Thank you to the wonderful adoptee in our community who shared this letter to her GP surgery about being adopted, and the reply from her GP… We salute you!
Dear [name of practice manager]
Following the Prime Minister's Forced Adoption Statement on 2nd July and the subsequent promise to adult adoptees "To recognise their experiences and help clinicians understand the impact of forced adoption" and "To support individuals to access the care most appropriate to their needs", I'd like to say this is well overdue.
The NHS snomed code marker to warn clinicians to be careful when speaking to adoptees, adoptees of any age, not just those like me, forcibly taken from my mother 70+ years ago, should be activated for us all.
I am exhausted most of the time, anxious if not panicked, often depressed and just want not to exist any more and in this I am not unusual among adoptees so to be asked over and over again what illness is in the family is too much. It should be assumed that illnesses are in our original families until we know otherwise and we should not be expected to explain our situation more than once, if ever. Even to reply "I don't know" is like twisting a barbed hook in my guts.
Some of us find it easy to talk about our situation, some, like me till I was 70 years old, say "All's fine" and lucky people are okay with having been taken from their mothers, handed to strangers and given a new identity but for some it's too painful to talk about and either we're struck dumb or if we manage to talk, the energy is sucked out of us.
A locum I saw a couple of years ago offered, when I broke down, CBT and when I said "That tends to reinforce it" and that I was looking into tapping or EMDR, she raised her eyebrows saying "But that's for trauma". Indeed it is. As if i didn't know that. Constantly being gaslit in this way is unacceptable but it has taken me all this time and the PM's apology to summon up the strength to write to you about it. There should have been a marker in my record.
In the gentlest way, could i ask you to please use whatever influence you have in [the practice] and all GP practices in the area to obtain adequate training for your staff and clinicians about how adoption might affect us.
Sincerely,
An adoptee
Reply from the surgery
Thank you for your letter and for bringing your experiences and concerns to our attention. We appreciate how difficult it must have been to write about something so deeply personal. We are very sorry that you have suffered so much and that you have felt your trauma was not understood or acknowledged during previous consultations.
We can confirm that a note has now been added to your clinical records alerting clinicians to the trauma you experience in relation to being adopted. This will help them approach conversations sensitively, particularly questions about your family history, which you have explained can be especially distressing.
We have also discussed your letter at our weekly clinical meeting to raise awareness within the team of how being adopted may affect patients and the important of recognising each person’s individual experiences.
Unfortunately, wea re not currently aware of any formal training available on this specific subject. However, sharing your experiences has provided a valuable opportunity for our team to reflect on how we communicate with and support patients affected by adoption.
Thank you again for helping us better understand the impact this had had on you.
Yours sincerely,
[GP practice]
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Message from Katharine Quarmby, Tenacious Journalism award winner
It's so sad to read of adoptees finding it traumatising to talk to health professionals about their adoptions - and also frustrating not to have information that could improve our health and that of any future children as well.
I am one of the Tenacious Journalism award winners this year for a project on adoptee healthcare and the gaps we experience as adoptees in NHS care. With the support of HTBA and other adoptee-led organisations I carried out a survey of 206 adult adoptees and found that adoption has significant and often overlooked implications for health, particularly in maternity, reproductive, menopause and mental health care.
Across responses, adoptees repeatedly described pregnancy, childbirth and becoming a parent as emotionally triggering experiences that could reactivate adoption trauma, yet health professionals rarely recognised or addressed this. A recurring theme was the absence of biological family medical history: adoptees reported being repeatedly asked for information they could not provide, with this lack of knowledge often recorded but seldom explored further or accommodated in clinical decision-making.
Many respondents felt that NHS services defaulted to a tick-box approach, overlooking the psychological impact of adoption, the increased need for trauma-informed support, and concerns about inherited health conditions. Experiences of postnatal depression, infertility, menopause, chronic pain and anxiety about unknown genetic risks were common, alongside feelings of isolation and dismissal.
Overall, the evidence points to a need for adoption-aware healthcare, better understanding of adoption-related trauma, improved use of unknown family history in risk assessment, and more personalised support throughout the reproductive life course.
There's more information about the survey - and my wider research - in the article below or visit my website for more on my wider writing (and a short film for the BBC) on adoption over the last couple of decades: https://katharinequarmby.com/katharines-journey-adoption-insights-and-journalism/
https://www.theferret.scot/adult-adoptees-health-histories/
Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash