Dr. Rosie Canning

I thought I would post a short piece about my recent good news which obviously has already been shared via Social Media. And why not! In early December, after eight amazing part-time years, I submitted my thesis and in February passed my viva with minor corrections.

I was not as nervous as I thought I would be and this was in part thanks to main supervisor, Ms. Rebecca Smith who prepared me well and the examiners who were delightful.

They say for those with Adverse Childhood Experiences, it only takes one teacher, or one adult, to believe in you. My first teacher at infant school taught me to read, a most amazing gift and in many ways the beginning of a journey through orphan tales my staple diet for many years. In secondary school I was labelled a trouble-maker though not all teachers believed that. One in particular, my English teacher, became one of the only adults who encouraged me. When at 12 years old, for the first time, I shared some of my life story, she gave me top marks.

At university, as a mature student, an English Literature lecturer encouraged me to do an autobiographical project and after I left the university she continued to read my work and wrote me many encouraging letters.

Rebecca, author and Principal Teaching Fellow and main supervisor at University of Southampton, was phenomenally encouraging. Even when I was at the lowest ebb of the PhD journey, and it wouldn’t be normal to not have at least one low point, Rebecca reminded me of all I had done and believed in my ability. And now, here I am many years later, finally Dr. Rosie Canning.

Flowers and congratulations from Rebecca.

My thanks must also go to examiners Prof. Stephanie Jones (University of Southampton) and Prof. Dawn Mannay (Cardiff University) who made what could have been an excruciatingly uncomfortable event into a very enjoyable morning. I learnt a lot about my thesis and myself. It’s not often you get a chance to have a conversation with two people who have closely read your work and enjoyed it. Of course if the novel gets published…there will be an editor!

The protagonist of my PhD novel, Marianne paints postcards which she sends to friends, a boyfriend and an imaginary mother. I’ve reproduced some of them, see above. ‘Hiraeth painting by Marianne Thomas’ sees a painting produced by Marianne looking beyond the distant landscape where she imagines her home might be. Hiraeth, a Welsh word with no English equivalent meaning a sort of longing, homesickness for a home that maybe never existed. The word was adopted by me for the Care Experienced community who have Hiraeth in their hearts.

You can read more about the many things I got up to during the PhD journey here.

Thinking Through Family: Narratives of Care Experienced Lives

Last week I was invited to be a discussant at Prof. Janet Boddy’s book launch Thinking Through Family: Narratives of Care Experienced Lives.[1]

Understanding what ‘family’ means – and how best to support families – depends on challenging politicised assumptions that frame ‘ordinary’ families in comparison to an imagined problematic ‘other’. Learning from the perspectives of people who were in care in childhood, this innovative book helps redefine the concept of family. Linking two longitudinal studies involving young adults in England, it reveals important new insights into the diverse and dynamic complexity of family lives, identities and practices in time – through childhood and beyond. Paving the way for future policy and practice, this book makes an important contribution to the theorisation of family in the 21st century.

I have always admired Prof. Boddy’s work because of the huge amount of respect she and her colleagues have for the Care Experienced participants in their projects and being a researcher with experience of care myself, that is hugely important.

Reading Thinking Through Family, made me look through my thesis to see what I have said about family and it was quite an interesting process. Marianne, my protagonist has to find ways to manage without family – enduring through reading and art and eventually creating a found family in the ‘house of happy endings’.

Boddy is looking through the family lens, not the sometimes stigmatising, old traditional one, her aim is thinking through meanings of family and care experienced lives, respect and sensitivity a part of the narrative. They use a new lens which which moves away from the Single Story about family; quite simply the reader is told: ‘This is a book about family.’

The first chapter in Thinking Through Family begins with a quote from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED talk.[2] Back at the beginning of my PhD journey I too watched ‘The Danger of a Single Story’.[3] Adichie speaks of how she wrote stories as a child of characters who were ‘white and blue-eyed’ and who ‘drank a lot of ginger beer’ because she was only exposed to ‘foreign’ characters. This made me laugh because I recognised The Famous Five, who were also part of my childhood reading. A watershed moment, I recognised the ‘single story’ often told about children in care, one of stereotyping, stigma and criminalisation and wrote a blog: ‘…as in the case of the young girls in Rotherham who were victims of grooming gangs who were it was said, ‘making lifestyle choices’ because they were ‘bad girls from troublesome backgrounds’…Show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become’.[4] And this is where the quote at the beginning of Thinking Through Family began. Boddy though is looking at how society often ‘others’ those not in ‘traditional’ families. Her book rejects that old view with ‘more nuanced narrative understandings of what ‘family’ means for care experienced people’ and moving beyond the ‘single story’ and this is done by listening to what participants from two studies have to say and how they make sense of ‘difficult and disrupted experiences…how that sense-making may shift over time… and apparent inconsistencies in participants accounts reflect lived experiences that cannot be told through narratives of neat coherence.’ The book also discusses ‘young people’s experiences within their families of origin to engage with the significance of ‘ordinary’ memories within extraordinary childhoods, encompassing narratives of regular, ritual and habitual family practises and the importance of these within participants accounts.’[5]

This ordinariness was a starting point for my PhD novel, I wanted to write about an ordinary care leaver. It’s 1974: the narrative follows sixteen-year-old Marianne who is leaving a children’s home in Muswell Hill where she has spent the last eight years. The creative practice also includes a collection of postcards which enable Marianne to write to an imaginary mother. Marianne’s boyfriends correspond with the music genres of the time (a chance for me to re-live the 1970s soul music and disco era) – chapter headings taken from popular songs. Family figures are made up of cultural icons from the era.

Music features in Thinking Through Family too, one example of this involved asking participants in the first study ‘Against all odds?’ to bring a piece of music of significance with positive associations. Music of course is very evocative and can transport the listener back in time and for this research team it was a way to disrupt conventional modes of interviewing and power relationships.

I only have to think of Don’t Sleep in the Subway Darling[6] and I am back in front of the fire in the kitchen area of an aunt’s house in Clacton on Sea where I am being told not to mix the washing – keep the whites and coloureds separate. I wheel the washing in a pram to the launderette where I work out that putting two lots of washing into a machine will save money and all I can think about is the aunt will be so pleased. I pull the finished washing out of the machine, and it is orange! I am doing the mundane task of washing even though I am very young. I am involved in the family, I am invested, I am doing family. Or at least I think I am.

Thinking Through Family looks at the significance of the ordinary, looks at the young people’s experiences within their family of origin and ordinary memories ‘within extraordinary childhoods’ inviting them to talk about what is important to them – to understand themselves, a powerful acquisition, and reflecting habitual practices – ritual practices and special occasions.

