6 recommendations for the JCHR re the inquiry into Treatment of unmarried mothers and their babies aka adoptees: Pam Hodgkins MBE oral evidence to The Joint Committee on Human Rights
Today, 16th March 2022, UK Parliament hears the evidence of birth mothers, first families and adopted people as part of the Inquiry into the Historic Treatment of Unmarried Mothers
Thank you to everyone who filled in the inquiry with their evidence. You can watch the proceedings here (live only on 16 March 2022)
Pam Hodgkins MBE has agreed to share the evidence she would have been submitting today in Parliament - before she was abruptly removed from the proceedings - with no explanation.
I hope the members of the JCHR will read the following carefully:
Can you tell us a little about your childhood?
I had a wonderful childhood having been adopted by a couple who were open armed, open hearted and utterly honest. They considered themselves very lucky to have me as their daughter, ensuring I knew I was special to them and that were so grateful to my birth mother Mary for allowing them to adopt me.
When were you told that you were adopted? What were you told about your birth mother and the reasons for your adoption?
I have no recollection of being told I was adopted; I have always known, so presumably the word adopted was commonly spoken in a positive manner before I was verbal. I was told my mother, Mary, was not able to bring me up as she did not have a daddy like ours to help her. Simplistic but positive. Each night I was taught to conclude my bedtime prayers with ‘God Bless, Mummy, Daddy, Mary and Me.’
What can you tell us about your birth mother’s experience of being an unmarried mother and your subsequent adoption?
I learned that my birth mother had realized she was pregnant over Christmas 1950. She did not return to my birth father and their shared theatrical digs in London but remained at her family home in North Lincolnshire. Her mother, very middle class, was determined no-one, including Mary’s father, should learn of this disgrace so she arranged for Mary to go away before her pregnancy was obvious to stay with a clergyman and his family in Essex, who had previously been their curate and next door neighbour. My maternal grandmother began making plans for my adoption via The Church of England Children’s Society but because of a family history of TB the society did not consider I would be ‘fit for adoption’ so the clergyman and GP attending my mother decided a private placement would be quicker and easier. The GP proposed my adoptive parents, a working class couple turned down by the Children’s Society and other adoption societies who cited the lack of indoor bathroom. When the clergyman told my grandmother he had only been able to find a working class couple she is reported to have retorted ‘So what, the father was working class – that is why we are in this mess!’ The plan included Mary returning to stay with the clergyman and his family after my birth until I could be placed for adoption at six weeks but because it was summer, during the time my mother was in hospital following my birth her brother, a doctor in Kingston and his wife who had 2 small daughters and a six-month-old baby son announced he and his family would be arriving at the family home on Sunday 28 July for their summer holiday. My grandmother realized that it would be inexplicable for Mary not to be there to play with her nieces and coo over her new nephew, so she hastily arranged for me to be taken to the identified prospective adopters at 10 am that Sunday morning direct from the hospital while she hired a car to drive her and Mary directly home in a race to get there before her son and his family arrived.
Having parted with her baby that morning Mary was expected to play the part of doting aunt by teatime the same day. This all clearly indicates that Mary had absolutely no control over events, and that her views were probably not even asked for, let alone acted upon. When my mother lay dying some 44 years later, her best friend from drama school and I sat either side of her bedside, her friend Margaret recalled the time I was born; Mary had confided in her behind her mother’s back and they had sent each other coded messages. Three days after arriving home Mary had gone out to a public phone box and called Margaret secretly, begging her to think of a viable excuse to call Mary to her home to get her away from the doting aunt role was tearing her apart. Margaret called the family home, the ‘emergency’ she had dreamed up was accepted as a reason for Mary to depart; Margaret recalled the nights she spent holding Mary as she wept for her baby. The actions of my Grandmother were replicated by many others, people who placed their ‘good name’ and respectable status way above their own daughter’s well-being and happiness.
