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Hi Shef
I was 20 months old when I was boarded out by Dr Barnardo's Homes, nearly 3 years old when adopted. Though Barnardos still seem to have been taking an interest in my progress at nearly 17 years old.
I only met Miss Simcox or Mother Simcox as she was generally known because I'm particularly persistent in demanding access to my own past history. Barnardos at that time 10 or 12 years ago would give me no information whatsoever about the home. Hopefully precedents that I and others have set have changed that now.
I got the impression from the then 90ish year old Miss Simcox that I would not have liked having her as a "mother". Nor that I would have liked to remain at Farm Hill. Things I have heard speaking to villagers from Coggeshall tend to confirm my thoughts on that.
I was under Barnardo's care and supervision for a total of just 2 years. Yet after the last 15 years of fighting with them I now have over 300 pages (some simply carbon copies of others) when originally I was told that "there is very little in the file". As far as I am concerned, they are (or were) a bunch of pathetic liars more intent on protecting their own and the corporate backside than anything else.
I guess you are the Shef that I know from The Forgotten People MSN group?
As you'll have seen if you still look in there, things tend to be tumultuous on MSN groups and as consequence some of them have gone private which is the case wit the Barnardo's Family group. If you don't hear anything give them another go. It is still only a rather small group. I think transracial placement would be good topic. It does not surprise me that they are not very good with that aspect of things even at the modern day Barnardo's. There were some extremely anti-Semitic comments in my file and what I believe to be veiled comments about the Anglo-Indian origins of one of the couple (the Threadgolds) that my mother had left me with and wished to adopt me.
I think it does depend an awful lot on which social worker you get assigned. The first one that I saw, Helen, was excellent, and gave a lot of verbal info that I would not have known was there including my father's full name. She also gave me the letter from the Threadgolds that appears on my website. That is the reason I've been fighting them ever since and still am. They still have info I need to see. Unfortunately Helen left soon after I first contacted Barnardos.
Most of my recent story regarding access to records and search for family is on the two links
http://robin.robin.org/barnardos
and
http://robin.robin.org/search
I wonder how you managed to get your case looked at by Barnardo's Aftercare rather than the Family Connections project. Was Barnardo's not the adoption agency for your adoption?
I rather think that After Care are better at this kind of thing than Family Connections which is obsessed with somewhat mythical aspects of adoption. Family separation is the same whether it involves adoption or not. With luck some of the more arrogant and entrenched workers and managers involved with post adoption work at Barnardos will retire soon.
Hope to see you on Barnardo's Family group.
Robin
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