Mother and baby home stories
A social history project
Taken: Experiences of Forced Adoption
A forthcoming book will tell the collected tales from mothers and their children whose lives have been impacted by the mother and baby homes in the UK.
In 1978 I was ‘packed off’ to a mother and baby home many miles from where I lived… I had just turned 15 and I didn’t have any choice or say in the matter.
I’m 61 now and I spent my whole life trying to understand what actually happened to me and the other young women in that home.
I have written a book about the experiences of other women and adult adoptees. It’s extremely important that these deeply personal histories are recorded and told. Taken: Experiences of Forced Adoption will be published in November 2024.
For many, this book may well be a troubling and disconcerting read, whether or not you have lived experience of forced adoption. Collecting these personal testimonies and rendering them onto the page has been moving and at times emotionally challenging for me.
Karen Constantine
Writer
Seeking an adoption apology
A few years ago I started a MFA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck University London, researching and writing a girl to teen memoir. In turn this lead me to speaking with other women and adult adoptees, and finding out about the need for an adoption apology. Since then I’ve lobbied for that apology using my political network – I’m a Kent County Councillor (Labour). I’ll continue to do all I can to make this much needed apology a reality.
In January 2024 the BBC invited me on to Sunday Politics South East, which I agreed to do if we discussed the issue of forced adoptions. The 10 minute segment featured Veronica Smith from Seaford who was forced to give up her daughter in the 1960s and is now calling on the government to make an official apology.
I then explained some of what happened to me in 1978 and talked about my conversations with women and adult adoptees. These collected stories will be the foundation for the book which, I hope will bring this ‘hidden’ social scandal out from the shadows.
Rattlechops sample chapter
My second book, a memoir will be published in 2025. Rattlechops details my time in a Catholic mother and baby home in Coleshill, Birmingham. Just as important is the preceding period at home and at school, where sex education is scant but the pressures to ‘do it’ are all around. These themes appear in conversations I’ve had with other women and I hope to document more stories with different angles in my next book. In the meantime, I have posted a chapter from Rattlechops to give a flavour of my Stoke-on -Trent in the 1970s.
Get in touch
Phone number
If you’d prefer to chat:
07984 532212
Address
4 Royal Road,
Ramsgate, Kent. CT11 9LE