Like Ella who agonised over the plans for her wedding and eventually wrote a letter to some family members telling them they weren’t invited. This was a brave decision. And sometimes this is what happens in families. We see Ella’s experience like that of other brides who have had to negotiate and think hard of how to overcome possible future problems. Ella finds a way with friends who will keep a lookout, they are holding her, on a very special celebration day.

Stories are defined by power, and it is power that makes the definitive story of a person:

• How they are told
• Who tells them
• When they are told
• How many stories are told

Here it is the Care Experienced people telling their stories, they are constructing life stories that feature themes of personal agency and exploration. Narrative identity theorists claim that those who find redemptive meanings in suffering and adversity, and who construct life stories that feature themes of personal agency and exploration, tend to enjoy higher levels of mental health, well-being, and maturity.[7] And this is what I’ve always liked about Boddy’s work that within ‘the research’ those who take part are also getting something back. Like the story of the young man who ironed his clothes every day, a story Boddy shared some years ago. He cared about his appearance, it was a good thing, he cared about himself. A family of one.

Megan does the ironing, and in this instance is caring for others. She shares her daily routine from when she wakes up which includes getting children ready for school, having dinner, doing their reading before getting them ready for bed. Once they are settled in bed Megan does the ironing for the following day and then does her studying.[8] It is the same strict routine every day. This reflection highlights the ordinariness of bringing up a family.

The book continually challenges the Single Story of Care Experience, and how ‘ordinary events and practices may be distinctively shaped by people and experiences associated with having been in care.’ By removing the ‘other’ children in care regardless of where that is i.e. foster care, adoption, kinship, or residential, are simply ‘doing family’ and often with more than one. It’s beautifully done and written, and I wish it had been available before I submitted my thesis!

 

You can hear Prof. Boddy speak about the book here.

Janet Boddy is Professor of Child, Youth and Family Studies at the University of Sussex and Adjunct Professor in the Childhood, Family and Welfare Division of NOVA at Oslo Metropolitan University. In 2020 she was made a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

Fidelma Hanrahan is Senior Research Officer at Research in Practice.

Bella Wheeler is Research Associate in the Methodologies Division in the Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery and Palliative Care at King’s College London.

[1] Boddy, Janet, and Bella Wheeler Fidelma Hanrahan, ‘Thinking Through Family’, Bristol University Press (Bristol University Press) <https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/thinking-through-family> [accessed 8 December 2023]

[2] Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. ‘Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The Danger of a Single Story | TED Talk’. https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story/c. TED Talk 2019 [accessed 20 March 2015.]

[3] 2, Adichie.

[4] Rosie Canning. ‘The Danger of the Single Story’. Orphans & Care Experience in Literature (blog), 27 March 2015. https://careleaversinfiction.wordpress.com/2015/03/27/how-can-we-change-a-culture-of-denial-for-our-most-vulnerable-children/. [Accessed 2 November 2022]

[5] 1, Boddy, p.45

[6] Tony Hatch, Jackie Trent, Don’t Sleep in the Subway (Cambridge: Pye, 1967) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Sleep_in_the_Subway&gt; [accessed 6 December 2023].

[7] McAdams, Dan P., Ruthellen Josselson, and Amia Lieblich, Identity and Story: Creating Self in Narrative, [The Narrative Study of Lives, v. 4], 1st ed, 1 online resource (x, 284 pages) : illustrations vols (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2006) <https://search.ebscohost.com/direct.asp?db=pzh&jid=%22200601746%22&scope=site> [accessed 13 October 2023]

[8] 1, Boddy, p.136

A Portrait of Care

A Portrait of Care celebrates those who have experience of being looked after or who have been estranged from families, by using their own photos and paintings.

Back in 2020, I had originally envisioned portraits in a gallery with some sort of interactive ipad where people were asked questions about their first reactions to the pictures. However, due to the pandemic it became an online exhibition via Instagram using self-portraiture as a way to combat the negative stereotypes people sometimes have about children in care. The project invited those with care experience and those that work in/with the care community to take part.

This project was also an important way for us to connect with each other during National Care Leavers week in 2020 as we were just going into another lockdown. A survey published by the National Youth Advocacy Service (NYAS) (2020) reported that 86% of people with care-experience felt lonely and anxious more often during the lockdown. During the pandemic, I wondered if some of the general public possibly for the first time, might experience what it was like to be care experienced with the heightened anxiety, isolation, loneliness, and estrangement from family.

Almost every care-experienced person comes into contact with discrimination at one point in their lives because of their background.

By using portraits, we hope to de-stigmatise the experience of care/estrangement as a way to improve perceptions and general public awareness. i.e. You cannot tell a person’s care experience from a photograph.

Here are a few of the entries from the Hansard Gallery:

As a way to bring a bit more creativity and art into the original online exhibition, I asked 10 artists all with experience of care to create a portrait in whatever style they wished. We held a draw and 10 winners had their portraits drawn. Here are a few of the artists and their portraits:

Chris Wild drew Izzy Kelly. Chris is author of The State Of It and Damaged and he says: I ended up in care when I was 11, after my dad died suddenly. After that my life fell apart in so many ways. I came from a pretty normal family and we had a normal, happy life, but the fall-out from dad’s death shattered that. Josie Pearse drew Kirsty Capes. Kirsty is an author and her first book Careless about a girl who grew up in foster care, was Longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2022 Josie says: I love drawing and painting people. I start with the eyes, that’s where you catch on to the spirit of the work and the person. Kirsty’s eyes are full of humour, willingness, and something constant.  I drew her quite a few times in my sketch book before I began on the final work. I put her photographs behind her on the wall. There are people in them. I wanted her to have her people at her back. Like us. We have each others’ backs I hope. Used: Gouache, pencil and watercolour.

We had a Caring Tree at the exhibition, here are some of the things people said:

I want to thank the University of Southampton Widening Participation team including Claire Giles, who worked with me on the original project and more recently Liam Gifford and Emma Woozer who were behind bringing our original vision to fruition to have this amazing exhibition, A Portrait of Care in the John Hansard Gallery.

To everyone who took part, thank you for trusting us with your personal information, beautiful photographs and for the shared joy of taking part. Thank you to the artists who gave their time and artistic skills to produce some fabulous original works of art.

And here I’d like to mention Yusuf McCormack, one of the artists and dear friend – who sadly did not make it through the pandemic.

As always, my supervisor Rebecca Smith who is always quietly but hugely supportive behind the scenes.

Thanks to Aoife who was always so positive about my ideas and who came up with the excellent title.

It has been brilliant working with everyone that took part and being part of A Portrait of Care, which has excelled all our expectations.

Voices from the silent cradles. Life histories of Romania’s looked after children by Mariela Neagu

Earlier this week, I was invited to a double book launch at Department of Education, University of Oxford to do a short introduction for one of the books: Mariela Neagu’s Voices from the Silent Cradles. Life Histories of Romania’s Looked After Children.

