder with his documents into the room but wouldn't allow him to see half of them. "It was quite frustrating and confronting, and when I tried to clarify things with Eastern I left with more questions than answers," he said.
Answers are something the 33-year-old craves. "In my life as an adopted person, I've struggled so much with identity," he said.
"Identity is such a fundamental part of your happiness as a human being and your sense of belonging and I want to find that sense of happiness and belonging in the world through reconciling my identity."
Diving into decades of archives
The adoptees who submitted cases to the TRC have high hopes the investigation will find the truth behind South Korea's adoption past. Amy Jung, the lead investigator for the TRC's intercountry adoption team, said she and her colleagues understand that acutely. "We are currently under a lot of pressure but we do not mind this pressure," she said. "It urges us to feel more responsible and carry out the investigation with utmost care."
Ms Jung said that so far, because of "outside influences including the media", South Korea's four adoption agencies have had "no other choice but to co-operate" with her team. "Although they were a bit hesitant about certain requests we made, they willingly cooperated with us," she said.
"Our investigators went into the adoption agencies' archives to physically look for the records, we checked their document filing system and how they were stored, and we scanned and stored the applicants' documents page by page."
The TRC has until next year to deliver its findings. "When the investigation is over, the result will show what happened in the past and whether human rights were violated," Ms Jung said.
"We will make recommendations to the government bodies or adoption agencies who might be responsible."
'We were pretty much sold for a profit'
The adoptees who submitted their cases hope the commission will also follow the money during its investigation. "I think maybe initially in the years immediately after the Korean War there may have been humanitarian need for children to find families," Mary said.
"But as time went on, the adoption agencies found there was significant money that people were willing to pay to adopt a child. We were pretty much sold for a profit."
Helen Noh, a retired professor of social work who was employed by Holt Children's Services as a social worker for a year in 1981, agreed there was a profit motive. "At the time I was working [adoptive families paid] $US3,000 ($4,609) for a child," Professor Noh said.
"It was more than one year's salary for a social worker like me it was a lot of money. Adoption should be done in the best interests of the child, but there were many cases where that didn't happen and it was really done in the interests of the agency."
Professor Noh, whose job at Holt was to match children with families in the west, said that at the time she genuinely felt like she was helping people. Her view changed in the years that followed when she began doing academic research into South Korea's intercountry adoption practices. "I started studying the issues more in depth and the more and more I looked into it, the more problems I saw," Professor Noh said.
"Mothers were pushed to place their children for adoption and sometimes the relatives, grandparents, uncles, aunts would do it without the parents' consent. Adoption agencies would visit hospitals or maternity homes, leave name cards and telling them, 'If you have a child whose family may have issues let us know', and we know that adoption agencies also handed some money to these hospitals and maternity homes for a child. And we know of many cases where the parents or grandparents were told that when the child goes overseas they'll be receiving pictures and letters regularly and when the child grows up they will come back. But once the child was gone [the adoption agency] refused to talk to them."
South Korea's reckoning
Foreign Correspondent made several requests for interviews with Holt Children's Services and Eastern Social Welfare Society and sent a list of detailed questions to each but received no responses. In a written statement, the South Korean government said it was waiting for the results of the TRC investigation, but pointed to progress made in recent years. "Separate from the investigation into past cases, Korea has continued efforts to strengthen national responsibility for adoption and has been preparing for the ratification of the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption," the statement said.
"Korea considers it important to uphold the principle that the best protection of children should take place within their family and country of origin."
The Hague Convention is an international treaty which makes intercountry adoption a last resort. Any cases would be managed by government in accordance with international standards, not through private adoption agencies. Adoptee advocates welcome this development but have said they will be watching closely to see if it is adhered to and policed. They also hope the TRC's recommendations will bring about more change. "I would hope to see historical acknowledgement of what happened, an official apology from the government and some kind of restitution for what happened," Mary said.
Peter said he hopes the TRC's findings would "lead to a stop to adoptions from South Korea".
He said an apology would be "too easy" and that instead he hopes for answers and truth. Peter added that he also feels deeply for adoptive parents who he believed had been wronged too. "My [adoptive] mother, she gets very sorry and one day she said to me, 'Peter, I want to say I'm sorry because I didn't know this'," he said.
"And I said, 'Of course you didn't know this. And this is not your fault. This is made by greedy people who wanted money'. Many, many people ask me, 'You have had a good life in Denmark, why don't you just forget about these things?' And I think, I have had a good life in Denmark, but having a good life has nothing to do with the violations of human rights and the sale of children."
Support lines
Intercountry Adoptee and Family Support Service | 1800 422 377
Intercountry Adoptee Voices (ICAV)
Lifeline Australia | 13 11 14
Beyond Blue | 1300 22 4636
Finding new family in adoptees
Chae said he hoped the Australian government would pay close attention to the TRC's findings. "I personally would like to see an Australian inquiry into intercountry adoption," he said.
"And not only South Korea but from other sending countries as well, which also have suspected human rights violations or similar practices. Since the TRC began their investigation, [some] European countries have started their own independent investigations into intercountry adoptions, and I'd love to see the Australian government look at doing something."
The AUSKRG said it would "wait to see what the commission's recommendations will be, but we would expect the Australian government to abide by its obligations under international humanitarian law".
The Australian government said it was "aware of increasing concerns about the legality of historic adoptions from the Republic of Korea occurring during the time frame subject to investigation by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission".
"The Department of Social Services acknowledges the lifelong challenges experienced by intercountry adoptees whose adoptions were impacted by illicit or illegal adoption practices," a departmental spokesperson said.
"Australia has no immediate plans to launch an inquiry but will be closely monitoring the outcome of the TRC and will work closely with state and territory governments on any follow-up actions."
Australia continues to facilitate adoptions from South Korea "if the principles and standards of the Hague Convention and relevant international obligations, including the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, are upheld".
For many Korean adoptees, trying to find their roots and understand who they are takes a large emotional toll, and one they say very few non-adoptees can truly understand. "Adoptees have become adults, have had that lived experience, and I think that as we look towards the future it's important that we look at the past and what's happened, and look at ways that we can better support not only adoptees, but birth families too," Chae said.
He said he had found "family" in the adoptee community. "Their unconditional love and support throughout this process has meant the world to me they're the most incredible people and I know that they'll always be there for me. Despite everything that's happened, I'm now proud to be a Korean adoptee."
Seoul Searching
After being 'sold off' as babies, South Korea's adoptees are searching for answers about their identity.
By Mazoe Ford, Matt Davis and Victoria Allen in South Korea
Foreign Correspondent
Published 1 May 2024, 7:52pm
When Peter reached out to his Korean adoption agency for the first time about 13 years ago to search for his roots, he soon discovered things didn't add up. "My social history actually says two things," Peter told ABC's Foreign Correspondent.
"One, that I'm an orphan, which means that my parents are dead, but my documents also describe my biological mother. So when we looked at the documents my first question was, 'How can you both be an orphan, having no parents, and then have your biological mother described?'."
Peter said his adoption agency, Holt Children's Services, also gave him two different city names as his place of birth and there was conflicting information about his date of birth. "How is this possible?" the Danish lawyer asked himself.
As that question played on his mind, Peter also began to wonder whether any other adoptees had noticed similar document discrepancies. With time on his hands during the pandemic, he reached out to the Danish Korean adoptee community. Some social histories "were like a copy-paste" while others had dates that did not line up, he said.
There were also cases where adoptees were listed as orphans but later discovered their parents were very much alive. "Everything looked very strange, so we began to question, 'How come these stories don't fit?'," Peter said.
"We collected all the stories and then we decided to go to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in Korea [and make] a formal complaint in the hope that they would investigate the case."
'We are adults and we have the right to know'
South Korea's TRC is tasked with investigating historical human rights violations. It agreed to take on the adoptees' cases. The Danish Korean Rights Group (DKRG), which Peter co-founded, initially presented the commission with 51 Danish cases. Then word spread. "The day after, we received hundreds of emails from all over the world, so we decided to open up our complaint to the commission to have as many adoptees as possible," Peter said.
