Beth Clarke Trustee Expand How did you become involved with adoption and Adoption UK? When my wife and I were approved to adopt we became members of Adoption UK and actually found our wonderful daughter in a publication that was produced then called ‘Children who Wait’. Our daughter was four when she arrived into our family and inevitably needed considerable love, patience and nurture. The on-line support and eagerly awaited arrival of the Adoption UK magazine helped us enormously in our attempt to parent therapeutically and continues to do so. Being an avid follower of Adoption UK on twitter, I saw the organisation were advertising for Trustees. I felt the time was right for us as a family to ‘give something back’. Any specific skills or areas of expertise relevant to the work of Adoption UK? I am a primary school Headteacher and believe that teaching has been a true vocation for me. Always wanting to improve my practice as a teacher I studied for my Masters in Education Degree which was awarded in 2003. Passionate about education and improving the life chances of all children, on appointment as Headteacher, I began to study for my Doctorate in Education and this was awarded in 2012. My background in education and as an adoptive parent allows me unique insight into the challenges presented for some adoptive children in school. I hope these insights prove useful not only to Adoption UK as an organisation but also to the wider members. How do you want to see Adoption UK develop over the next five years? There has been a significant acknowledgement in recent years of the challenges faced by Adoptive children, much of which stems from their early childhood experiences. Adoption UK proactively raises awareness of the vulnerabilities of our children through key publications like, Bridging the Gap Giving adopted children an equal chance in school. These messages need to get to the heart of school improvement planning. I would like to see Adoption UK support more teachers in the classroom so they are better able to meet the needs of our children. I would like to see every adoptive family become a member of Adoption UK and continue to be members as our children move through adolescence into adulthood. Together our collective voice is stronger.
Clare Hudson Trustee Expand How did you become involved with adoption and Adoption UK? I first became involved with Adoption UK when my partner and I adopted a four year old girl seven years ago. We were given a high degree of support in the months leading up to our daughter’s placement with us and in the year following her arrival. We knew that was unusual, and my years of involvement with AUK have only served to underline how unusual it was. I have received a great deal of support and insight from meeting other adopters through AUK, as well as the staff and volunteers who work here in Wales. I would like to think that by being involved I can help ensure that future adopters have the kind of positive experience that we had at the outset. Any specific skills or areas of expertise relevant to the work of Adoption UK? I have worked in the media for most of my adult life - first as a print journalist, then as an investigative reporter and producer for ITV, and later as a programme commissioner for the BBC in Wales. This has given me an in-depth knowledge of how newsrooms and the media generally work, which I hope to use to help AUK get our key messages across . It has also given me an understanding of how messages need to be tailored to reach different kinds of audiences, and how campaigns of different sorts need to be able to tell a strong “story”. I sit on the Boards of several organisations and have learned that offering constructive challenge and lots of support is what works best at this level - and there should always be space to celebrate achievement.
Eleanor Bradford Trustee, Scotland Expand How did you become involved with adoption and Adoption UK? I was given membership of Adoption UK by my local council when I adopted two boys in 2013. My partner and I were unusual in that we were adopting brothers aged 3 and 7. Sadly, the chances of being adopted decline sharply for children over 5. I found the magazine to be a great source of advice, and also attended a couple of workshops. Shortly after I saw an advert looking for trustees, and applied. Any specific skills or areas of expertise relevant to the work of Adoption UK? I have worked in the media and communications industry for more than 20 years. I spent most of my career as a correspondent with the BBC before leading the Communications department of Aberdeen University, then as a senior partner in a PR company and I am currently Head of PR and Marketing for a very well known independent school. My focus is helping the charity to champion the interests of adoptive families through the press and social media. How do you want to see Adoption UK develop over the next five years? My adoption experience was fairly smooth but we still faced many tricky issues such as lying, stealing and toileting problems. Adoption UK already offers a helpline and online forum for advice, but I'd like to see the charity develop a larger online resource of factsheets and information. It would also be great if we could put training videos on our website, for parents to access when it suits them.
Emily Boardman Trustee Expand How did you become involved with adoption and Adoption UK?I am a solicitor who does a lot of work with birth families and adopters and I have become increasingly interested in how we support children moving into adoption, and their parents. I deal with care proceedings every day and see in great detail the difficult start that so many adopted children have and I cannot understand why these children and their adoptive families are not given every available resource to assist them.As a national organisation with a big voice Adoption UK is perfectly placed to lobby for the support these kids need and support their families and I am excited to be a part of that.Any specific skills or areas of expertise relevant to the work of Adoption UK? I have been a solicitor dealing with family law since 2002 and I bring to Adoption UK knowledge about the legal system, and access to the judiciary and other professionals involved in family justice. Family courts can be private places and as a consequence there are many misunderstandings about family justice in the public arena. I hope it will be very helpful to Adoption UK to have a trustee who has been in this system for so long.How do you want to see Adoption UK develop over the next five years? I would like Adoption UK membership to be essential for every adopter or prospective adopter. With that growth in membership our voice will grow stronger and we will continue to select carefully which areas to concentrate on. I am especially pleased to join Adoption UK at a time when we are focusing on support in education and giving adopted children an equal chance in schools.
