Progress on our New Website
Adopters Corner
Adoptees Corner
Birth Relatives Corner

New Helpline No. 0117 3730265

Magic Moments ...

Our Newsletters:

April 2004
April 2003
October 2002

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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.

If you are under eighteen

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 have created a new leaflet .for birth parents, who are in the process of having children adopted.

We hope soon to have a pack for Birth Parents and for social workers working with Birth Parents.

Maybe you had a child adopted several years ago and have never stopped wondering what has happened to that child.

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 who is Currently Loosing your Child to Adoption.

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:

Sometimes searching for relatives does not lead to Happy Endings, but to finding that the search is fruitless, and that the one you seek, has died or rejects the opportunity to reconnect.

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.
Http://www.rags-online.org

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