"We also saw American cases, cases from other places in Europe, from Australia."
Peter, who now lives in Seoul, ended up coordinating 375 cases to be submitted from Korean adoptees in 11 countries. He said he also continued to try to get information from the adoption agency, Holt, about his own case, but got nowhere. "Of course, I think most adoptees would respect if it is the wish of the birth family not to be contacted what we actually challenge is whether our private, intimate information can be the private property of adoption agencies," he said.
"It's very important for us to know our true identity and for people to know where do I come from? We are adults, and we have the right to know."
Babies: Supply and demand
Since the end of the Korean War 71 years ago, about 200,000 children have been adopted from South Korea to families around the world. Following The Korean Armistice Agreement in 1953, orphanages were full of thousands of war orphans and babies fathered by foreign soldiers. South Korea's leaders saw this as a social welfare problem, so the children were sent abroad. Interest surged after Harry and Bertha Holt, a Christian couple from the US, adopted eight babies in 1955. The Holts then continued to make headlines as they set up what would become Korea's biggest adoption agency. In the following decades, more agencies were set up and international adoption became a lucrative business for them. At the same time, South Korea had little social welfare support unwed mothers were shamed into handing over their newborns and poor families had little choice. There is also evidence that some children were stolen. Figures from the South Korean government show adoption peaked in 1985 when there were 8,837 children sent abroad an average of 24 a day. The turning point came during the 1988 Seoul Olympics when the world's media took notice, describing babies as Korea's "primary export". Numbers have fallen most years ever since. In 2022, 142 Korean children were adopted overseas.
'Nothing is verifiable'
Later in life as adults, many adoptees feel a pull to South Korea and make the journey back. They want to connect with a country they have never really known. Not every Korean adoptee feels compelled to search for their birth family, but many do. Mary Bowers was adopted as a baby in 1982 to a small town in Colorado, in the United States. Curious about what living in Korea would be like, she moved to Seoul in 2020. "It's definitely been a roller coaster," Mary, 42, said.
"I have good days where I feel like I've learned a lot and I've made lots of connections and I feel pretty great. But there are also days where I'm just flat on the floor, I can't breathe, I can't move, I can't handle anything."
Mary said her adoptive parents were told her birth mother was a single mother who was too poor to raise her. However, after Mary moved to Seoul and went to look at her file at the Eastern Social Welfare Society adoption agency, she discovered "conflicting information". Mary said she went back to Eastern multiple times over the past few years to try to clarify the discrepancies but was never offered an explanation. She said staff eventually told her they had tried but failed to contact her birth mother, and that her case was now closed. "Now that I've realised that my documents have two names listed for my mother, who did they contact? I have no idea," Mary said.
"Or if I'm listed as an orphan, what parents are there to even send a letter to?
"I asked for proof that they sent the letters, but they wouldn't send me any kind of receipts, and I asked them for redacted receipts and they wouldn't send redacted receipts nothing is verifiable."
'Alarming patterns' in adoption stories emerge
Mary got on with her life in Seoul, but she continued to grapple with the confusion surrounding her identity. When she heard about Peter Møller and the TRC complaint case, she knew she had to submit her story too. She joined a group called the Australia-United States Korean Rights Group (AUSKRG), a group of adoptees from America and Australia who were adopted through Eastern. "To find other people who have had similar experiences and to have my experience validated as, 'Wait, this happened to me too'," Mary said.
"You're not losing your mind. You're not going crazy. This is something that was pervasive. That makes me feel more self-assured and sane."
The AUSKRG formed in late 2022 after hearing the TRC had accepted the Danish cases and was open to receiving more submissions from around the world.
'More questions than answers' for Australian adoptee
Over the decades, 3,600 adoptees have been sent to Australia. Australian adoptee Chae is one of the AUSKRG members who submitted his case to the TRC. Chae's adoption file lists two conflicting stories: one was that he was born to a single mother, and the other was that his mother was married but had fallen pregnant while having an affair and was pressured to give the baby up. "When you're trying to understand where you come from and trying to find your family it's quite difficult to reconcile that you have two different leads to go on," Chae said.
When Chae travelled to Seoul in 2023 to do his birth family search, he went into his adoption agency, Eastern, to try to look at his file. He said staff brought a large folder with his documents into the room but wouldn't allow him to see half of them. "It was quite frustrating and confronting, and when I tried to clarify things with Eastern I left with more questions than answers," he said.
Answers are something the 33-year-old craves. "In my life as an adopted person, I've struggled so much with identity," he said.
"Identity is such a fundamental part of your happiness as a human being and your sense of belonging and I want to find that sense of happiness and belonging in the world through reconciling my identity."
Diving into decades of archives
The adoptees who submitted cases to the TRC have high hopes the investigation will find the truth behind South Korea's adoption past. Amy Jung, the lead investigator for the TRC's intercountry adoption team, said she and her colleagues understand that acutely. "We are currently under a lot of pressure but we do not mind this pressure," she said. "It urges us to feel more responsible and carry out the investigation with utmost care."
Ms Jung said that so far, because of "outside influences including the media", South Korea's four adoption agencies have had "no other choice but to co-operate" with her team. "Although they were a bit hesitant about certain requests we made, they willingly cooperated with us," she said.
"Our investigators went into the adoption agencies' archives to physically look for the records, we checked their document filing system and how they were stored, and we scanned and stored the applicants' documents page by page."
The TRC has until next year to deliver its findings. "When the investigation is over, the result will show what happened in the past and whether human rights were violated," Ms Jung said.
"We will make recommendations to the government bodies or adoption agencies who might be responsible."
'We were pretty much sold for a profit'
The adoptees who submitted their cases hope the commission will also follow the money during its investigation. "I think maybe initially in the years immediately after the Korean War there may have been humanitarian need for children to find families," Mary said.
"But as time went on, the adoption agencies found there was significant money that people were willing to pay to adopt a child. We were pretty much sold for a profit."
Helen Noh, a retired professor of social work who was employed by Holt Children's Services as a social worker for a year in 1981, agreed there was a profit motive. "At the time I was working [adoptive families paid] $US3,000 ($4,609) for a child," Professor Noh said.
"It was more than one year's salary for a social worker like me it was a lot of money. Adoption should be done in the best interests of the child, but there were many cases where that didn't happen and it was really done in the interests of the agency."
Professor Noh, whose job at Holt was to match children with families in the west, said that at the time she genuinely felt like she was helping people. Her view changed in the years that followed when she began doing academic research into South Korea's intercountry adoption practices. "I started studying the issues more in depth and the more and more I looked into it, the more problems I saw," Professor Noh said.
"Mothers were pushed to place their children for adoption and sometimes the relatives, grandparents, uncles, aunts would do it without the parents' consent. Adoption agencies would visit hospitals or maternity homes, leave name cards and telling them, 'If you have a child whose family may have issues let us know', and we know that adoption agencies also handed some money to these hospitals and maternity homes for a child. And we know of many cases where the parents or grandparents were told that when the child goes overseas they'll be receiving pictures and letters regularly and when the child grows up they will come back. But once the child was gone [the adoption agency] refused to talk to them."
South Korea's reckoning
Foreign Correspondent made several requests for interviews with Holt Children's Services and Eastern Social Welfare Society and sent a list of detailed questions to each but received no responses. In a written statement, the South Korean government said it was waiting for the results of the TRC investigation, but pointed to progress made in recent years. "Separate from the investigation into past cases, Korea has continued efforts to strengthen national responsibility for adoption and has been preparing for the ratification of the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption," the statement said.
"Korea considers it important to uphold the principle that the best protection of children should take place within their family and country of origin."