In 1990, disturbing television footage emerged showing the inhumane conditions in which children in Romanian institutions were living. Viewers were shocked that the babies were silent. The so-called ‘Romanian orphans’ became subjects of several international research studies. In parallel, Romania had to reform its child protection system in order to become a member of the European Union.

Voices from the Silent Cradles sheds light on the lived experiences of these children, who had become adults by the time the country joined the EU. Uniquely, the book brings together the accounts of those who stayed in institutions, those who grew up in foster care and those who were adopted, both in Romania and internationally. Their narratives challenge stereotypes about these types of care.

In 1999, Mariela, in her role working for the European Commission’s office in Bucharest, suggested to the Romanian government as part of a public awareness campaign, a talent competition ‘Edelweiss’ for children in institutions. The aim of the campaign was to promote foster care and domestic adoption as alternatives to residential institutions. ‘For once, children in care had appeared in the public eye not through what they lacked, but through what they had to offer.’[1]

Mariela’s observance consolidates my own experiences and consequent activism. I grew up in the UK care system during the 60s and 70s experiencing varying ‘placements’ with family, foster care, and residential children’s homes; so I have a personal and professional interest in her work.

Mariela explains how the winners of the competition also participated in a summer camp which she attended and that this was where she got to know the young people and their stories. She stayed in touch with many of the young people, and says in her Phd in 2017: ‘I know that their friendship was the seed of this research, long before I knew that I would be a researcher.’[2]

These young people who are now approaching their 30s had been in care during major policy changes around Child Protection in Romania, i.e. in 1990 ‘…when the ‘orphanage crisis’ was exposed by international media and when Romania ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child…[these children] became adults in 2007 when Romania became a member of the EU.’[3] Mariela recognised that as adults they might have something to say: ‘The care community must be included in research and policy debates whose aim is to better the lives of children and young people.’[4]

Finding potential research participants was difficult, made more difficult because Romania does not collect data on care leavers and there is no comprehensive database regarding children adopted internationally in the early 90s.[5] Mariela biggest worry was ‘Why would someone share with me the story of their life?’ This was despite having read about the benefits of life history for the storyteller.[6]

Her 40 research participants came from 13 of Romania’s 41 counties, and their age range was 20-31. ‘I wanted to find out from them how they made sense of their experiences growing up in different types of placements and how they navigated their journeys to adulthood; what mattered to them while they were in care and what helped them to become who they were at the time of the interview.’[7] She did this by conducting life history interviews with open-ended questions in which she asked them about their childhood memories. About their current lives and future plans, and about what they believed made them the people they were.

Each type of placement had its specific recruitment challenges – for example there were participants who couldn’t be interviewed because they didn’t know they had been adopted.[8] On her journey, Mariela also uncovered tragic situations, cases where parents had been told their child had died, but no remains were given to them. Some of these children left Romania with papers that had another child’s name. ‘This is where intercountry adoption becomes nothing more than an umbrella for trafficking… No legal action or attempt of restorative justice has been undertaken in Romania for the thousands of children who left [the country], for which Romania holds no record.’[9]

We learn about the different backgrounds the participants experienced, some whom did not understand why their circumstances changed such as, Uma, who to all intents and purposes believed she had been adopted. At 8 years old just after giving her ‘mother’ a bunch of snowdrops, is told she is being put into residential care. It later transpired the birth mother would not give consent. The main reason why children enter care in Romania continues to be poverty and neglect.

Child protection research (particularly in the UK) is usually carried out with children in or just leaving care; Mariela’s research as we know is with adults. This is unusual and very much needed because we get to learn more about them and their journeys, and recognise their ability not just to remember their childhoods, the impact this had, but the reflections and understanding which is not possible for a small child. The quality of care seemed to depend on the relationship children had with their carers, regardless of the type of placement they were in and indeed their current lives.

The voices of those with Care Experience, the detail, the humanity, the variety and richness of experience, despite in some instances cases of abuse and cruelty, contribute an important addition to all those interested in the lives of young people who don’t grow up with their birth families.

Mariela Neagu holds a PhD in Social Sciences and an MSt in International Human Rights Law and from the University of Oxford. She has conducted research with children in state care in several countries and is the author ‘Voices from the Silent Cradles- Life histories of Romania’s looked after children’ (Policy Press, 2021). She has extensive experience in children’s rights having used the UNCRC in her research as well as in her previous policy work for the European Commission office in Romania (1999-2006) and as Head of the National Authority for Children’s Rights in Romania (2007-2009). Mariela’s research can be viewed here.

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[1] Mariela Neagu, Voices from the Silent Cradles: Life Histories of Romania’s Looked-After Children. (Bristol: Policy Press, 2023) p. 1.

[2] Mariela Neagu, ‘Young Adults’ Perspectives on Their Experiences of Different Types of Placement in Romania’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Oxford, 2017).

[3] Mariela Neagu, Voices from the Silent Cradles: Life Histories of Romania’s Looked-After Children. (Bristol: Policy Press, 2023) p. 3

[4] Neagu, p.7

[5] Neagu, p.53

[6] Neagu, p.54

[7] Neagu, p.51

[8] Neagu, p.58

[9] Neagu, p.61

Cuckoo in the Nest by Fran Hill

Cuckoo in the Nest is told from the viewpoint of 14-year-old uber intelligent, poet-in-waiting Jackie Chadwick. This is the voice of a young girl whose world is falling apart. Her mother has died from cancer, her father, an alcoholic is rude and at times physically abusive. So much so, Jackie ends up at A&E.

He was face down on the bed, his bulky frame vanquished by the drink: on his face and off his face at the same time. He had his shirt on but no trousers, only grey Y-fronts. The usual late afternoon uniform. At first, I thought he was awake, but then he snored, suddenly, like an engine being revved.

Jackie’s teachers though are observant and determined that Jackie will be looked after despite the girl’s protestations and inform Social Services, after which she is allocated a Social Worker.

Call-me-Bobbie and I were in the kitchen. We’d left Dad sulking in the front room. He was staring at Jackanory, chain- smoking away resentment. He’d slammed the door shut. I knew he couldn’t wait for Bobbie to be out of the house so that he could open another bottle, but the new one was in the kitchen, on the surface.

After Jackie’s father sprains her wrist which sees her in A&E, and more subsequent violence, her move into care is brought forward. She arrives at the very new (first-timers) foster family’s house and life continues to unravel. Not only has she lost her home – though in this instance at least she still goes to the same school – but her father’s troubles are not over. After a stint in re-hab he falls off the wagon completely and ends up arrested and imprisoned.

Meanwhile, at the Wall House with its new brightly painted yellow room, there are a new set of problems. Their daughter, Amanda has an eating disorder that nobody, apart from Jackie seems to notice.

