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Hi Kim
I am pleased to hear that your experiences with Barnardos have been more satisfactory than my own.
My own experience of adoption would I am sure have been fine but for the fact that my adoptive mother died when I just seven years old after a long hospitalisation so last saw her when I was six. Barnardos gave my parents a lot of information before I was adopted and made them sign an agreement that they would tell me about my adoption. Barnardos has become a great deal more secretive over the years, as it is realised how bad some of its past pratise really was by today's standards. The reasons for my adoption and process by which I was taken into care were probably not entirely legal even in 1954 under the Children Act 1948 and Adoption Children Act 1949.
It is not really true to say that the Barnardos organisations around the world are all the same organisation. Although they share a founder and in some cases trustees. Barnardos in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and the UK share a common name and heritage, but the differences in the laws on both child care and adoption and on charitable status mean that they operate autonomously and often very differently from each other. I suspect Barnardos no longer operate in HK.
What I write of above is my experience with Barnardos London Division and specifically 'Barnardos Counselling Services Project' at Barkingside.
The Barnardos projects that deal with postadoption issues in both Scotland and Ireland are believe most professional in their work excellently well run. But both Scotland and Ireland have very different laws to England & Wales, also of course those two projects are dealing largely with adoptions that were not arranged by Barnardos. Hence there is a lot less corporate backside covering to be done.
The Barnardos in Aus and NZ are run separately from the organisation in the UK. I do not know what Barnardos involvement in adoption was in those countries or what its involvement now is with post-adoption practise.
The one thing that Barnardos is very good at in the UK is spin and its own publicity.
If you view this page from an ISP in the UK you will almost certainly see an ad for Barnardos fund raising somewhere on the page. No doubt Barnardos pay for that and could use it as leverage to have anything it dislikes removed from here.
Robin
http://harritt.net
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