The Hague Convention is an international treaty which makes intercountry adoption a last resort. Any cases would be managed by government in accordance with international standards, not through private adoption agencies. Adoptee advocates welcome this development but have said they will be watching closely to see if it is adhered to and policed. They also hope the TRC's recommendations will bring about more change. "I would hope to see historical acknowledgement of what happened, an official apology from the government and some kind of restitution for what happened," Mary said.
Peter said he hopes the TRC's findings would "lead to a stop to adoptions from South Korea".
He said an apology would be "too easy" and that instead he hopes for answers and truth. Peter added that he also feels deeply for adoptive parents who he believed had been wronged too. "My [adoptive] mother, she gets very sorry and one day she said to me, 'Peter, I want to say I'm sorry because I didn't know this'," he said.
"And I said, 'Of course you didn't know this. And this is not your fault. This is made by greedy people who wanted money'. Many, many people ask me, 'You have had a good life in Denmark, why don't you just forget about these things?' And I think, I have had a good life in Denmark, but having a good life has nothing to do with the violations of human rights and the sale of children."
Support lines
Intercountry Adoptee and Family Support Service | 1800 422 377
Intercountry Adoptee Voices (ICAV)
Lifeline Australia | 13 11 14
Beyond Blue | 1300 22 4636
Finding new family in adoptees
Chae said he hoped the Australian government would pay close attention to the TRC's findings. "I personally would like to see an Australian inquiry into intercountry adoption," he said.
"And not only South Korea but from other sending countries as well, which also have suspected human rights violations or similar practices. Since the TRC began their investigation, [some] European countries have started their own independent investigations into intercountry adoptions, and I'd love to see the Australian government look at doing something."
The AUSKRG said it would "wait to see what the commission's recommendations will be, but we would expect the Australian government to abide by its obligations under international humanitarian law".
The Australian government said it was "aware of increasing concerns about the legality of historic adoptions from the Republic of Korea occurring during the time frame subject to investigation by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission".
"The Department of Social Services acknowledges the lifelong challenges experienced by intercountry adoptees whose adoptions were impacted by illicit or illegal adoption practices," a departmental spokesperson said.
"Australia has no immediate plans to launch an inquiry but will be closely monitoring the outcome of the TRC and will work closely with state and territory governments on any follow-up actions."
Australia continues to facilitate adoptions from South Korea "if the principles and standards of the Hague Convention and relevant international obligations, including the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, are upheld".
For many Korean adoptees, trying to find their roots and understand who they are takes a large emotional toll, and one they say very few non-adoptees can truly understand. "Adoptees have become adults, have had that lived experience, and I think that as we look towards the future it's important that we look at the past and what's happened, and look at ways that we can better support not only adoptees, but birth families too," Chae said.
He said he had found "family" in the adoptee community. "Their unconditional love and support throughout this process has meant the world to me they're the most incredible people and I know that they'll always be there for me. Despite everything that's happened, I'm now proud to be a Korean adoptee."
#7
General Discussion / CVAA overview of the Independe...
Last post by Admin - Apr 29, 2024, 07:26 PMhttps://cvaa.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Care-review-final-report-summary-May-2022.pdf
CVAA overview of the Independent Review of Children's Social Care final report
Last week saw the publication of the final report from the Independent Review of Children's Social Care, which was launched in March 2021. The full report can be found here, alongside an executive summary and children and young people's summary. The report is long but easy to follow with its recommendations clearly highlighted throughout, so we would recommend looking through it if you can find time. Government will not be publishing its formal response to the report until the end of the year.
The Report has been broadly welcomed by the sector and many have praised its ambition and the fact that it does not shy away from the big challenges we face. However, children's organisations remain cautious, such as Ofsted which has said it is still working through the detail, and ADCS which has stated that more detail is needed about how reforms would work in practice and therefore urges careful trialling to ensure the proposals are in children's best interests.
It is important to first outline the broad themes of the Review which provide helpful context for its implications for adopted children and families, and the adoption sector as a whole. The Review's diagnosis of the problem with the care system is that we are stuck in a vicious cycle, driven by scarce resources, reactive crisis management and not recognising the strengths of families and communities enough. When children's needs escalate as a result of inadequately responding to families' needs, resource is directed towards episodic and siloed crisis responses, continuing the cycle of fewer resources for supporting families.
The Review is divided into 6 key themes which it believes will break the cycle:
• A revolution in Family Help (making the case for heavy investment in supporting families in the right way and shifting away from crisis intervention)
• A just and decisive child protection system (outlining proposals to develop specialist safeguarding practitioners and multi-agency working)
• Unlocking the potential of family networks (focused on new rights and support for kinship carers)
• Fixing the broken care market and giving children a voice (about new Regional Care Cooperatives to run public care services more on this later)
• Five 'missions' for care experienced people (in response to inequalities they face)
• Realising the potential of the workforce (about better career pathways for social workers and reducing reliance on agency workers).
It identifies the central aim of care as strengthening lifelong relationships, and believes this can be achieved by moving towards a system with greater freedom and responsibility, guided by a clear national framework but without compliance led processes. It argues that if its recommendations are implemented by the government in England, 30,000 fewer children will come into care by 2032 compared to the current trajectory.
What the Review says about adoption
The Review includes a very short section about 'modernising adoption'; other than that there are few mentions of adoption in the report. This is disappointing but not surprising the Review has consistently indicated its views that adoption does not need to be a strong focus because of the recent Adoption Strategy. The DfE is expected to underscore the priority of adoption in its response.
We were pleased to see that this section opens with Ward's 2022 Australian research which found that adoption can lead to better outcomes for children than foster care and residential care. The central focus of the section is about modernising adoption through transforming contact i.e. updating Letterbox contact, better supporting birth parents, regularly reviewing contact plans and harnessing digital solutions such as the RAA Letter Swap pilot and ARC Box. It states that "contact between adopted children and birth parents should start to be assumed by default and supported unless this is not in the child's best interest", which supports CVAA's position and helps strengthen our case for investment in lifelong connections, ahead of our paper on a national connection service to be launched this summer.
The section also states that "The Adoption Support Fund should specifically include provision to support better contact between adopted children, adoptive parents and birth parents." This is a positive message but there is no detail about how this would be achieved, such as how much more funding the ASF would require and what type of interventions would be included, which is discouraging, and the DfE show no appetite for moving away from the purpose of the ASF as providing therapeutic support to children only.
The brevity of this section means that some pertinent issues have been glossed over, such as the falling number of children with adoption as their plan, the long waiting times for children with particular characteristics, and the increasing numbers of adopters waiting to be matched. There is also a brief reference about the establishment of RAAs contributing to "improved the support for adopters and adoptees" which shows limited scrutiny of the RAA programme and the difficulties it has brought alongside advantages.
Adoption UK has published the following apt commentary on the report:
"We welcome the call for deep reform, the focus on sustained, loving relationships and the recommendation for a new protected characteristic for care experienced people. Sadly, children adopted from care are in the shadows of the report. Adopted children have the same traumatic start in life, with the same lasting effects and the same ongoing need for support. Until every child adopted from care is thriving, we will not have properly reformed the system."
The report also misses some opportunities to join up thinking across all care pathways for children, such as showing why its family help proposals could also meet the needs of adoptive families as well as other families. Its proposals tend to be specific to different care pathways rather than focused on the rights and needs of children regardless of care decision making.
What are the other implications for adoption?
The wider report contains numerous recommendations which are relevant to adoption, many of which we warmly welcome and are things that CVAA has advocated for in the past.
Unlocking the potential of family networks
There is an entire section on the value of kinship care and ways that kinship carers can be better supported, in line with the support adoptive parents receive. It discusses variation in kinship care across the country, the costs of overlooking kinship care as an option for children, and gives examples of other countries such as Australia which rely more heavily on kinship carers. Its central recommendations are:
• There should be a new arrangement in law Family Network Plans to support and oversee care from wider family networks. Under these plans children would not become looked after.