Amanda puzzled me. She was tall and slender and yet seemed to eat constantly. How do you stay so slim? I asked her one evening, a few days after I’d moved in. She was snaffling her way through a box of Black Magic that Uncle Nick had won in a raffle at school and she’d eaten all the soft centres before deciding to offer them round.

Amanda makes it very clear she is very put out by this ‘cuckoo in the nest’ girl who’s the same age, she had been expecting a cute little three year old. Rude Amanda who is up to all sorts once she is out of the house including stealing, smoking and drinking (the irony is not lost on readers with care experience). The foster family all have secrets. Bridget, who compulsively cleans and plays happy families, is quite shocked when Jackie wants to clean her own room. Nick, a teacher, hides in his man-shed in the garden restoring bicycles but is interested in Jackie’s poetry and eventually they form an uneasy alliance.

‘I can read it to you, if you like.’
‘I would like,’ he said. ‘It’s very lovely so far.’
I read. ‘A kind of winter took you over
with his curious spiteful fingers
mapping you, laying down snow on snow
in your bones so you grew heavy with it.
He lay down with you, whispering numbness until he made you fly as quiet as birds
into his winter heart that folds you now,
tight and gone where sun cannot find you.’

Jackie’s poetry leaves the reader breathless, it’s where all her feelings really lie. The long, hot, and if you were there, unforgettable summer of 1976 creates its own tension mirroring the family unravelling. As Amanda, Bridget and Nick spiral out of control, Jackie’s nervous habit of picking spots on her head becomes worse. As the novel reaches its climax you can feel the heat rising, it’s impossible to find any shade, impossible to hide.

Well-written, the ‘foster’ child, Jackie is a funny, sarcastic, and loyal heroine. One that will hopefully knock Tracy Beaker off her perch (it is time) – Cuckoo in the Nest would make a brilliant film or tv series especially capturing the music and fashions of the time. This is a gentle and realistic novel, well told and full of humour and at times pathos. I admired the sarcasm, chuckled a lot and by the denouement was ringing out my hanky.

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Fran Hill is a 60-year-old self-employed English teacher and writer with two previous books, a memoir and a self-published novella. This is her first full-length work of fiction. She has written extensively for the Times Educational Supplement and lives in Warwickshire with her gardener husband. She has two grandchildren.

Fran was fostered as a teenager and says ‘from my own experience and from years teaching English to vulnerable children, I know how easy it is to make assumptions about ‘disadvantaged’ teenagers. I wanted, through Jackie’s story, to show the incredible strength of many foster children and what they can contribute to their new family.’

Thank you to Legend Press and Fran Hill for the review copy.

Follow Fran on Twitter: @franhill123

A Conversation with Fran Hill

Cuckoo in the Nest

Fran Hill is a 60-year-old retired English teacher and self-employed writer with two previous books: a self-published novella and a memoir. This is her first full-length work of fiction inspired by her time in foster care. She has three grown-up children and two grandchildren and lives in Warwickshire with her gardener husband. 

‘Fresh, authentic and darkly funny. I absolutely loved it’ – Ruth Hogan, bestselling author of The Keeper of Lost Things

It’s the heatwave summer of 1976 and 14-year-old would be poet Jackie Chadwick is newly fostered by the Walls. She desperately needs stability, but their insecure, jealous teenage daughter isn’t happy about the cuckoo in the nest and sets about ousting her.

When her attempts to do so lead to near-tragedy – and the Walls’ veneer of middle-class respectability begins to crumble – everyone in the household is forced to reassess what really matters.

Funny and poignant, Cuckoo in the Nest is inspired by Fran Hill’s own experience of being fostered. A glorious coming of age story set in the summer of 1976.

It is an absolute pleasure to welcome Fran to the blog. I’d like to thank Fran for writing about her novel Cuckoo in the Nest – which I am sure will be a fantastic contribution to care experienced literature.

• Tell us of your journey as a writer.

I wrote as a teenager but am 60 now and only just publishing my first full-length novel. (I’m comforted by stories of septuagenarians winning awards.) In 1995, when my youngest child started school, I signed up to a creative writing class. That tutor said when I read my first piece, ‘Well, we know she can write,’ and I felt warm and fuzzy inside. I started publishing pieces in faith-based magazines, then in the Times Educational Supplement as a teacher, then more widely on and offline, submitting poetry, non-fiction and fiction. I self-published a novella in 2014, had a funny teacher-memoir traditionally published in (lockdown) 2020, and now Cuckoo in the Nest is coming via Legend Press. A protracted journey but a fun ride!  

• How do you see your role as a writer and what do you like most about it?

I want to make people feel things through my writing, whether that’s joy or laughter, empathy or yearning, regret or realisation. For instance, I want them to feel for Jackie Chadwick in Cuckoo in the Nest and to understand how displaced she feels in a family not her own and how conflicted in terms of loyalties. But I also would like them to laugh with her at what she observes in the Wall family and at her incisiveness. Drawing an emotional reaction from readers is the best thing. I want them to have an experience they’ll remember (at the risk of sounding like a holiday promo).  

• What has been your experience of writing about diverse characters?

My memoir Miss, What Does Incomprehensible Mean? contains a varied cast of characters, drawn from my experiences of real colleagues and pupils encountered during my teaching career. I hope they reflect the diversity found in any school, including looked-after children, those with learning difficulties and children (and teachers) with mental health problems such as addictions. My novel Cuckoo in the Nest focuses on a fostered teenager and I hope I have shown to some extent the effects of traumatic experiences and the resilience and support needed to move on from those.   

• If you could be transported instantly, anywhere in the world, where would you most like to spend your time writing? And why?

I’m more of an indoor person than outdoor, so where others might say ‘A house by the beach’ or ‘A wooden hut in the Alps’, I write much better where there is noise, buzz and a coffee machine fussing and huffing. I also love working in libraries. So, when libraries start serving coffee and cake, I will be there before you can say ‘Dewey Decimal system’.  

• What is the one book you wish you had written?

I wish I’d written Cuckoo in the Nest but about 20 years ago. Apart from that, I admire anyone who can write historical fiction. If I’d listened better in my history lessons and not been a complete plonker of a student, I could have been one of them. But I also admire people who write science fiction or fantasy; I find it impossible to move out of the real world into those other-worldly stretches of imagination. My stories always seem to take place in kitchens, at dinner tables, in shops and schools, or the seaside if you’re lucky.    

• What advice do you have for would be novelists?

Don’t be too precious about your writing. Share it with others more experienced and listen and learn from their feedback. This does not include your mum or dog, unless either is a published writer. Choose people who will be honest, preferably those who don’t love you. Also, ask advice from booky people before signing any contract, especially if a publisher tells you your novel is brilliant.  

