Following years

During Roy's adult years, from age 18 when he got married to 2010. He contacted social services several times probably getting toward 20 to 25 times. Each time he was told for one reason or another he could not have contact with his siblings. The only reason he was given that may have had some merit was the following. As part of his family had been adopted and he had not been there was an assumption that there had been abuse within the family setting and that (aged 9) he was part of that abuse. Surely anyone would find it difficult to think that a 9 year old could be part of such a thing without being coxed into by an adult. However there is a limited logic behind that thinking. Roy had always had self worth issues and that meant when these professional people were saying that he was not a worthwhile man to meet his brother and sister he believed them ran away and hid. Feeling worse about himself than he had prior to seeking help. At this point I feel I should say that in no way am I saying that all social workers are bad or that they do a bad job. There are good social workers but they are restricted by a system that no longer works for this day and age. Around 2009 Roy, thanks to his new found faith, decided that he would just keep going this time till he found them. He once again contacted social services and got an even worse response than normal. He was told that he did not exist that he had never been in the care system and they had no record of him. Thankfully during the years prior to this Roy had received a copy of his social work record. They then asked if he could take it to them and allow them to read it and see if they could help. The day arrived and he went to Kircaldy spoke to a social worker, who asked if they could keep his file. No Roy replied you can copy it but your keeping it. Which they did and he left there being told he would be contacted with a result as to if they could help or not. He received no reply and worse still thinks that they only spoke to him to gain a copy of his record in case he wanted to sue them. So after this knock back Roy went home chanted about things and tried to think how he could move forward from here. He knew, or thought he did, that Ian and Lorna had been re-homed to a farming couple in St Andrews. So he contacted a local paper to there the St Andrews Citizen. His original inquiry was asking if they would run an advert for him asking for information relating to his lost siblings. They were amazing and offered to run a feature story about his plight. The response from this however was not what he'd hoped for. He did receive a single piece of useful information. Roy had set up an email account purely for the emails relating to this article. he received one email from a vicar saying 'I had an illegitimate son and had no information about his name or his family. All he had was a date of birth. He told Roy that the only time your date of birth appears on the voters role is the year you turn 18'. So if you start with a date of birth you can try and trace someone using the voters role. So Roy set out to check the voters role. making appointments at local archive centers. He searched every voters role starting with St Andrews and finally searching the entire voters role for his county. This was rather tedious and took a long time plus proved to be fruitless. Being a little disheartened he once again went home and chanted about the situation. He decided to broaden the search and went to broaden his search. He made appointments with archive centers in the Perth & Kinross area and once more began searching voters roles. His way of thinking was there can't be many twins born on the same day in Scotland all he had to do was fins that entry that would give him a starting point. Once again disheartened and having covered all of East Central Scotland he was at a loss how to proceed. However Roy thought if one newspaper had helped maybe a second would. He contacted The Dundee Courier and asked if they would be interested and they said they would run a feature article as well. Roy was stunned never believing he was worth anything un-yet here were 2 newspaper who felt his story was worth running. This one proved to be the golden ticket. The day the article appeared in the paper he received an email from his brother. That day will live in Roy's memory for the rest of his life. He had found them and completed his family. Now he could do what he should have done back in 1968, he could be the big brother and care for ALL his family.