• All local authorities should make a financial allowance paid at the same rate as their fostering allowance available for special guardians and kinship carers with a Child Arrangement Order looking after children who would otherwise be in care.
• Legal aid should be provided in a range of circumstances where special guardians and kinship carers with a Child Arrangement Order interact with the family courts.
• All new special guardians and kinship carers with a Child Arrangement Order should be given kinship leave, which matches the entitlement given to adopters. For example, by expanding the recently announced a £1 million programme for 2022-23 to establish kinship peer support groups in local authorities.
• A legal definition of kinship care to include those in informal arrangements.
CVAA is fully supportive of kinship care arrangements where they are in the best interests of children, so these recommendations are a step in the right direction. However, our position is that there should also be parity between adoptive parents and kinship carers when it comes to assessments and training, and that further longitudinal research is essential to understand the long- term outcomes of children in kinship arrangements compared to other forms of care, to fully understand the implications of these policies for children's outcomes. A prominent care leaver and care professional on Twitter, John Radoux, has noted that LAs already search for family members first and are unable to find them, so we need to be wary of seeing this as a silver bullet.
A new regional model to transform care
One area of concern in the report is the section entitled 'A new regional model to transform care', which outlines issues with the care market at present, including weak oversight, high costs and profiteering, poor planning, and lack of coordination. Its solution is to establish new Regional Care Cooperatives (around 20) to take on responsibility for the creation and running of all new public sector fostering, residential and secure care in a region, as well as commissioning all not-for-profit and private sector provided care for children as necessary. It states that "The larger scale of RCCs and dedicated capabilities will mean that they can provide specialist marketing, recruitment, support and training for foster carers within their region".
The parallels between RCCs and RAAs has not gone unnoticed by the sector especially the number of 20 RCCs compared to 32 RAAs yet it could be said that this section raises more questions than answers. The section falls short of detailing how this partnership will actually work, stating that RCCs will be fully accountable to LAs but Government should consider the best organisational form. It adds that LAs will no longer be involved in sufficiency planning and running/creating new services but will have "direct involvement in the running of RCCs". The report also states that "Over time, the functions of Regional Adoption Agencies should be integrated into RCCs given the strong overlap in functions of recruitment, support and training".
Children England's commentary on the creation of RCCs is particularly thought-provoking; it questions the relationship between RCCs and LAs and challenges the assumption that RCCs would be able to procure better services because of their wider geographical scale. It adds that RCCs would fundamentally be a new market structure rather than an alternative to the market itself, wherein the problem lies. The Care Review Watch Alliance has also expressed doubts about the proposed model, stating that whole system change "could leave children even more vulnerable as they will be out of scope of the State losing many protective layers whilst millions of pounds are given to unregulated organisations". Article 39 shares a similar sentiment: "It is heart-sinking that the care review's principal recommendations are for major structural reorganisation, which will, for years, consume many millions of pounds and the hearts and minds of people who could instead be leading cultural change to put children and their rights at the heart of everything." The Fostering Network warns that we should learn lessons from the past and make sure to value local recruitment.
It is interesting to note that the Review states that Ofsted should create a new framework to inspect RCCs, which could add weight to our policy ask that RAAs should be individually inspected, in the same way that VAAs are. We will be closely watching how this recommendation develops and looking for opportunities to contribute our views where appropriate.
The Courts
The Review puts its weight behind court reform which is a core strategic priority for CVAA. Its recommendations mirror what we have asked for previously, particularly the first two of the list below:
• More data and information for the courts to understand the outcomes of their decisions and how decisions in their area compare with other areas. It states that Local Family Justice Boards should be part of a learning loop, and Designated Family Judges should be full participants in these Boards.
• Improvements to the quality and consistency of local and judicial decision making through improving the quality and transparency of data and facilitating learning at a local level.
• Recommending that the Public Law Working Group should lead work to bring learning from Family Drug and Alcohol Courts and other problem solving approaches into public law proceedings, to make proceedings less adversarial and improve parents' engagement in the process.
Additional points relating to adoption
There are a few additional points throughout the report which we believe will impact upon the adoption sector in a positive way, if implemented. These recommendations include:
• A strong emphasis on children and families co-designing services at all levels this is something CVAA strongly supports and is one of our strategic ambitions for 21st Century Adoption.
• High quality family finding support should be available for children in care and young people that have recently left care, up to the age of 25, recognising that many will have not been offered a family finding service whilst in care. It highlights the work and success of the
Lifelong Links programme.
• A new lifelong guardianship order should be created, allowing a care experienced person and an adult who loves them to form a lifelong legal bond. It cites the 2016 Australian Adoption legislation which was amended to make adult adoption a possibility.
• In its section about implementation, the Review states that Government should work with people with lived experience of services, practitioners, researchers and other public services to develop a National Children's Social Care Framework to set the purpose, objectives and outcomes for children's social care alongside the best available evidence for achieving this.
One of these objectives should be: "Where children cannot remain safely at home, there is a relentless focus on engaging and supporting a child's wider family network to step forward, supporting successful reunification with a birth family or other forms of permanence that
promote lifelong relationships".
The review asks for this to be delivered at pace through a five year reform programme. It states that reform will come at a cost of £2.6 billion of new spending over four years, comprising £46 million in year one, £987 million in year two, £1.257 billion in year three and £233 million in year four.
However, doubt has been cast on how motivated the government will be to deliver this funding settlement, especially given that the DfE's accompanying press release gives minimal detail about this aspect of the review. Children England maintains that government should double the £2.6bn figure at least.
A sample of media coverage
• BBC: Care system: Help families before they reach crisis, urges review
• Guardian: Overhaul of children's social care in England urgent and unavoidable, review finds
• The Times: Plea for equality law to protect children in care
• The Mirror: Ministers told to slap windfall tax on top private children's home providers
• Sky - Children's social care: System needs 'radical reset' to prevent 'enormous' problems down the line - report
• Daily Mail - Is the door closing on children's jails? Axing young offender institutions is part of radical demands in major review of 'dysfunctional' care system as annual costs spiral towards £15bn
• CYP Now: CARE REVIEW: DFE ANNOUNCES PLANS FOR NATIONAL IMPLEMENTATION BOARD TO OVERSEE REFORMS
• Community Care: Care review urges national social work pay scales to reward expertise and boost retention
Appendix: Central recommendations in the report not outlined above
In this section we summarise additional significant recommendations included in the report which give a flavour of each section and the direction of travel.
A revolution in Family Help
• To "reclaim the original intention of section 17 of the Children Act 1989"
• £2 billion over the next five years to bring early help and child in need work together under one single category of Family Help. The service will be delivered by multidisciplinary teams and will be based in community settings
• A single service would reduce transitions between teams
• The review would like there to be a national definition of Family Help and who is eligible, while leaving room for professional judgment locally
• A non-stigmatising front door where mechanical referrals and assessments are replaced with tailored conversations
• Access to high quality universal and community services to meet families' needs where they are not severe enough for Family Help support
• The review defers to the SEND and AP green paper for matters relating to children with SEND, but outlines a few areas where it would like to see change, including more transparency for families about what support is available to them where their children have different levels of need, improving transitions to adults services, and improving the strategic integration of children's social care with the SEND system.
A just and decisive child protection system
• 'Expert Child Protection Practitioners' to co-work alongside Family Help Teams to remove the need for break points and handovers
• Expert Child Protection Practitioners should be supported by more regular and direct involvement of a multi-agency workforce
• A multidisciplinary response to extra familial harms should be supported by a clearer statutory framework, and the system for responding to extra familial harms needs to be simplified (e.g. the NRM)
• Expectations for the features and capabilities of a joint multi-agency child protection response should be set out nationally in Working Together
• Coordinated action to support local authorities, health, police and education to make the technical changes they need to achieve frictionless data sharing
• Better engaging with parents throughout the CP process.
Transforming care
• New universal care standards should be introduced covering all types of care (it cites unregulated accommodation and deprivation of liberty cases as examples of inflexible current care standards and regulations)
• A windfall tax on profits made by the largest private children's home providers and independent fostering agencies should be levied to contribute to the costs of transforming the care system.
