Effects on others

These pictures show my niece and nephew at their Christmas carol concert yesterday.

It was a weird day.

To start with a 3hr drive to get there, after picking my son up, he would meet his cousins for the first time and he is 29. Then I met a lovely lass that at one point had been my sister in law. Now that I had ever met her, social services wouldn't allow it. With her was my niece who looks so much like my mum it's scary. Every time I see it brings a lump to my throat, not that I have seen her often, only once actually another thing they stopped.

Then of to my brothers house to see him and his with their 3 kids. This again is something that social services would rather had never happened. We both spent a great afternoon just chilling having a cuppa and chatting. I wish I could spend more time with them but the distance makes that hard.

My nephew and niece at their carol concert

my nephew

my niece

My nephew and niece at their carol concert

We then went to my niece and nephews Christmas carol concert which was just amazing. I didn't understand the parts in Gaelic but it was an awesome night. 

On the way home my son and I were lucky enough to see a barn owl, 2 female red deer and a very large red deer stag.

A great end to an amazing day, well other than the 3 hr drive lol.

After I dropped my son of I went home and had a cuppa it had been a long day. Left home at 9.30am and returned around 11.30pm but oh so worth it.

Then the mind kicks into gear. All those thoughts about what might have been.


When I was thinking all of them I realized that this abuse by social services did not just effect my brother's sister and I. It effected the 9 kids who are my nephews and nieces one of whom it looks like I will never meet, my 3 kids and their 7 kids, my ex wife and my brothers 2 ex wives.

That means including my 3 siblings and myself social services have abused and altered the life of 26 people for no good reason.
They are still doing this please don't allow it to continue speak up and make them listen abuse of children by the state like this is so wrong and must stop!

what the professionals say

Here is a what some professionals say. As in domestic adoption, children may also be separated from siblings who have remained either living with the birth parents or other birth family relatives. And, of course, different families may adopt siblings. When adoptive parents know that siblings are living with other adoptive parents, they usually want to connect with each other. Unfortunately, many times parents only know that the sibling was adopted by another family, with no other information available to them. Honor the Connections Just as adoptive parents honor the connections to birth parents, it is important that all who touch the lives of children in foster care and adoption give serious consideration to sibling relationships. Whether the goal is to maintain a strong sibling connection, heal sibling relationships, or foster new connections, these ties should not be broken. What about the children who have no information about siblings? It is painful for parents to say and for children to hear, “I don’t know.” Most parents will try everything possible to get as much information as possible for their children. But sometimes the reality is just that it isn’t possible. Because of China’s one child policy and no available information, many children may speculate, and rightfully so, about the possibility that they were the “second born” and have an older brother or sister. Children in domestic or international adoption may also wonder if their parents went on to have other children. These quotes are from this link if anyone wants to read the whole thing. http://www.adoptionsupport.org/pub/docs/sibling_bonds09copyright.pdf It does show that social services still split families and still prevent contact after adoption/fostering.

Why?

As you can see from my earlier posts here my situation had a positive ending. I found my family after a real struggle but we all got there and now are very happy all 4 siblings in touch and enjoying each others company. My involvement with social services and social workers started back in the late 60's. Now we are in the 21st century and you would think things had moved on. You'd think lessons would have been learned over the last 40 years. Sadly to say they have not! After the second newspaper article about my case I was approached in the shops by a young lass asking how I went about things. Her mum was in a worse position to me she was searching for her biological mother and had nothing but a first name. No surname, no date of birth, nothing. How wrong is this. Then I learned that we now need charities to keep siblings re-united. The powers that separate them have no conscious. T they think once that decision is made they won't ever need to see each other again. I won't gain anything from creating a fuss over this but I can't just sit and do nothing. Surely these situations are still happening they are still splitting families up they are still keeping siblings apart for what reason I don't know BUT ITS WRONG! I can't/won't sit and allow other kids to feel the way I did! I will fight this corrupt system until these so called professional people see that keeping siblings apart is the wrong decision and needs changing NOW!

Friends help

It should be made clear at this point that if not for 2 people Roy would never have gotten to the point where he re-united his family. One was a friend who he hadn't seen since high school, a lovely lass called June who heard about Roy's search and went out of her way to give advice and offer help to a man not seen for 30 years. The second was a G+ friend Sunnie Moon. Who gave Roy so much support throughout the later part of his search he doubts he would have made it without her. So a massive thank you to both these amazing people who gave so much of themselves to help Roy!

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.

?

Went to visit a friend tonight and ended up discussing what has wound me up and caused me to write this. What an argument. Seemingly its not for the likes of me to influence how anyone thinks. If things are wrong within the care system, which they doubt, then the government will do something about it. These friends doubt what I'm saying ever happened and wonder about the mentality of a man my age (54) who would make that up. Can you believe that? Am I wrong in thinking that kids who have family, brothers & sisters, should be in touch with other?

The Problem

The previous posts have been background really what I want to shout about is the continued use of power by social workers that prevent families from being together. I don't mean parents that are abusive, I mean siblings! There should never be a time when kids don't know about their siblings or know they can get in touch with them if they need to. After Roy left the children s home Paul and him were settled for the following 8 years. Roy could talk for such a long time about those years and what happened but it is not relevant to this tale or the problem that he feels is still happening in our society. The only relevant factor's during those years he supposes was this. Social workers who came to visit him not very frequently decided that he couldn't talk freely in the foster home so they would meet at a local hall where he could talk more openly. During one of these sessions he was told that he could not have any contact with the twins for the following reason. When part of a family is adopted and part of it is fostered the system back then made the assumption that, the children who are in foster care were part of an abusive relationship within the family set up. This meant that after such a decision the foster kids could never contact the adopted ones. Since the death of his gran really Roy had struggled with self worth and believing that he was worthy of having a family. This statement by social workers created such a down for him that he really struggled with life. this meant he no longer felt he had the speak to his siblings. It did continue to trouble him and cause problems between Paul and Roy. It became obvious that Paul felt Roy being the eldest it was his responsibility to create contact between the family so he tried again. During his time in foster care Roy had been told that the twins had been homed with a farming family near St Andrews. As he had worked on farms since age 12 he felt a possible solution to his problems and the difficulty social services had re- foster and adoptive care was. He could work on the farm as a casual laborer for free just to see that the twins were OK. That they were being cared for properly and were turning out OK. Once again the social services stopped that happening. The social worker he spoke to stated that it was her decision alone. She would decide if he could have any contact with the twins and her reply shocked him to tears. This is what she said 'I have to decide if you are a suitable person to be in touch with his siblings. In her opinion he was not suitable for such contact because he was not of sounds character and judgement to be allowed contact. So he would have to forget about them and improve his life on his own'. At this point Roy was around 15 years old he had had a traumatic start in life and now these people who had controlled all of it were saying they'd made such a great job of it that he had turned out to be a nasty kid and not trustworthy enough to be in touch with his own family. There were other issues that Roy would not discover for many years after this but can you imagine being told that at 15? This shows the way social services treat kids and the power they hold over the children's future. Thinking about these things now some 40+ years later is still upsetting. However Roy now has contact with both the twins and they have an awesome relationship. What he struggles with is that these things are still happening and social services still have similar wide ranging power over our young vulnerable people. Is it right they have this sort of power over our children? I don't think so and I think these laws should be changed to prevent separations like this from happening in the future.