• Children in care/adults with care experience, often feel stereotyped by their past. How aware of this were you whilst creating your novel?

I deliberately created my character, foster child Jackie, to be less dysfunctional and disruptive than Amanda Wall, the resident teenager.  And what if, I asked myself during the writing, Jackie rescues the Wall family when they are meant to be the ones rescuing her?  

• What are you currently working on? What can we look forward to reading?

I’m drafting a sequel to Cuckoo in the Nest and am four-fifths of the way to a decent manuscript. I’m enjoying myself, writing about a slightly older Jackie Chadwick, especially now I’m through the worst of draft-writing when you see your novel as the literary equivalent of Kilimanjaro.

• Who is your favourite literary character from childhood and why?

I hoovered up Enid Blyton books as a child. She’s fallen out of favour but Blyton was extremely popular then. I memorised whole pages of one particular book, Hollow Tree House, in which children run away and make a new home in the hollow trunk of a giant tree. Its portrayal of neglectful adults, secret hideaways and children longing for escape rang huge bells for me before I was fostered. So, Susan, one of the children, would count as a favourite.  

• What one piece of advice would you give young people leaving the care system today?

My experience was years ago but perhaps what never changes is the lost opportunities because of a disrupted childhood. I should have achieved much more at school than I did but education is a sideshow to the traumatised. So, I’d say, chase those opportunities you missed and hunt them down, taking any support offered to do so. It really is never too late to learn who you are and what you can do.   

Thanks to Fran and Legend Press for a review copy of Cuckoo in the Nest due to be published 26th April in paperback and e-book formats. An audiobook will follow very soon from W F Howes.

Follow Fran on Twitter: @franhill123

Bad Blood

Warning: content may be distressing to some readers.

When researching there are so many garden paths that one can take, it is a wonder anything ever gets finished. Alongside reading books about orphans and care experience in fiction, there is also research and the writing of the PhD novel. You may be researching one thing and accidentally stumble across another. So it was for me when I was campaigning some years ago for an Adoption Apology for mothers who were forced to give up their children in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s; since then there has been some movement from Government which you can read about here.

On Thursday 21st March 2013, in Canberra, Australia — Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard delivered a moving national apology in Parliament to the thousands of unwed mothers who were forced by government policies to give up their babies for adoption over several decades. The committee could not estimate how many adoptions were forced but said they numbered in the thousands.

Here in the UK, the situation was no different. The era was one of intense discrimination and stigmatisation of women who had children outside of marriage. Tens of thousands of women sought the assistance of social services and religious institutions and gave birth in homes for unmarried mothers. These women were often subjected to humiliating, cruel and sometimes criminal practices designed to pressurise them into surrendering their new-born babies to the adoption market.

If you were in the United Kingdom unmarried, pregnant, and without the support of your family, the likelihood was that you would end up in a Mother and Baby home.  These institutions were often run by the church or local government, sometimes a mixture of the two. If the figures for illegitimate births in 1952-1955 were 33,000, it seems likely that the total figure could be hundreds of thousands during the period 1950-1979. If we include the mothers, then we could be looking at many thousands more, who were affected by the stigma of illegitimacy, and the social and political policies of the day.

Photo by Jimmy Conover on Unsplash

As well as the trauma of being rejected by their families, facing the prospect of having to give up their newborn child for adoption, being ritually humiliated and in some instances abused by the people who ran these homes, there were other worrying policies that were enforced by the British Medical Association (BMA).

During the fifties and sixties, in order to enter one of these Mother and Baby homes, the pregnant woman first had to undergo certain invasive medical tests. One of these was for gonorrhea. Having these tests meant getting a medical certificate, without one, the young mother-to-be would not be allowed to enter the home.

Amherst Lodge Mother and Baby Home, Ealing. (Now a luxury block of flats)

What were the reasons for these tests? According to a leading consultant Venereologist, and the Chief Medical Officer of Health at the time, Gonorrhoea, was on the increase in the late 1950s. Of course, a general medical examination of a pregnant woman entering a new establishment was necessary, but to test thousands of women for Gonorrhea – Syphilis, and other venereal diseases; were these necessary? Could it be that testing them for sexual diseases was just another way of demonising them? These unmarried women were often likened to prostitutes. Even more worrying was the testing of newborn babies for sexual diseases. Just as the mother needed a medical certificate to enter the Mother and Baby Home, so the newborn needed a certificate to leave, not with its mother but with its new adoptive parents.

Under Adoption Regulations at the time, the Adoption Act, 1958: The Adoption Agencies Regulations, 1959 – Serological Tests Before Adoption: infants who were to be adopted had to be tested for syphilis. ‘In cases in which there is no history of previous infection – blood tests from mother and baby, when the child is 6 weeks old, if negative, can in my opinion be regarded as a safe basis for adoption…I think the child should be kept under observation and my practice is Wasserman and Kahn[i] tests at 3 monthly intervals for 1½-2 years, then at six monthly intervals until the age of 3 years – one test at 4 years of age and one at 5 years.’[ii]

At the time, it was thought that if a mother’s Wasserman reaction was negative during the pregnancy this did not preclude syphilis in the offspring: and although the mother may transmit the infection while in the incubation period of syphilis or in the seronegative primary stage; it was possible that she could become infected during pregnancy.

The British Medical Association provided a list of venereologists who were willing to carry out examinations and tests on the pregnant mothers and the babies, once born.

‘In small infants it is difficult to obtain blood from the arm, but not from the heel…The blood flows freely and can be collected in a test-tube. 2ml of whole blood is sufficient. The clean cut made by the blade is practically painless; the bleeding soon stops when the tourniquet is removed…’[iii]

Although many members of the medical profession carried out these tests without question and even insisted the child should be brought back for further tests, there was some concern about the way the tests were carried out. The Wasserman test involved obtaining sufficient blood from a small baby, the organising Secretary for Moral Welfare in the Diocese of Southwell at the time, observed, ‘…only a specialist will undertake venous puncture in the skull’.[iv]  The Shrewsbury Diocesan Children’s Rescue Society, one of the adoption agencies of the time, was also concerned, ‘In one case recently, the Doctor inflicted sixteen pricks in vain, with the resulting upset to the child and children concerned.’[v]

A pathologist from Warrington, D.G. Miller, refused to do the test, saying: ‘I do not consider it justified to attempt to extract from so small an infant the relatively large amount of blood necessary for this test. The procedure is not without risk and unless it is essential to save life, I will not do it.’[vi]

It’s questionable if taking blood from an infant’s foot is dangerous, but it appears that many hospitals did not know how to extract the blood properly.