A new deal for foster care
• A "new deal" with foster carers, including better support networks and training, as well as a new national foster carer recruitment programme, to approve 9,000 new foster carers over three years
• Use of family group decision making to identify important adults that are already known to a child and may be willing to foster
• Foster carers should be given delegated authority by default, to take decisions which affect the day to day lives of children in their care
• Independent, opt-out, high quality advocacy for children in care and in proceedings should replace the existing Independent Reviewing Officer and Regulation 44 Visitor roles (this has attracted a lot of controversy!).
The care experience
• Five ambitious missions so that care experienced people secure: loving relationships; quality education; a decent home; fulfilling work and good health as the foundations for a good life.
o No young person should leave care without at least two loving relationships, by 2027
o Double the proportion of care leavers attending university, and particularly high tariff universities, by 2026
o Create at least 3,500 new well paid jobs and apprenticeships for care leavers each year, by 2026
o Reduce care experience homelessness now, before ending it entirely
o To increase the life expectancy of care experienced people, by narrowing health inequalities with the wider population
• Government should make care experience a protected characteristic, following consultation with care experienced people and the Devolved Administrations
• Local authorities should redesign their existing Independent Visitors scheme for children in care and care leavers to allow for long term relationships to be built
• A National Children's Social Care Framework to set the direction and purpose for the system, and a National Practice Group to build accompanying practice guides.
Realising the potential of the workforce
• A five-year Early Career Framework to provide a desirable career pathway for social workers, as well as action on improving case management systems to reduce administrative tasks completed by social workers
• New national rules on agency usage supported by the development of not-for-profit regional staff banks to reduce costs and increase the stability and quality of relationships children and families receive
• Measures to support the development of the wider social care workforce and strengthen existing leadership programmes
Implementation
• Government to work with people with lived experience of services, practitioners, researchers and other public services to develop a National Children's Social Care
Framework to set the purpose, objectives and outcomes for children's social care alongside the best available evidence for achieving this
• This would sit alongside a balanced scorecard of indicators for learning and improvement. should include guidance on the best known ways of achieving these objectives, led by the National Practice Group
• A review of the role of the DCS and the local authority to ensure that they have a clear role as a champion for children and families across a local area
• Government should introduce an updated funding formula for children's services, and take greater care to ensure that changes in government policy that impact the cost of delivering children's social care are accompanied by additional resources for local government
• Ofsted inspection should be reformed to increase transparency in how judgements are made, ensure a rounded understanding of being 'child focused' and to ensure inspection supports the proposed reforms
• Government should establish a National Data and Technology Taskforce to drive progress on implementing the review's three priority recommendations to achieve frictionless data sharing by 2027, drastically reduce the time social workers spend on case recording and improve the use and collection of data local.
CVAA overview of the Independent Review of Children's Social Care final report
Last week saw the publication of the final report from the Independent Review of Children's Social Care, which was launched in March 2021. The full report can be found here, alongside an executive summary and children and young people's summary. The report is long but easy to follow with its recommendations clearly highlighted throughout, so we would recommend looking through it if you can find time. Government will not be publishing its formal response to the report until the end of the year.
The Report has been broadly welcomed by the sector and many have praised its ambition and the fact that it does not shy away from the big challenges we face. However, children's organisations remain cautious, such as Ofsted which has said it is still working through the detail, and ADCS which has stated that more detail is needed about how reforms would work in practice and therefore urges careful trialling to ensure the proposals are in children's best interests.
It is important to first outline the broad themes of the Review which provide helpful context for its implications for adopted children and families, and the adoption sector as a whole. The Review's diagnosis of the problem with the care system is that we are stuck in a vicious cycle, driven by scarce resources, reactive crisis management and not recognising the strengths of families and communities enough. When children's needs escalate as a result of inadequately responding to families' needs, resource is directed towards episodic and siloed crisis responses, continuing the cycle of fewer resources for supporting families.
The Review is divided into 6 key themes which it believes will break the cycle:
• A revolution in Family Help (making the case for heavy investment in supporting families in the right way and shifting away from crisis intervention)
• A just and decisive child protection system (outlining proposals to develop specialist safeguarding practitioners and multi-agency working)
• Unlocking the potential of family networks (focused on new rights and support for kinship carers)
• Fixing the broken care market and giving children a voice (about new Regional Care Cooperatives to run public care services more on this later)
• Five 'missions' for care experienced people (in response to inequalities they face)
• Realising the potential of the workforce (about better career pathways for social workers and reducing reliance on agency workers).
It identifies the central aim of care as strengthening lifelong relationships, and believes this can be achieved by moving towards a system with greater freedom and responsibility, guided by a clear national framework but without compliance led processes. It argues that if its recommendations are implemented by the government in England, 30,000 fewer children will come into care by 2032 compared to the current trajectory.
What the Review says about adoption
The Review includes a very short section about 'modernising adoption'; other than that there are few mentions of adoption in the report. This is disappointing but not surprising the Review has consistently indicated its views that adoption does not need to be a strong focus because of the recent Adoption Strategy. The DfE is expected to underscore the priority of adoption in its response.
We were pleased to see that this section opens with Ward's 2022 Australian research which found that adoption can lead to better outcomes for children than foster care and residential care. The central focus of the section is about modernising adoption through transforming contact i.e. updating Letterbox contact, better supporting birth parents, regularly reviewing contact plans and harnessing digital solutions such as the RAA Letter Swap pilot and ARC Box. It states that "contact between adopted children and birth parents should start to be assumed by default and supported unless this is not in the child's best interest", which supports CVAA's position and helps strengthen our case for investment in lifelong connections, ahead of our paper on a national connection service to be launched this summer.
The section also states that "The Adoption Support Fund should specifically include provision to support better contact between adopted children, adoptive parents and birth parents." This is a positive message but there is no detail about how this would be achieved, such as how much more funding the ASF would require and what type of interventions would be included, which is discouraging, and the DfE show no appetite for moving away from the purpose of the ASF as providing therapeutic support to children only.
The brevity of this section means that some pertinent issues have been glossed over, such as the falling number of children with adoption as their plan, the long waiting times for children with particular characteristics, and the increasing numbers of adopters waiting to be matched. There is also a brief reference about the establishment of RAAs contributing to "improved the support for adopters and adoptees" which shows limited scrutiny of the RAA programme and the difficulties it has brought alongside advantages.
Adoption UK has published the following apt commentary on the report:
"We welcome the call for deep reform, the focus on sustained, loving relationships and the recommendation for a new protected characteristic for care experienced people. Sadly, children adopted from care are in the shadows of the report. Adopted children have the same traumatic start in life, with the same lasting effects and the same ongoing need for support. Until every child adopted from care is thriving, we will not have properly reformed the system."
The report also misses some opportunities to join up thinking across all care pathways for children, such as showing why its family help proposals could also meet the needs of adoptive families as well as other families. Its proposals tend to be specific to different care pathways rather than focused on the rights and needs of children regardless of care decision making.
What are the other implications for adoption?
The wider report contains numerous recommendations which are relevant to adoption, many of which we warmly welcome and are things that CVAA has advocated for in the past.
Unlocking the potential of family networks
There is an entire section on the value of kinship care and ways that kinship carers can be better supported, in line with the support adoptive parents receive. It discusses variation in kinship care across the country, the costs of overlooking kinship care as an option for children, and gives examples of other countries such as Australia which rely more heavily on kinship carers. Its central recommendations are:
• There should be a new arrangement in law Family Network Plans to support and oversee care from wider family networks. Under these plans children would not become looked after.
• All local authorities should make a financial allowance paid at the same rate as their fostering allowance available for special guardians and kinship carers with a Child Arrangement Order looking after children who would otherwise be in care.
• Legal aid should be provided in a range of circumstances where special guardians and kinship carers with a Child Arrangement Order interact with the family courts.