The impact on Mary was lifelong. Her mother’s plan worked, her father and brother did not know what had happened to her. No one in their community found out and when a local Alderman’s son ‘courted’ her and wanted to marry her, she confided to him her disgraceful past; he told her she was pretty enough for him to overlook that and he would still marry her. For the rest of her life she remained grateful to him for this willingness to marry her. Their marriage would appear to an onlooker today to be one of coercive control. He accepted the subservience of Mary as his right, and of course this attitude impacted on their daughters, she was there to serve. Many years later actual physical abuse of Mary by her youngest daughter which resulted in a broken nose was blamed on Mary for ‘upsetting H’. She loved them all and never complained. I complain on her behalf.
My mother breast fed the two daughters of her marriage. She asked the GP for ‘something to dry up her milk’ after my birth, so her recent delivery would not be visible to her brother and his wife – a nurse. She was given medication, and a repeat dose after a couple of days as she was still leaking milk. When in her 60s she developed breast cancer, her consultant was surprised; her notes described her long term breast feeding of two babies, considered a very protective factor against Breast Cancer. There were no notes of her first pregnancy and the treatment to stop lactation. She later told me of this and added ‘Old sins cast long shadows’. My birth and adoption cast a lifelong shadow over her life, the bright young girl who dreamed of being an actress and could recite the entire works of Shakespeare became a nervous shadow of her once vivacious self, loved especially by Margaret and my birth father and me. I hope her immediate family loved her, I know the elder of my two sisters did and I expect they all did but in a way that played on her self-sacrifice of herself
In what ways do you feel the experiences you have described affected your right to family life under Article 8 of the ECHR, as we know it today?
In my childhood I enjoyed a family life that would be the envy of many, I expect that to the outside world, Mary, her husband and their two little girls also appeared to be the ideal image of family life. What we were both deprived of was the chance to be mother and daughter together. Was it the state that took away our right to family life together? The obvious culprit is my maternal grandmother and her obsession with respectability, but one could ask why did she feel that she had to sacrifice the happiness of her daughter to ensure she was still ‘marriageable’ – she was 200 years beyond being Jane Austen’s Mrs Bennet, but one fears Mary was perceived as at least as deviant as the feckless Lydia Bennet.
Have you traced family members? What was that experience like?
I contacted my birth mother Mary in early 1982. I thought I needed medical background as I had suffered a very serious illness linked to TB! I obtained my original birth certificate by simply calling the District Registrar in the town where I was born and asking for it. I had ‘always’ known my birth name and my mother’s name so I had no need to use the recently introduced ‘Access to Birth Records’ provision. My mother and I had a relationship from that time, until her death in 1995, that was of great importance to us both but fraught with tension as her husband resented the very fact I existed. Initially there were no plans for my half-sisters to learn of my existence, Mary’s husband vetoed the suggestion it may be best to be open, but the elder of them discovered a letter I had written to my mother at the school where she taught, an arrangement we had, and the secret was out. At the insistence of Mary’s husband my connection to the family was still kept secret from everyone else in their circle until Mary was dying. I made contact with her brother; I was so concerned for her well-being. I enjoyed a warm, open and enduring relationship with my aunt and uncle for the remainder of their lives and their adult children are some of my closest friends and relatives today. My actual relationship to my mother in so far as her community were aware only became public on the day of her funeral – a sides-person insisted on making a list of names, and relationship, of everyone entering the church for funeral. I was holding the hand of my 7 year old daughter, the first funeral she has attended, if I had not been asked I would not have told, but I was not going to lie in those circumstances, my reply was ‘eldest daughter, son in law, grandson and granddaughter’. My mother’s widower and I have not spoken since, and neither do I have any communication with Mary’s youngest daughter. I do have a relationship with my other sister and one nephew who is somewhat estranged from his mother – the youngest daughter.