‘Kidderminster General Hospital refused to take blood from any young baby, they tell us that it is dangerous, as it must be taken from a jugular vein. They will not consider a heel stab which all the other hospitals in our County and Diocese use.’[vii]

Other adoption societies wrote to say they had no difficulty in getting their medical certificates completed and blood tests carried out, their babies, coming from ‘Mother and Baby Homes’, all over the country. These adoption societies often gave the new adoptive parents a letter when they received the newborn baby to be passed to their doctor. This suggested that the baby be taken for another Wasserman test at three months.

There was so much doubt about the tests, both the need for the test and how to obtain the blood, that articles were published by Mr Ambrose King in the Lancet[viii] and by Dr Hilda Lewis in the British Medical Journal[ix].

And in some instances, the Organising Secretaries of the Mother and Baby Homes were most surprised at the idea of testing for gonococcal infection, it was felt that “their girls” were not the promiscuous type and were seldom, if ever, infected. Some went even further, ‘Why single out unmarried mothers? Why should not all mothers have this examination?’ And in the Northampton area, apparently: ‘The offer also to take samples of blood for those babies to be placed for adoption did not act as the “selling point”, that the General Secretary, of the Church Assembly Board for Social Responsibility, Church of England Moral Welfare Council, had hoped.’

Indeed, they said the test was valueless at six weeks, as it was useless to take blood before the child was three and half months.

What is even more puzzling is the many reports that claimed gonorrhoea was on the increase, whereas in fact, it was in decline, figures for 1957-1958 showed ‘that very few of these unmarried mothers are, in fact, infected.’[x] As an example, in 1958, figures from the Department of Public Health in Bristol, showed that of the total of new unmarried mothers, 178, who attended a ‘special’ diagnostic clinic only two actually had Gonorrhea.[xi]

If Venereal Disease was on the wain, and the test results on newborn babies were useless, what was the point of these tests? Why traumatise new-born babies from loss of blood, bruised and bloodied arms, feet and even heads (where apparently the veins are more visible). It seems the whole idea of sexual-disease-free certificates had only one ulterior use. Government officials, together with adoption agencies, devised a scheme whereby a newborn baby that was put up for adoption could be handed over to the prospective parents whilst clutching its newly printed medical certificate, presumably to reassure them that the baby was clean and had no ‘bad-blood’ coursing through its veins and came from good stock.

Since writing this research there has been even more movement for a UK Adoption Apology. The Joint Committee on Human Rights launches a new inquiry to understand the experiences of unmarried women whose children were taken and adopted between 1949 and 1976.

The inquiry will examine whether adoption processes respected the human rights, as we understand them now, of the mothers and children who experienced them, as well as the lasting consequences on their lives.

Launching the inquiry, Committee Chair Harriet Harman QC MP said: “Everyone has the right to family life. The Joint Committee on Human Rights will look at whether the right to family life of young unmarried mothers and their children was respected in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. We have launched this inquiry to understand the realities of what the adoption process was like at that time and hear the experiences of those who went through it. The adoptions took place decades ago, but the pain and suffering remains today.”

The inquiry will cover a range of practices that led to the children of unmarried mothers being adopted. The scope of the inquiry will specifically cover issues arising from cases which took place during the time period between the Adoption of Children Act 1949 and the Adoption Act 1976.

• Inquiry: The right to family life: adoption of children of unmarried women 1949-1976
• Joint Committee on Human Rights

 

[i] Test for syphilis. Kahn’s test is faster and simpler than the Wassermann test – which required a two-day incubation period – and can be completed in a matter of minutes. However, it can also be inaccurate and show false positive and negative results.

[ii] Michael Shaw, 27th September 1956

[iii] Ministry of Health File, ‘Examination of unmarried mothers for Venereal Disease, 1958-1960

[iv] Ministry of Health File, ‘Examination of unmarried mothers for Venereal Disease, 1958-1960

[v] Ministry of Health File, ‘Examination of unmarried mothers for Venereal Disease, 1958-1960

[vi] Ministry of Health File, ‘Examination of unmarried mothers for Venereal Disease, 1958-1960

[vii] Ministry of Health File, ‘Examination of unmarried mothers for Venereal Disease, 1958-1960

[viii] Lancet, 10th October 1959, p.553

[ix] British Medical Journal, 16th April 1960, entitled. ‘Medical Responsibility in Adoption’, p.1197-1200

[x] Ministry of Health File, ‘Examination of unmarried mothers for Venereal Disease, 1958-1960

[xi] Ministry of Health File, ‘Examination of unmarried mothers for Venereal Disease, 1958-1960

The Homes by J.B. Mylet

Book Review by Dee Michell

When I told a friend I was reading The Homes by J.B. Mylet, a murder mystery set in an orphanage, he responded by saying: “aren’t all orphanages and children’s homes crime scenes?”

To Mylet’s credit, he doesn’t ignore what we now know about the horrendous happenings in numerous orphanages during the 20^th century— that paedophiles were harboured within; that kids bullied other kids; that physical punishment was rife and harsh; that warmth and affection were often absent —but these are background themes.

As indeed are the murders committed in the grounds of the children’s home in his story, a village of about 1000 children around 16km west of Glasgow.

Instead, and what I loved most, is that The Homes is really about the smart and brave 12-year-old Lesley.

Lesley has been a resident of The Homes since she was a baby. She lives in Cottage 5 with her dearest friend, the irrepressible, voluble Morag Jones—Jonesy—and the two have been best friends their entire short lives.

Lesley’s maternal grandmother visits often, her mother less so. The girl is six before she realises her living arrangement is unusual.

Set in 1963, The Homes is based on stories Mylet’s mother told him about residing at the Orphan Homes of Scotland during the 1950s. The Orphan Homes in the village of Bridge of Weir, Renfrewshire, was founded by William Quarrier (1829-1903), a successful businessman who was influenced to philanthropy because of his own impoverished childhood.

A classic example of what sociologist Erving Goffman would call a “total institution,” around 1000 children plus staff live within the confines of The Homes. Thirty children stay in each cottage under the care of the ‘house mother’ and the ‘house father’ (plus live in cook) and on the grounds there is a school, church, shop, and hospital.

Unlike most of the children she lives with, Lesley gets to escape The Homes every school day. She takes the train to the local grammar school, a state high school that only takes in students who pass an exam at the age of 11. Her love of school, especially maths, allows Lesley to tolerate a long, lonely commute and social isolation at lunchtime.

One day, the body of an older village girl, Jane Denton, is found covered with stab wounds. Shortly after, Sally Ward is missing and later discovered strangled to death.

Lesley and Jonesy are scared, but they’re also excited by the drama. Indeed, Lesley’s school life is transformed as everyone wants to hear about the murders.

When the police fail to locate the killer, Lesley and Jonesy decide to solve the crime themselves.

Throughout the story we learn about how few people Lesley can trust. The onsite counsellor, Eadie, is one, but even Eadie heartbreakingly disappears. Her mother, she discovers, has been hiding an entire family from Lesley, and her darling grandmother, a reliable visitor who often sneaks the child money for sweets, is complicit in the lie.