• All new special guardians and kinship carers with a Child Arrangement Order should be given kinship leave, which matches the entitlement given to adopters. For example, by expanding the recently announced a £1 million programme for 2022-23 to establish kinship peer support groups in local authorities.
• A legal definition of kinship care to include those in informal arrangements.
CVAA is fully supportive of kinship care arrangements where they are in the best interests of children, so these recommendations are a step in the right direction. However, our position is that there should also be parity between adoptive parents and kinship carers when it comes to assessments and training, and that further longitudinal research is essential to understand the long- term outcomes of children in kinship arrangements compared to other forms of care, to fully understand the implications of these policies for children's outcomes. A prominent care leaver and care professional on Twitter, John Radoux, has noted that LAs already search for family members first and are unable to find them, so we need to be wary of seeing this as a silver bullet.
A new regional model to transform care
One area of concern in the report is the section entitled 'A new regional model to transform care', which outlines issues with the care market at present, including weak oversight, high costs and profiteering, poor planning, and lack of coordination. Its solution is to establish new Regional Care Cooperatives (around 20) to take on responsibility for the creation and running of all new public sector fostering, residential and secure care in a region, as well as commissioning all not-for-profit and private sector provided care for children as necessary. It states that "The larger scale of RCCs and dedicated capabilities will mean that they can provide specialist marketing, recruitment, support and training for foster carers within their region".
The parallels between RCCs and RAAs has not gone unnoticed by the sector especially the number of 20 RCCs compared to 32 RAAs yet it could be said that this section raises more questions than answers. The section falls short of detailing how this partnership will actually work, stating that RCCs will be fully accountable to LAs but Government should consider the best organisational form. It adds that LAs will no longer be involved in sufficiency planning and running/creating new services but will have "direct involvement in the running of RCCs". The report also states that "Over time, the functions of Regional Adoption Agencies should be integrated into RCCs given the strong overlap in functions of recruitment, support and training".
Children England's commentary on the creation of RCCs is particularly thought-provoking; it questions the relationship between RCCs and LAs and challenges the assumption that RCCs would be able to procure better services because of their wider geographical scale. It adds that RCCs would fundamentally be a new market structure rather than an alternative to the market itself, wherein the problem lies. The Care Review Watch Alliance has also expressed doubts about the proposed model, stating that whole system change "could leave children even more vulnerable as they will be out of scope of the State losing many protective layers whilst millions of pounds are given to unregulated organisations". Article 39 shares a similar sentiment: "It is heart-sinking that the care review's principal recommendations are for major structural reorganisation, which will, for years, consume many millions of pounds and the hearts and minds of people who could instead be leading cultural change to put children and their rights at the heart of everything." The Fostering Network warns that we should learn lessons from the past and make sure to value local recruitment.
It is interesting to note that the Review states that Ofsted should create a new framework to inspect RCCs, which could add weight to our policy ask that RAAs should be individually inspected, in the same way that VAAs are. We will be closely watching how this recommendation develops and looking for opportunities to contribute our views where appropriate.
The Courts
The Review puts its weight behind court reform which is a core strategic priority for CVAA. Its recommendations mirror what we have asked for previously, particularly the first two of the list below:
• More data and information for the courts to understand the outcomes of their decisions and how decisions in their area compare with other areas. It states that Local Family Justice Boards should be part of a learning loop, and Designated Family Judges should be full participants in these Boards.
• Improvements to the quality and consistency of local and judicial decision making through improving the quality and transparency of data and facilitating learning at a local level.
• Recommending that the Public Law Working Group should lead work to bring learning from Family Drug and Alcohol Courts and other problem solving approaches into public law proceedings, to make proceedings less adversarial and improve parents' engagement in the process.
Additional points relating to adoption
There are a few additional points throughout the report which we believe will impact upon the adoption sector in a positive way, if implemented. These recommendations include:
• A strong emphasis on children and families co-designing services at all levels this is something CVAA strongly supports and is one of our strategic ambitions for 21st Century Adoption.
• High quality family finding support should be available for children in care and young people that have recently left care, up to the age of 25, recognising that many will have not been offered a family finding service whilst in care. It highlights the work and success of the
Lifelong Links programme.
• A new lifelong guardianship order should be created, allowing a care experienced person and an adult who loves them to form a lifelong legal bond. It cites the 2016 Australian Adoption legislation which was amended to make adult adoption a possibility.
• In its section about implementation, the Review states that Government should work with people with lived experience of services, practitioners, researchers and other public services to develop a National Children's Social Care Framework to set the purpose, objectives and outcomes for children's social care alongside the best available evidence for achieving this.
One of these objectives should be: "Where children cannot remain safely at home, there is a relentless focus on engaging and supporting a child's wider family network to step forward, supporting successful reunification with a birth family or other forms of permanence that
promote lifelong relationships".
The review asks for this to be delivered at pace through a five year reform programme. It states that reform will come at a cost of £2.6 billion of new spending over four years, comprising £46 million in year one, £987 million in year two, £1.257 billion in year three and £233 million in year four.
However, doubt has been cast on how motivated the government will be to deliver this funding settlement, especially given that the DfE's accompanying press release gives minimal detail about this aspect of the review. Children England maintains that government should double the £2.6bn figure at least.
A sample of media coverage
• BBC: Care system: Help families before they reach crisis, urges review
• Guardian: Overhaul of children's social care in England urgent and unavoidable, review finds
• The Times: Plea for equality law to protect children in care
• The Mirror: Ministers told to slap windfall tax on top private children's home providers
• Sky - Children's social care: System needs 'radical reset' to prevent 'enormous' problems down the line - report
• Daily Mail - Is the door closing on children's jails? Axing young offender institutions is part of radical demands in major review of 'dysfunctional' care system as annual costs spiral towards £15bn
• CYP Now: CARE REVIEW: DFE ANNOUNCES PLANS FOR NATIONAL IMPLEMENTATION BOARD TO OVERSEE REFORMS
• Community Care: Care review urges national social work pay scales to reward expertise and boost retention
Appendix: Central recommendations in the report not outlined above
In this section we summarise additional significant recommendations included in the report which give a flavour of each section and the direction of travel.
A revolution in Family Help
• To "reclaim the original intention of section 17 of the Children Act 1989"
• £2 billion over the next five years to bring early help and child in need work together under one single category of Family Help. The service will be delivered by multidisciplinary teams and will be based in community settings
• A single service would reduce transitions between teams
• The review would like there to be a national definition of Family Help and who is eligible, while leaving room for professional judgment locally
• A non-stigmatising front door where mechanical referrals and assessments are replaced with tailored conversations
• Access to high quality universal and community services to meet families' needs where they are not severe enough for Family Help support
• The review defers to the SEND and AP green paper for matters relating to children with SEND, but outlines a few areas where it would like to see change, including more transparency for families about what support is available to them where their children have different levels of need, improving transitions to adults services, and improving the strategic integration of children's social care with the SEND system.
A just and decisive child protection system
• 'Expert Child Protection Practitioners' to co-work alongside Family Help Teams to remove the need for break points and handovers
• Expert Child Protection Practitioners should be supported by more regular and direct involvement of a multi-agency workforce
• A multidisciplinary response to extra familial harms should be supported by a clearer statutory framework, and the system for responding to extra familial harms needs to be simplified (e.g. the NRM)
• Expectations for the features and capabilities of a joint multi-agency child protection response should be set out nationally in Working Together
• Coordinated action to support local authorities, health, police and education to make the technical changes they need to achieve frictionless data sharing
• Better engaging with parents throughout the CP process.
Transforming care
• New universal care standards should be introduced covering all types of care (it cites unregulated accommodation and deprivation of liberty cases as examples of inflexible current care standards and regulations)
• A windfall tax on profits made by the largest private children's home providers and independent fostering agencies should be levied to contribute to the costs of transforming the care system.