Mary told me who my father was and who he married, an actress who had achieved much more success than either Roy or Mary, but through her agent I was able to make contact with Roy, my birth father. Roy was a ‘character’, think Victor Meldrew in ‘One Foot in the Grave’ and you will have an approximation of Roy. The relationship with him lasted from 1982 until his death in 2017. I sat by his bedside on 14 June, the sunny day following the Grenfell Fire and realized I would never forget this day his life slipped away after 89 years, a date marked by public history but also the day on which my adoptive father would have celebrated his 100th birthday had he enjoyed a much longer life than that cut short when he was only 56. Without doubt Roy embraced me, and my family, as his daughter, son in law and grandchildren. My children enjoyed the most amazing times with a grandfather who was truly unique, reckless and great fun. Were we deprived of our right to family life? Yes, and what a good thing we were. As a 23 years old bi-sexual, temperamental, out of work actor in 1951, tied to a woman who adored him, but who was to him just a very pretty face, Roy would have been an unreliable parent, not a patch on my loving and beloved Dad. BUT as someone to find in adulthood and share a very special father and daughter relationship he was wonderful, and I loved him dearly. At his son’s, my brother’s wedding we were family, at Roy’s funeral we shared duty as his children. The openness we shared so much better than the secrecy demanded by Mary’s husband.
In what way do you think your experiences reflect those of other people who were adopted in the 1950s, 60s and 70s?
I think the reasons for my adoption were prevalent throughout the 50’s, 60’s and well into the 70’s. The adoption of the baby of an unmarried mother by a married couple who were involuntarily childless was simply what happened. However, there the commonality probably ends. Adoption agencies had developed a notion of secrecy facilitated by the option of serial numbers to conceal the identity of adopters from birth mothers within the 1948 Act. My adopters, rejected by adoption societies, simply did what felt right, without preparation or instruction they ‘knew’ openness and honesty was best, that adoption was something no one should be ashamed about. In a curious way it was their behaviour that I was advocating to prospective adopters, as a social worker, 30 odd years later. I think the shame and disgrace showered on birth mothers transferred to their infants and unfortunately many adoptees grew up in its shadow. I am sure it devalued their sense of self. I do not deny I had some ‘issues’ as a teenager, but were they teenage angst or adoption issues? I cannot say. It probably disappoints adoption enthusiasts that no I will not endorse adoption as wonderful, but at the other extreme, neither will I claim it ruined my life, because it did not. We only get one life, I hope I have, and am, making the most of mine.
How can you, and other adopted people and their parents be better supported today?
I am pleased to assure you that I am not in need of any particular support at this stage of my lifetime as an adopted person. However I am extremely mindful of the unmet needs of many adopted people and birth parents, particularly ageing birth mothers, who are in desperate need of services that can be delivered locally, promptly, without unaffordable charges. Services that the 2002 Adoption Act suggested would be available to everyone who needed them but which a decade plus of austerity has reduced to few and very far between.
I hope the committee members will consider my personal experience relevant and useful but the primary reason I wanted to give oral evidence to you was to show you what small amendments and proposals the committee might recommend to the government which for minimal cost could make an enormous positive difference for this elderly cohort who have suffered so much and who now fear time may be running out.
I understand that a supplementary paper I provided at the written evidence stage of this enquiry has been published. This contains full details of these proposals; I, and colleagues with whom I have been working – all of us dedicated volunteers giving our time freely to this cause – will be please to meet with all or any of the committee to expand on our proposals, likewise we extend our offer to work with the appropriate departmental ministers and officials to work up these proposals into practical steps to radically improve service provision.
The key provisions we wish to see implemented are:-
1. Requiring every local authority and adoption agency to advise the Registrar General of all vetoes presently registered by the agency and to subsequently advise the Registrar General of any new vetoes placed
2. The Registrar General to maintain a comprehensive register of vetoes for England and Wales, updated by any new information provided by a LA or adoption agency. The Registrar General to link this data to his existing registers that link birth and adoption entries. The Registrar General to advise any intermediary agency of the existence of a veto and the agency where that veto is recorded, or to confirm no veto is recorded, in every case before the intermediary agency moves on to intermediary work.
3. NHS Digital Back Office Function to restore the enquiry service offered prior to the pandemic which enabled an intermediary agency to enquire if the adopted person or birth relative sought was known to have already died in England or Wales. The service also confirmed if the person sought was currently registered with a GP, this positive information is very reassuring to a relative, especially when it is the only positive information they have.