Jeremy Langley Trustee Expand How did you become involved with adoption and Adoption UK? When I met my now-husband in 2008 I knew he was a committed ‘no-family’ man but with the support of an enthusiastic Mother-in-law and slow determination we adopted our son in 2015. Since he came to us we’ve ‘consumed’ many post-adoption services including PAS, Virtual Schools, Therapeutic services, SALT, OD, EHCP and we now have some knowledge of the challenges (and the many abbreviations!). I come from a generation of gay men for whom having a family was largely unthinkable and so changes in legislation and attitude opened up new doors which made the unthinkable thinkable. We signed up with AUK early in the adoption process to access their forums and understand the experience of adoptive parents and have stayed since. Any specific skills or areas of expertise relevant to the work of Adoption UK? I’ve spent most of my professional life growing technology businesses, and my particular strengths lie in strategic Marketing and Sales. I like to think that these skills will be come in good stead in my role as a Trustee in helping support work around membership engagement and organisational strategy. My experience as a two-Dad family will also hopefully bring some value on the AUK Trustee board How do you want to see Adoption UK develop over the next five years? I am a firm believer that to make the biggest differences to the lives of adoptive families AdoptionUK needs to focus on fearless campaigning. Being an adoptive parent is not easy, and often requires us to each campaign on our child’s behalf – AUK should be one step ahead of us in leading the way by demanding the changes that we need to help our children succeed to help smoothe our paths. I also believe we have a role to represent families who have other forms of permanence – including long-term fostering, kinship carers and SGOs - and who will also need to find ways of dealing with the effects of trauma and separation. As a Trustee I see my job as helping to ensure we stay independent, unaligned (expect to adoptive families) and fearless.
Melissa Shackleton Trustee Expand How did you become involved with adoption and Adoption UK? I am a grown up adoptee and have followed Adoption UK on Facebook and simply saw a Trustee role advertised and thought why not go for it! Previously I wasn’t even aware that the support services existed. Any specific skills or areas of expertise relevant to the work of Adoption UK? My career has been in Marketing and E-commerce with a luxury retailer and I have no experience of working within the charity sector. But my experience of building a brand from the very beginning means that I am resourceful in my thinking and understand how to grow awareness of brands through campaigns and PR activities. Focusing on stories and good content can make a real difference to brand reach. Coming from a commercial background, membership growth at Adoption UK is an area which my past experience can really help. As an adoptee who had very little awareness of Adoption support services previously. I would like to help Adoption UK become more widely known and help not just families who are going through adoption but older children and young adults.
Mike Rebeiro Chair Expand How did you become involved with adoption and Adoption UK? My wife and I adopted two siblings in 2007 and they are growing up into great young adults. But from our own experience we know that adopters, special guardians and their children need ongoing support. This is an exciting opportunity to bring together my personal and professional interests in support of the work of an organisation that is already making a big difference to some of the most vulnerable children in the UK. Adoption UK does a fantastic job of supporting families, giving them a safe place to connect, and providing a powerful advocacy voice with both central and devolved government. After a near 30 year career in corporate law I’m happy to be able to use my skills and experience to support Adoption UK in this vital work, so that all of our children can grow to have happy and independent adult lives. Any specific skills or areas of expertise relevant to the work of Adoption UK? Adoption UK puts adopters and their children at the heart of all it does, from services to advocacy. As an adopter myself, I fully support that approach and am looking forward to building on it for the future. The vast majority of Adoption UKs trustees are adopters themselves and or were adopted, so we share many of the same challenges and joys as the community we seek to support. We are looking at a range of ways to engage with adopters and special guardians more directly and consistently, to make sure everything we do is grounded in reality and designed to make the biggest possible difference to families’ lives. During my legal career I played an active role in the firm’s LGBT and BAME employee groups, and am passionate about diversity. For the past decade I have also been busy volunteering for organisations that work with disadvantaged children. At Action for Children I helped to raise £12 million as co-chair of an annual corporate sleep-out event, Byte Night. I was a trustee of Drive Forward Foundation – a charity that helps young care leavers into full time employment.How do you want to see Adoption UK develop over the next five years? The last year has brought many challenges for adopters and special guardians. Adoption UK has done a marvellous job of adapting to the needs of the community it serves. I think we will need to continue to find new ways of doing things and providing our services digitally as we adapt to a “new norm”. Adopted and SGO children face particular challenges in education and we will continue to work with schools and governments to ensure that their needs are met. We need to ensure that Adopters from a BAME background are not unfairly prejudiced by either the adoption process or the support that they can seek. In England, we will need to continue to work with the newly established Regional Adoption Agencies to ensure that adopters are being well supported before and after the transition from local authorities. Finally, we need to engage more fully with the challenges that adoptive and SGO families have in juggling home life with work – this has become sharpened with so many of us working from home in lockdown. We will need to engage actively with the business community to raise awareness of the issues we face.