A new deal for foster care
• A "new deal" with foster carers, including better support networks and training, as well as a new national foster carer recruitment programme, to approve 9,000 new foster carers over three years
• Use of family group decision making to identify important adults that are already known to a child and may be willing to foster
• Foster carers should be given delegated authority by default, to take decisions which affect the day to day lives of children in their care
• Independent, opt-out, high quality advocacy for children in care and in proceedings should replace the existing Independent Reviewing Officer and Regulation 44 Visitor roles (this has attracted a lot of controversy!).
The care experience
• Five ambitious missions so that care experienced people secure: loving relationships; quality education; a decent home; fulfilling work and good health as the foundations for a good life.
o No young person should leave care without at least two loving relationships, by 2027
o Double the proportion of care leavers attending university, and particularly high tariff universities, by 2026
o Create at least 3,500 new well paid jobs and apprenticeships for care leavers each year, by 2026
o Reduce care experience homelessness now, before ending it entirely
o To increase the life expectancy of care experienced people, by narrowing health inequalities with the wider population
• Government should make care experience a protected characteristic, following consultation with care experienced people and the Devolved Administrations
• Local authorities should redesign their existing Independent Visitors scheme for children in care and care leavers to allow for long term relationships to be built
• A National Children's Social Care Framework to set the direction and purpose for the system, and a National Practice Group to build accompanying practice guides.
Realising the potential of the workforce
• A five-year Early Career Framework to provide a desirable career pathway for social workers, as well as action on improving case management systems to reduce administrative tasks completed by social workers
• New national rules on agency usage supported by the development of not-for-profit regional staff banks to reduce costs and increase the stability and quality of relationships children and families receive
• Measures to support the development of the wider social care workforce and strengthen existing leadership programmes
Implementation
• Government to work with people with lived experience of services, practitioners, researchers and other public services to develop a National Children's Social Care
Framework to set the purpose, objectives and outcomes for children's social care alongside the best available evidence for achieving this
• This would sit alongside a balanced scorecard of indicators for learning and improvement. should include guidance on the best known ways of achieving these objectives, led by the National Practice Group
• A review of the role of the DCS and the local authority to ensure that they have a clear role as a champion for children and families across a local area
• Government should introduce an updated funding formula for children's services, and take greater care to ensure that changes in government policy that impact the cost of delivering children's social care are accompanied by additional resources for local government
• Ofsted inspection should be reformed to increase transparency in how judgements are made, ensure a rounded understanding of being 'child focused' and to ensure inspection supports the proposed reforms
• Government should establish a National Data and Technology Taskforce to drive progress on implementing the review's three priority recommendations to achieve frictionless data sharing by 2027, drastically reduce the time social workers spend on case recording and improve the use and collection of data local.
#8
Family Time / The Top Ten Benefits Of Spendi...
Last post by Montravia - Apr 27, 2024, 06:25 PMhttps://highlandspringsclinic.org/the-top-ten-benefits-of-spending-time-with-family/
The Top Ten Benefits Of Spending Time With Family
March 17, 2020 | Dr. Todd Thatcher
Do you ever ask yourself why is family important? In our world of pervasive screen time and social media, many of us have actually become less social in the ways that are not only beneficial, but essential to our mental and physical well-being. A Cigna study from the American Journal of Health Promotion indicated that excessive social media use is one of the biggest risk factors for loneliness.
We need in-person interactions to reap the full benefits of social connection. Those who experience less loneliness cultivate meaningful relationships, including a social network and a committed relationship.
Here at Highland Springs our trained therapists can help you create stronger bonds within your relationships and reignite familial ties. Continue reading to learn why family is important.
What are the advantages of spending time with family?
Why is family important? Some advantages of spending time with family are increased happiness and satisfaction. Studies have shown that spending time with family can help reduce stress and anxiety, lead to a healthier lifestyle and lengthen your life. Family gives you motivation to be the best version of yourself. At Highland Springs you can enroll in family counseling where there are trained therapists that specialize in helping to restore family relationships.
Why is family so important?
Family is so important because of all the love and support it provides. Being with family helps construct principles and improves overall mental health. Spending time with family is key to a person's development as it promotes adaptability and resilience. Such key lessons can only be taught by family members coaching each other regarding life's ups and downs. Family is what makes us who we are.
A PLOS ONE study showed that participants' stress, happiness, and well-being levels were better predicted by their social circle strength than by the physical health data collected on a fitness tracker. This shows just how important time with family (or close friends you call family) is to your physical and mental health and why family is important.
The benefits of spending time with family is such a critical component of a full, meaningful life. Remember, family doesn't necessarily have to be considered blood relatives. Close friends, a guardian, or step siblings are well within the realm of who you consider family. Here is a list of benefits that may answer the question, "Why is family important?"
Health Benefits of Spending Time with Family
Improves Mental Health
When we spend time with family—especially face-to-face communication, as opposed to digital—it significantly reduces the occurrence of depression, anxiety, and other mental illness. Being physically present with loved ones creates a strong emotional support to buoy you up through life's challenges.
Helps Children Perform Well Academically
On average, kids who are spending time with family, tend to do better in school. They learn communication skills and the importance of education. When needed, assisting with assignments or new concepts reinforces the fact that their success is important to you. Even just asking about their day and what they're learning will show your children how much you care.
Lowers Risk Of Behavioral Problems
Children who are spending time with their family have shown less risk of behavioral issues, such as violence and substance abuse. When they receive positive attention for positive behaviors, it increases their desire to continue those healthy patterns. Being with family and doing activities together also provides an outlet for pent-up emotions that could otherwise lead to unhealthy decisions. Family is so important when it comes to a child (or teenager) bringing problems to you, because your advice can allow them to become better equipped to cope with problems and make positive choices.
Boosts Self-Confidence
Spending time with family builds confidence for all of its members. Parents can teach children to build self-esteem through specific skills such as problem solving and communication. They can also model the ability to love oneself without degrading others. For parents and children, confidence grows simply with the knowledge that they are valued and appreciated by their loved ones.
Helps Kids Learn Future Parenting Skills
The memories you create together will instill in children a desire to foster that same loving atmosphere in their own future homes. Family is so important because, through your example, your kids learn important caregiving skills that they can use one day. They may even practice now by copying your behaviors when they interact with siblings.
Teaches Effective Conflict Resolution
When we spend time with family it is fun, but it can be difficult, too. When conflicts arise, you can't just walk away for good. You're in this together, so you have to work together to solve the issues that come up. Spending time with family teaches interpersonal communication skills including healthy, constructive ways to discuss, debate, and solve problems.
Reduces Stress
Those with strong family healthy relationships tend to seek out healthier coping mechanisms for stress—such as confiding in friends and family—instead of other unhealthy outlets. This establishes a habit of talking through problems together to relieve stress and find effective solutions.
Stress also significantly affects aspects of physical health, such as fatigue, blood pressure, and heart health. The Annals of Behavioral Medicine conducted a study that found when people discussed hardships in their lives with a friend beside them (instead of alone), they had lowered pulse and blood pressure readings.
Promotes Adaptability And Resilience
Your ability to face life's changes and challenges is greatly improved by a strong family bond. Being with family gives you the feeling of knowing that you belong, you are cared for, and you are needed, which gives a sense of meaning and purpose. This assurance gives motivation to push forward, grow, and succeed.
Enhances Physical Health
With the right kind of activities, spending time with family can positively impact physical well-being. For instance, families who eat home-cooked meals together tend to have a better diet than those who don't. Participating in outdoor activities like sports games, hikes, or gardening together helps to improve fitness. There's even evidence that time with family can boost the effects of exercise and other healthy habits. It improves heart, brain, hormonal, and immune health. Being with family can also encourage one another to maintain healthy lifestyles.
Lengthens Life Expectancy
Healthy relationships could increase your lifespan up to 50%. Combine all the physical and mental health benefits discussed above, and you can see why family time has been linked to living a longer, healthier, happier life. Even those with unhealthy physical habits, but a strong social network live longer than those without these relationships.