4. Change the regulations so in cases involving the adoption of an infant under one year of age who had been ‘relinquished’ for adoption prior to May 1984, and where the RG has confirmed no veto, the intermediary agency may assume the Appropriate Adoption Agency view to be neutral unless anything arising in the intermediary process suggests otherwise.
5. The requirements for persons deemed to be ‘qualified workers’ in the context of intermediary work to be changed to people with suitable skills, knowledge and training who are working under the close supervision of a social worker or diploma qualified counsellor with at least two years post qualifying experience.
6. The availability of supportive and therapeutic work with adults over the age of 25, (those who are completely outside the scope of services that may be provided via the adoption support fund) should no longer be restricted to those counsellors and therapists working as, on behalf of, or in an adoption agency or adoption support agency. Counsellors and therapist work to high professional standards regulated by their professional bodies, in all other areas their capacity to work with any presenting client will be a matter for their professional judgment; they will recognize the need to refer on to specialist services if presenting issues, or those that later arise are found to be outside their own area of competence. It is important to trust the judgment of these professionals and provide adopted adults and birth relatives with the right to choose a counsellor or therapist with whom they have the confidence to address their support and therapeutic needs without prejudging that suitability dependent upon the work setting. It must also be acknowledged that whilst adoption is a significant factor in the life of everyone affected, it is not the only factor. The choice of service providers for those whose lives have been touched by adoption must not be restricted by statutory regulation linked solely to the adoption.
What will making these changes achieve?
Proposal 1-4 will all streamline the time consuming, and expensive processes that are currently required in order for any agency to offer intermediary service. In some cases potential service users have died whilst waiting for an agency to undertake all the requirements, gaining a response from the designated Appropriate Adoption Agency, or locating the relative sought. Many more of the cohort the JCHR committee is focused upon will also die before they receive the service they need if the regulations are not changed.
As well as the delays to providing the service each step adds to the cost for the agency, costs that are usually passed on to the service user. Anything that reduces the cost will increase the opportunity to access service for those least able to afford current costs. There are few, if any, agencies offering complete intermediary service for less that £500, the average cost within the non-commercial sector is frequently approaching £1,000, in the private sector fees that are double or triple that amount are the norm. Even a relatively well off occupational pensioner may struggle to find such a large cost, for the poorer pensioner living on just state pension and pension credit the cost is prohibitive, and most of the people the JCHR is considering are now pensioners.
Proposal 5 will open up a ‘reserve army’ of exceptional volunteers to once again become service providers. These will include retired professionals who undertook intermediary and related tasks in their roles as adoption social workers, who became frustrated by the competing demands for increasing adoption numbers, supporting children and families in placement and still trying to juggle the needs of adults from the ‘historic adoption era’ the JCHR is reviewing. These people will give their time and skills willingly if they are given the freedom to work flexibly, to control their own caseloads and provide the level of support and time they consider appropriate to achieve the best possible outcomes, which in turn leads to intense job satisfaction, the only reward the volunteers are seeking. Likewise there is a large pool of highly experienced and trained volunteers who previously volunteered for AAA-NORCAP and After Adoption who were lost to this area of service when the organizations for whom they volunteered went into liquidation due to the impact of austerity in the past 10 years. They are ready and waiting, and refresher training delivered via Zoom could bring them back into useful and timely service.
Proposal 6 remedies at a stroke the critical shortage of therapist and counsellors available to those who have been impacted by adoption alongside all the other issues and trauma they may encounter during a lifetime. It also ends the frustrating and enduring experience of almost all adopted people – we are treated as adopted children for ever. Unless it has been changed, as I suggested, your programme will tell you that you are to hear from two Birth Mothers followed by two Adopted Children! Despite our adoption we grow up, we become adults, adopted adults, but people who can and should be allowed to make our own decisions.
Thank you for taking the time to read my evidence. I am sorry not to be allowed to present this to you in person on Wednesday 16 March, but I hope I may have the opportunity to discuss these issues and proposals with all or some of you shortly.
Thank you
Pam Hodgkins MBE
Adopted person
Founder of AAA-NORCAP BA (Hons) CQSW, AASW
Photo by Aditya Romansa on Unsplash