What Mylet has done extraordinarily well is create the emotional life of a small girl living in a strange and frightening situation. He has also devoloped a fabulous character in Lesley; she is intelligent, inquisitive, caring, compassionate and courageous, as well as vulnerable and in the process of learning some tough lessons about life.

I finished the book feeling horrified by finding out the identity of the murderer but also keen to know what Lesley does next.

Thanks to Viper/Profile books for a review copy of The Homes.

Dr Dee Michell is an academic at The University of Adelaide. She was made a Ward of the South Australian State in 1960 and remained in foster care for 15 years. From 2013 to 2016, Dee has worked on many projects including the history of foster care in Australia and more recently Care Leaver Activism & Advocacy: From Deficit Models to Survivor Narratives – both with Nell Musgrove, Australian Catholic University. Dee also works with Rosie Canning on the Care Experience & Culture digital archive.

Follow Dee on Twitter: @DrDeeMichell

J.B. Mylet was inspired to write The Homes by the stories his mother told him about her childhood. She grew up in the infamous Quarrier’s Homes in Scotland in the 1960s, along with a thousand other orphaned or unwanted children, and did not realise that children were supposed to live with their parents until she was seven. He felt this was a story that needed to be told. He lives in London.

Follow J.B. Mylet on Twitter: @JamesMylet

Rousseau and The Paris Foundling Hospital

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Born: 28 June 1712 Geneva
Died: 2 July 1778 Ermenonville
Partner: Thérèse Levasseur (1745–1778)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a philosopher, writer, and composer. He was in kinship and foster care as a child. Rousseau’s mother died shortly after his birth and his father abandoned him when he was 10. Young Jean-Jacques was sent to live with an uncle, who had the child fostered out. From about age 14 Jean-Jacque was on his own. He was often homeless and did a variety of working-class jobs to support himself. Jean-Jacque was fortunate at the age of 16 to meet Francois-Louise de Warens (1690-1762), who took the boy in and supported him financially and emotionally.

His political philosophy – outlined in the Discourse on Inequality (1754) and The Social Contract (1762) – was a key influence during the Enlightenment, an intellectual movement in the 17th and 18th centuries which advanced ideas such as religious tolerance, individual rights and a focus on reason and science rather than religious dogmatism.

The Confessions (1782) published posthumously, is widely regarded as the first modern autobiography. It is an astonishing work of acute psychological insight. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) argued passionately against the inequality he believed to be intrinsic to civilized society. Rousseau believed that society has an enormous influence on human development and behaviour. In Confessions, he wrote a detailed account of his life from the formative experience of his humble childhood in kinship care and then in foster care, through the achievement of international fame as novelist and philosopher in Paris, He explained how his own experiences shaped his personality, views, neuroses, and imperfections.

It took more than 200 years for Rousseau’s basic ideas to be formally adopted by many western education systems, though now they’re accepted in our contemporary culture: children are very different from adults; they need protection from harm; they need love and security; they are full of joy and curiosity and have a natural urge to understand the world.

According to Rousseau, childhood has to be respected and revered. Children should not be subjected to threats, smacks or other punishments.

In modern times we have only recently endorsed the importance of ‘children’s voices’

Rousseau had a long-term relationship with Thérèse Levasseur, a barely literate working-class woman he met in 1745. He was seen as being radical and was anti-verbal lessons and instruction he believed children learnt by experience alone, which encouraged thought. Instruction is bad because it is not natural. Children should be guided how to learn for themselves. He who wrote a long book Emile, Or Treatise on Education (1762) about just the right way to raise children. And yet he sent his own children, five of them to the Paris Foundling Hospital immediately upon birth. He never knew or even saw them.

Édouard Gelhay, Aux enfants-assistés: L’abandon, (1886).

He says that at the time he was not troubled by his conscience and the only reason he did not boast openly of his actions was to save the feelings of his mistress (the mother), who did not agree with the decision.  He claimed abandoning one’s children at the Foundling Hospital was “the custom of the country” as told by the “fundamentally decent” men at the dining establishments he frequented. He regarded children as a considerable inconvenience, abandoning them was a socially acceptable way to relieve oneself of it, problem solved.

Rousseau was eventually troubled by his conscience about the way he had disposed of his children: I will only say that this error was such that in handing over my children to be raised at public expense, since I had not the means to bring them up myself, in ensuring that they became labourers and peasants rather than adventurers and fortune seekers, I believed that I was acting as a true citizen and father (Rousseau, 348).

He considered making a public confession at the start of Emile but thought better of it!

And yet, a baby at the Paris Foundling Hospital had only a two thirds chance of surviving its first year and only a five percent chance of reaching maturity. These are facts which Rousseau could have determined without much difficulty if he had investigated.

 

Ref:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau#Final_years

Were Rousseau’s Children Victims of His Moral Theory?

https://www.nurseryworld.co.uk/features/article/early-years-pioneers-jean-jacques-rousseau

Rousseau’s children

My Name is Leon

My Page Forty-Three…

My Name Is Leon with Cole Martin as the young lead star. (Image credit: BBC)

“When Sir Lenny Henry was narrating the audiobook version of Kit de Waal’s novel My Name Is Leon, he had decided by lunchtime on the first day of recording that he wanted to make a TV version happen.”[i]

That was six years ago. The result was Friday night’s BBC2 90-minute one-off drama about Leon, a nine-year-old boy at the mercy of the foster care and adoption system along with his beloved baby brother after their mother (played by Poppy Lee Friar) has a mental breakdown. Lenny said: “I just found myself swept up in this kid’s world. And I found myself really moved by his predicament, being a mixed race kid who’s got a younger brother who’s white with blue eyes, and the threat of being separated from his brother causing him to take certain actions.”

De Waal says she didn’t set out for the book to have an explicit message. “But if people take anything away from it, it’s that there are a lot of children in the care system that don’t get adopted, and whenever possible, siblings should be kept together,” she says. “I worked on the adoption panel and, of necessity, siblings are split up all the time. It still happens today. It’s a phenomenon of children going into the care system.[ii]

Cole Martin, who plays Leon in the BBC adaptation, is exceptional. I had no doubt de Waal’s protagonist had been brought to life. So many layers, Leon’s slow realisation of losing his brother through adoption, racism, and the loss of innocence as he begins to understand the police, he looked up to, are responsible for killing Castro, Tufty’s friend.

Cole’s acting reminded me a little of Khoji in Mike McKenzie’s short film Be-Longing, played by Casey Mckenzie (Mike’s nephew) he brought alive the powerful emotions of what it is like to be a voiceless child in foster care. Casey was Nominated for best Child Actor at the Indie Short Fest. LA. I’m sure there will be many future awards given to My Name is Leon.

