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New Helpline No. 0117 3730265 |
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Magic Moments ... |
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Dear Friends and
Colleagues I am delighted
to be writing to you for the first time as Service Manager of SWAN. Many of you will know me as the
former Helpline Co-ordinator at SWAN – a job which I continue to do alongside
the new bigger one. It is great to
be working alongside members of the public who are so appreciative of the
work that the funding from our local authority partners allows us to do, and
the other workers here who bring so much experience and enthusiasm to their
work. I continue to be
ably supported by Vanessa our office manager, our team of Helpline workers,
and the dedication of our Trustees and sessional workers. Chris, the Chair of Trustees, has
continued her hands-on involvement supporting our operations, and David
continues indispensable in sorting out our finances. We continue to try to strike a
balance between maintaining consistent services and putting time aside for
developing them alongside changing needs and changing demands from
legislation and our partners. We
are aiming now to stay independent and concentrate on delivering the best
possible services in the areas we know best : Bath & North East Somerset,
Bristol, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire and Swindon. Here is a news
round up for each of the groups we cover : Adopted
adults – We continue to
receive most of our referrals from this group and that includes all the
schedule 2 counselling for Bristol.
This development means that Bristol service users can have the same
SWAN worker throughout their search for their records potentially through to
reunion with their birth relatives.
Sadly we have lost contact with LAFTA : a social group for people who
were transracially adopted. If
anyone has information about any similar agency, please contact the helpline
– we’d love to hear about them. Birth
Relatives of adopted adults
– Very sadly we are working with fewer and fewer people in this group. We believe this is mainly to do with
our having to charge for our Search and Intermediary service since the change
in legislation in December 2005.
Although our Special Rate service is well-used and brilliantly
supported by the local authorities, it is still too expensive for some
people. We continue to offer
free counselling and we are working with the Trustees to try to raise funds
that will enable us to offer a few free Search and Intermediary places. We don’t have the money yet, but
watch this space… We are also in
the process of reviewing our procedures in line with the new government
“Guidance on Access to Information and Intermediary Services“ which has just
been published [see the Every Child Matters website]. Many thanks to Bridget Simpson for
getting things started here. Current birth
relatives – we have
recently conducted a survey of our current service users in this group to ask
their views about areas for service development. We’ll let you know what they say when the results come in. Many thanks to Angela Doughty who is
collating this exercise. We have
also been developing our relationships with other agencies who can sometimes
offer longer term support than we can provide, or other specialist
services. There are some really
creative and useful projects being developed. Adoptive
Families – Kirstie and
Rosemary do most of our work for this group. Rosemary is currently training with Family Futures, which
she says is hugely helpful, and which our service users really benefit from. Kirstie has been doing lots of work
on trauma and how that can affect attachment. We have been doing some work with teenage / young adult
adoptees and their parents recently and developing our links with other agencies
supporting adoptive families. We
have recently purchased two books about education and adoption issues which
for once are based on research in the UK. See elsewhere in the newsletter for details. The Helpline remains
very busy and is run now by Jo, Bridget, and myself. Over the summer we have a few more
people covering for holiday absences.
Many thanks to Sandy, Kirstie, and Angela, and welcome back to Jane
and Rosemary. We are open now
for a shorter time but share a phone number with the office. This way we keep costs down AND can
be more responsive to urgent matters. As you can see
we have lots of plans and lots to do.
Please feel welcome to contact us if you have any queries or
suggestions. With best wishes Corinna Levack |
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We can provide short term assessments of need, and counselling for adoptive families who are experiencing problems. Our helpline can also help you with phone counselling and support. We can provide short term counselling and support for adopted adults seeking to find their birth relatives. We will also act as intermediaries when you find relatives and facilitate introductions if necessary Many adoptees tell us that finding birth relatives
raises all sorts of issues. Our short term counselling can help you make
sense of the intense feelings and support you in a pace of introductions that
suits you. Many young adopted people wonder about their birth relatives and want to know more about them. This is particularly common when things are not going well at home or if you are not getting on with someone in your adoptive family. The temptation is to think that one's birth family would be better and could perhaps rescue you from difficult encounters. Sadly this is usually not the case and sometimes searching for or meeting birth relatives can often cause more problems than it solves. If you are having problems with your parents or brothers or sisters it is usually better to deal with that and not complicate things further with another set of parents. However, young people who are adopted tell us that there are many difficult things about being adopted. Sometimes people at school or in the community ask you difficult questions or sometimes school projects bring up things about being adopted. you may prefer not to think about. If you live in one of our subscribing areas and have problems that are connected to being adopted it may help to talk to a counsellor from SWAN or to ring our HELPLINE. Sometimes young people are afraid it will upset their parents to talk about their birth relatives or to ask for information. A SWAN counsellor can help with that. Sometimes, young people have difficulty in School related to their adoption - we can also help here. Do contact us if you want to talk about something related to your adoption.
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We hope soon to have a pack for Birth Parents and for
social workers working with Birth Parents. When your birth child is 25 we can support you in searching for that child and act as an intermediary when we find them. We can help you to understand your feelings or think through what you can in a letter or in a prospective contact. * We can unfortunately only help if you live in one of our subscribing areas or if the adoption took place there. If you are a Birth Parent SWAN can provide independent free counselling support to birth relatives who are loosing their children to adoption or who are contesting adoption. We cannot stop the adoption - you need to work with your lawyer to explore that - but we can help you to look at your feelings and put you into contact with other people who have experienced this grief. We can also help you write letters if you have letterbox contact. Rejection Work: Rejection network was formed for that reason, to support those, be they
adopted or birth relatives or others who carry that grief and have lost
connection with relatives. It holds meetings and has a lively website. |
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