Make Spending Time with Family a Priority
Spend time with family. With all these incredible benefits of a supportive social network, you can see why spending time with family is important. While it's fun to invite friends and family to spend quality time together, it's also a significant aspect of your physical health and mental well-being. Put down the phone, gather together, and create some fun, meaningful memories. Making time to connect with family requires a bit of planning—sometimes a bit of money—but the investment is well worth it for the outcomes of healthy individuals and strong family bonds
The Top Ten Benefits Of Spending Time With Family
March 17, 2020 | Dr. Todd Thatcher
Do you ever ask yourself why is family important? In our world of pervasive screen time and social media, many of us have actually become less social in the ways that are not only beneficial, but essential to our mental and physical well-being. A Cigna study from the American Journal of Health Promotion indicated that excessive social media use is one of the biggest risk factors for loneliness.
We need in-person interactions to reap the full benefits of social connection. Those who experience less loneliness cultivate meaningful relationships, including a social network and a committed relationship.
Here at Highland Springs our trained therapists can help you create stronger bonds within your relationships and reignite familial ties. Continue reading to learn why family is important.
What are the advantages of spending time with family?
Why is family important? Some advantages of spending time with family are increased happiness and satisfaction. Studies have shown that spending time with family can help reduce stress and anxiety, lead to a healthier lifestyle and lengthen your life. Family gives you motivation to be the best version of yourself. At Highland Springs you can enroll in family counseling where there are trained therapists that specialize in helping to restore family relationships.
Why is family so important?
Family is so important because of all the love and support it provides. Being with family helps construct principles and improves overall mental health. Spending time with family is key to a person's development as it promotes adaptability and resilience. Such key lessons can only be taught by family members coaching each other regarding life's ups and downs. Family is what makes us who we are.
A PLOS ONE study showed that participants' stress, happiness, and well-being levels were better predicted by their social circle strength than by the physical health data collected on a fitness tracker. This shows just how important time with family (or close friends you call family) is to your physical and mental health and why family is important.
The benefits of spending time with family is such a critical component of a full, meaningful life. Remember, family doesn't necessarily have to be considered blood relatives. Close friends, a guardian, or step siblings are well within the realm of who you consider family. Here is a list of benefits that may answer the question, "Why is family important?"
Health Benefits of Spending Time with Family
Improves Mental Health
When we spend time with family—especially face-to-face communication, as opposed to digital—it significantly reduces the occurrence of depression, anxiety, and other mental illness. Being physically present with loved ones creates a strong emotional support to buoy you up through life's challenges.
Helps Children Perform Well Academically
On average, kids who are spending time with family, tend to do better in school. They learn communication skills and the importance of education. When needed, assisting with assignments or new concepts reinforces the fact that their success is important to you. Even just asking about their day and what they're learning will show your children how much you care.
Lowers Risk Of Behavioral Problems
Children who are spending time with their family have shown less risk of behavioral issues, such as violence and substance abuse. When they receive positive attention for positive behaviors, it increases their desire to continue those healthy patterns. Being with family and doing activities together also provides an outlet for pent-up emotions that could otherwise lead to unhealthy decisions. Family is so important when it comes to a child (or teenager) bringing problems to you, because your advice can allow them to become better equipped to cope with problems and make positive choices.
Boosts Self-Confidence
Spending time with family builds confidence for all of its members. Parents can teach children to build self-esteem through specific skills such as problem solving and communication. They can also model the ability to love oneself without degrading others. For parents and children, confidence grows simply with the knowledge that they are valued and appreciated by their loved ones.
Helps Kids Learn Future Parenting Skills
The memories you create together will instill in children a desire to foster that same loving atmosphere in their own future homes. Family is so important because, through your example, your kids learn important caregiving skills that they can use one day. They may even practice now by copying your behaviors when they interact with siblings.
Teaches Effective Conflict Resolution
When we spend time with family it is fun, but it can be difficult, too. When conflicts arise, you can't just walk away for good. You're in this together, so you have to work together to solve the issues that come up. Spending time with family teaches interpersonal communication skills including healthy, constructive ways to discuss, debate, and solve problems.
Reduces Stress
Those with strong family healthy relationships tend to seek out healthier coping mechanisms for stress—such as confiding in friends and family—instead of other unhealthy outlets. This establishes a habit of talking through problems together to relieve stress and find effective solutions.
Stress also significantly affects aspects of physical health, such as fatigue, blood pressure, and heart health. The Annals of Behavioral Medicine conducted a study that found when people discussed hardships in their lives with a friend beside them (instead of alone), they had lowered pulse and blood pressure readings.
Promotes Adaptability And Resilience
Your ability to face life's changes and challenges is greatly improved by a strong family bond. Being with family gives you the feeling of knowing that you belong, you are cared for, and you are needed, which gives a sense of meaning and purpose. This assurance gives motivation to push forward, grow, and succeed.
Enhances Physical Health
With the right kind of activities, spending time with family can positively impact physical well-being. For instance, families who eat home-cooked meals together tend to have a better diet than those who don't. Participating in outdoor activities like sports games, hikes, or gardening together helps to improve fitness. There's even evidence that time with family can boost the effects of exercise and other healthy habits. It improves heart, brain, hormonal, and immune health. Being with family can also encourage one another to maintain healthy lifestyles.
Lengthens Life Expectancy
Healthy relationships could increase your lifespan up to 50%. Combine all the physical and mental health benefits discussed above, and you can see why family time has been linked to living a longer, healthier, happier life. Even those with unhealthy physical habits, but a strong social network live longer than those without these relationships.
Make Spending Time with Family a Priority
Spend time with family. With all these incredible benefits of a supportive social network, you can see why spending time with family is important. While it's fun to invite friends and family to spend quality time together, it's also a significant aspect of your physical health and mental well-being. Put down the phone, gather together, and create some fun, meaningful memories. Making time to connect with family requires a bit of planning—sometimes a bit of money—but the investment is well worth it for the outcomes of healthy individuals and strong family bonds
#9
Fun, Games and Silliness / NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS YOU CAN ...
Last post by Topaz - Apr 27, 2024, 05:33 PMNEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS YOU CAN KEEP
Are you sick of making the same resolutions year after year that you never keep? Why not promise to do something you can ACTUALLY accomplish?
Here are some resolutions that you can use as a starting point:
~ Gain weight. At least 30 pounds.
~ Stop exercising. Waste of time.
~ Read less. Makes you think.
~ Procrastinate more. Starting tomorrow.
~ Spend more time at work, surfing the web.
~ Get in a whole NEW rut!
~ Personal goal: Don't bring back disco.
~ Only wear jeans that are 2 sizes too small and use a chain or rope for a belt.
~ Create loose ends.
~ Get more toys.
~ Get further in debt.
~ Spread out priorities beyond the ability to keep track of them.
~ Focus on the faults of others.
~ Mope about your faults.
~ Never make New Year's resolutions again.
Are you sick of making the same resolutions year after year that you never keep? Why not promise to do something you can ACTUALLY accomplish?
Here are some resolutions that you can use as a starting point:
~ Gain weight. At least 30 pounds.
~ Stop exercising. Waste of time.
~ Read less. Makes you think.
~ Procrastinate more. Starting tomorrow.
~ Spend more time at work, surfing the web.
~ Get in a whole NEW rut!
~ Personal goal: Don't bring back disco.
~ Only wear jeans that are 2 sizes too small and use a chain or rope for a belt.
~ Create loose ends.
~ Get more toys.
~ Get further in debt.
~ Spread out priorities beyond the ability to keep track of them.
~ Focus on the faults of others.
~ Mope about your faults.
~ Never make New Year's resolutions again.
#10
Fun, Games and Silliness / Re: WHY WE WOULD LOVE TO BE SA...
Last post by Topaz - Apr 27, 2024, 05:30 PM