Happy new year! Time to round up some of last year’s highlights.

25th January 2025 afternoon retreat: book now

Places are going fast for the HTBA annual January adoptee community retreat with Claire and Gilli. You can see a rough agenda here and book your place. Suggested donation is £15 but you can put anything from £1 in order to check out. It’s running online from 2-5pm and we’ll cover the effect of trauma on the body and some tips on finding/starting an adoptee group near you.

Book now

2024 highlights

BBC Radio 4 Women’s Hour

Women’s Hour has been a dream for me for a long time. It was amazing to finally get the call, but bittersweet as well because I was talking about some very heartbreaking family circumstances rather than just bigging up How To Be Adopted and other great adoptee organisations.

Listen back to Claire from How To Be Adopted on Women’s Hour talking about a new report that recommends changes to contact arrangements (aka maintaining relationships) after adoption. It starts around 20 mins in.Also interviewed is Prof Beth Neil. You can learn more about the proposed changes to modern adoption practice here.

Expansion of adoptee peer groups throughout the UK

Groups are going strong, with contingents in London, Bristol, Devon, Cornwall and more. The fabulous Ryan in Edinburgh ran an amazing run of adoptee meet ups including breakfast, lunch and dinner!

‘We Are Family’ webinar on adoptees becoming parents

I’m regularly asked to present to adoptive parents and I always say no, until this year! Professor Beth Neil asked me to speak about my lived experience of being an adopted person and becoming a parent. This was part of a webinar for We Are Family and within the huor we managed to cover Beth’s extensive research into what happens when adopted people become parents, as well as two adoptees’ experiences - mine and Daniel Bishop who you may remember from this brillaint guest blog on being a late-discovery adoptee.

Currently only members of WAF can watch the talk back.

Anniversary of changing the Ofsted law re adoptees accessing counselling

18th December marked a year since the law change! I’d love to know your stories on how the law change has impacted you whether you’re a therapist or adopted person.

HTBA North London group Christmas meal

Sponsored by Tatlers estate agency, we had a wonderful Christmas lunch.

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