Tony Eastwood Trustee - Finance Scrutiny Committee Member Expand How did you become involved with adoption and Adoption UK?My wife and I adopted three siblings in 2012 through our local council’s adoption placement service and soon after joined an Adoption UK local support group run by volunteers, where we met peer adopters and were able to share stories and talk to people who understood our situation. More than seven years later and with time to spare and (I thought) skills to offer, I approached Adoption UK to see if there was anything I could do to help them in repayment for their early support to my family, leading to me becoming a Trustee of Adoption UK in September 2019 and Chair of Adoption UK’s Finance & Scrutiny Committee. Any specific skills or areas of expertise relevant to the work of Adoption UK?Aside from having been through the adoption screening process and being a parent to thee wonderful, but at times challenging, children I have observed over time family, friends and professionals in the education system fail to fully understand the long term effects of trauma and insecure attachment in early childhood on adopted children’s self-esteem and ability to learn and the style of parenting that is often needed to employ with adopted children. I therefore have the personal experience to understand the mission of Adoption UK and am pleased to be a part of the Board of Trustees. In my professional life I work in an industry that is subject to a great deal of regulation and which requires good governance and oversight and I work regularly with senior leadership teams and Boards of companies. Charities are similarly subject to specific requirements and regulations across the UK and need an equivalent level of scrutiny and oversight, which I hope I will be able to meaningfully contribute to in the coming years. How do you want to see Adoption UK develop over the next five years?I would wish Adoption UK to continue to build its membership base and volunteer groups to foster an even greater sense of community and shared experience among adopters, adoptees and prospective adopters. I also support the Adoption UK aim to become the partner of choice to governments, local authorities and schools for advice, guidance and support in relation to the types of issues we see in adopted (but also in birth family) children. Finally, I would want Adoption UK to continue its excellent advocacy and research work, with more well researched, well presented and impactful reports around this topic to influence the decision makers in the sphere of children and young persons welfare, care and protection, especially for those who have suffered abuse, neglect or trauma in their early lives.
Wesley Graham Trustee Expand How did you become involved with adoption and Adoption UK? My wife and I adopted our son 10 years ago after he lived with us for one year on a fostering basis. We became involved with Adoption UK through attending the parenting course, ‘A Piece of Cake’, now called ‘Parenting our Children’, which we found extremely helpful in understanding the reasons behind our son’s behaviour. We also attended our local AUK support group and after about a year I was asked to became the volunteer co-ordinator for this group. I agreed to do so as I wanted to give something back to AUK for the help and support they had given to us. I was asked to join the AUK Advisory Group in Northern Ireland three years ago and have been the Chair of that group for the past 18 months. Any specific skills or areas of expertise relevant to the work of Adoption UK? My role as a volunteer support group co-ordinator and lived experience as an adoptive parent has given me insight into the needs of adoptive families. I worked for 11 years as a Senior Commissioner responsible for commissioning community-based health and social care services. This role has given me knowledge and experience of health and social care systems and the relationships between the Department of Health, commissioning bodies and provider organisations. It also has also given me extensive experience of financial management and corporate governance. I currently sit as an independent member of my local Trust Adoption Panel whose job it is to assess the suitability of prospective adopters, decide whether adoption is in a child’s best interests and to match children with suitable prospective adopters. I think that this experience and the knowledge and skills I have gained within the statutory / public sector are transferable to my role as Trustee. How do you want to see Adoption UK develop over the next five years? I would like to see all adoptive families becoming members of AUK and benefiting from that membership through peer support, training and counselling where appropriate. Based on my own experience of the TESSA programme (Therapeutic Education and Support Service in Adoption) in Northern Ireland, I think the roll out of this programme to other UK nations would be an invaluable resource to adoptive families (and teachers and social workers who could refer into the service) and I would like to see this become widespread in the next five years. I would also like more teachers and social workers in particular to see the benefit of having closer links with AUK in terms of the training and professional development opportunities that AUK can for developing their own knowledge of early childhood trauma and neglect and the impact that this can have on children and their adoptive families. I would therefore like to see more widespread professional and corporate membership uptake with the ultimate result of having social service providers and schools that are more understanding and appreciative of the needs of adoptive families.