I had been looking forward to seeing the TV adaption, but I was also wary, I didn’t want to prod old scars. When I first read the novel, particularly page 43, I had an overwhelming visceral response and found myself buried in an avalanche of feelings. Louise Beech talks about this in Daffodils how the old wounds have scabbed over but underneath the cesspit is still there (though she didn’t use the word cesspit). Louise’s memoir is unusual because it is a family memoir, the voices of herself and three siblings are with her the whole way through. They managed to stay together apart from one period when they were separated from their baby brother, who was put into a foster home. The twins and Louise were sent to their grandmother, but eventually they moved back home and stayed together as a family. Their bond unbreakable, their story full of pathos and humour.

Bits of my story are not dissimilar to Leon’s. When I was six and a half, my mother took myself and my five-year-old and eleven-month-old brothers to the local clinic. In those days clinics were very much a community centre. She said she was going shopping and would be back later, but she never did come back. Five-year-old brother went to stay with my grandparents as he always did in times of crisis, and myself and baby brother were put into a foster home.

Unlike Leon, who was safer with his foster carer Maureen (Monica Dolan in the BBC2 adaptation), the foster home I was sent to was no safer than the house I had just left. The K’s had two children of their own and were brutal and violent, but only to me. Like Leon, I had been a mini-mum to my baby brother, *David even though I was only five and a half when he was born. Our mother often went out and left me looking after both brothers. I remember one day when the baby was crying, I knew he needed milk but I also knew our mum would be angry if I used the milk in the fridge so I made up a baby bottle and topped the milk up in the fridge with water. (She later discovered this and told me I was silly, she hadn’t meant don’t feed the baby only for us not to drink it). I loved David with the passion of a first-time mum and I can remember when my first son was born the familiarity of looking after a baby washed over me, I had done this before, I had cared and fiercely loved before.

A few months after living with the K’s, I went to school as usual, and that day when I came home David was gone. There were no explanations. Reading through my files this huge loss is not mentioned at all. Nobody explained where he’d gone, nobody even bothered to pre-warn me. The only reference I can find is a report by a social worker who wrote: “The K’s told me how Rosemary is obsessed with the idea of having a baby. She embarrassed them by remarking in a loud voice, on a bus, that she will have a baby as soon as she leaves school (not, however, mentioning marriage) and is always talking about it. She continues to be difficult, but the K’s seem very understanding and patient. She does not, however get on with the other children, and often causes trouble.”

I’m glad to see my spirit was not broken by the foster parent’s cruelty. The reality was nothing like it is painted in that social worker’s report. A couple of years later I reported the K’s, but was not believed.

I buried the pain and trauma of losing my brother. Page 43 of My Name is Leon dug it all up:

Wouldn’t you like Jake to be in a family with a mum and dad of his own?…Leon, we’ve got a family that want to look after Jake. They want to be Jake’s new parents. Isn’t that good, Leon? Jake is going to have a new mummy and daddy…Do you understand, Leon? Jake is going to be adopted. That means he’s going to have a new forever family. p.43[iii]

I wasn’t expecting such a strong reaction. All those feelings of losing David resurfaced and I cried on and off for days.

When I first read My Name is Leon, I wrote:

The writing is exquisite, powerful, and realistic. De Waal captures the voice of a traumatised child. Leon experiences what it is like to be nine years old and taken away from a mother and brother whom you love and adore. To be left alone in a strange world where all your belongings have disappeared and living with a stranger whose house rules you have to get used to. As young as he is, Leon finds new ways to live his life without his mother and brother whilst learning to overcome unbearable loss.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was of course writing about myself. Louise Beech says in her memoir Daffodils which is about the consequences of an attempted suicide by her mother and her erratic childhood that all her stories were life writing, all her stories had at their heart autobiographical truths about her interrupted childhood.

After Jake’s adoption, the story follows Leon, and a single summer of his life while he struggles to adapt to life on his own. The story is set in 1981 when a number of momentous things were happening in the UK; IRA bombs, hunger strikes, the riots and the Royal Wedding of Diana to Charles. De Waal wanted to illustrate that while all these big things were happening, one little boy was lost and grieving and going unnoticed. But Leon had a secret plan, one day he’ll rescue Jake and his mum.

Meanwhile, when foster carer Maureen is taken ill, Leon is sent to live with her sister, Sylvia (Olivia Williams in the BBC production) rather than a new foster placement. His social worker gets him a bike and with this, he gains a sort of freedom. On one of his rides, he goes to the Rookery Road Allotments where he meets Tufty, who reminds him of his dad. Tufty (Malachi Kirby) teaches him about planting seeds:

‘…these plants need support. They need to hold on to something strong while they’re growing. They curl round the bamboo and then, couple of months’ time, we get some beans.’[iv]

My Name Is Leon on BBC2 sees Malachi Kirby play allotment enthusiast Tufty Burrows who Leon meets at the allotment. (Image credit: BBC)

As Leon gets to know the people at the allotments, he begins to experience a sense of peace and more than that, a sense of belonging. In Friday night’s BBC2 adaptation, the drama comes to a close with Leon busily caring for his plants at the allotment:

‘Tufty’s teaching me about cuttings. You need to keep them warm and watered, and take care of them. Sometimes it takes time for the roots to grow properly, but they’re going to be strong, like the plant they came from. That’s what I think of you and Mum. We’re being taken care of in different places, but we’re cuttings from the same plant.’[v]

Belonging is all about roots, that feeling of putting a plant in the ground, watering it, watching it grow, revelling in the flower or fruit it produces. I imagine that feeling of roots deep in the ground, a little shift here or there, lodged, facing the sun, at home in the earth.

‘…I am aged maybe 6, in shorts and stripy top, on the pink porch of our Devon house. Lillian is there with me, in her yellow patterned summer dress with blue butterfly-wing brooch, sitting, smiling, patiently podding peas into her dented aluminium colander. And as I pick up a pod and help her, I know this is what safety will forever taste like: garden peas freshly picked from the lap of your new mum.’ – Plot 29, Allan Jenkins

Children in care, separated siblings, somehow survive the most excruciatingly traumatic episodes of their life and like all humans, many go on to grow wholesome and fulfilling lives. Leon found a place to belong, I hope you do too.

*David is a pseudonym

Siblings Together is a UK based charity that promotes positive contact between brothers and sisters separated in foster care, kinship care, residential care, or adoption.

[i] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-61730891

[ii] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-61730891

[iii] Kit De Waal, My Name is Leon. Penguin; 1st edition (London: Penguin, 2017) p.43

[iv] Kit De Waal, My Name is Leon. Op. cit., p.105

[v] Cole Martin, My Name is Leon, (BBC2 10^th June, 2022) https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00184br/my-name-is-leon