PowerPoint Presentation

Telling you how it is

11People think that once your adopted thats it youre OK, Youre lucky.. We are here to tell you it is not as simple as that2I was adopted age 5 and I will always remember the day of meeting my new family. I remember the excitement i had when it came to the day I moved out of foster care to being in a loving home with real parents. Throughout the years i have always been open and honest about being adopted and people have always seemed interested. Throughout primary school I was never bullied for it because Other children didnt know what adoption was, but everything changed when secondary school came along. It was year 8/9 when the bullying started to occur and I began to take things to heart. The things that were said to me were terrible for example ..youre a freak, you deserve to be alone.no one even cares about you.no wonder your parents put you into care. This carried on for months and after a while I blocked the open world and kept myself enclosed, I started to self harm as i thought that the blade was my only friend. In the end my whole year hated me and I felt alone and tried to take my own life. I had a note prepared ,had cuts on my arm and was unconscious on the floor. My mum found me and took me straight to the hospital ,after this everything got sorted out and I eventually started to gain friends again. Now everything is perfect, I have contact with my birth family and see them every couple of months. My friends understand and I love talking about being adopted. I will never be ashamed of my parents. It has been lovely meeting other teenagers like me who are adopted It has been good sharing our pasts and our experiences. NEVER be ashamed of being adopted ,be proud of it and be open. You are special in your own way.

3Well at least my parents wanted me. Wow. I hadnt expected that to be the comeback in the argument I was having with the girl in my PE class. It didnt shock me that she knew I was adopted; I had always been open with people about it because my mum had always been open with me about it. I thought if people knew about it; it would mean they wouldnt be mean about it.This was in the first year of high school and it wasnt the first time that comments had been made in school about the fact that I was adopted; it was just more disappointing because I had hoped it would have been different at high school. Deciding to walk away from the girl seemed to be the best idea and I didnt want her to see that her comment had stung. She wasnt having this and followed me saying Come on Tracey Beaker dont you have anything to say?This was just the right thing to say to me, she quite clearly didnt even know the difference between fostering and adoption. It sounds mean but I found it most helpful to feel sorry for her because she was so clueless she didnt know Tracey Beaker wasnt adopted. Although I carried on ignoring her while she made comment after comment about how I was never wanted, I thought about how daft you would have to be to not know the difference between fostering and adoption, and smiled inside and this became my kind of shield against her none of her comments would stick because of my shield. Im 20 now and at university. I found when I went to college and university people were much more understanding and instead of using it against me they were just interested to find out about it. Now Im older I think bullying because of adoption only carries on because they dont know about it.

My adoptive mum always told me how much she loved me when she tucked me in at night, that I was a special baby. I was chosen by an angel, but the other kids didnt always understand. I was so proud that my mummy and daddy chose me and shouted it in the playground, but the other kids were so cruel, as if I was something alien.I got called some awful things like freak, unwanted, dustbin baby I even got called an orphan! Apparently my mum and dad killed themselves because I was so ugly and they hated me. I knew it was a load of rubbish but it brought a lump in my throat, played on my mind. I didnt know how to cope with all the different emotions. I felt like I couldnt talk to my adoptive parents about my birth parents, because what if I upset them? It made them feel like I was pushing them out or didnt care about them any more? It took a while to pluck up the courage, but I did it!

By the time i got to 16 years old I was really depressed and even felt suicidal. At that point my parents got me in touch with a counsellor from a Children's charity. I began to talk things through and explore my feelings and realized that i need to know about my past. there were too many gaps like a jigsaw puzzle with too many missing pieces. I needed to satisfy my curiosity about why I had been adopted. I had photos but no feelings .i had a collection of emotional letters from my birth mother via the letterbox which had been saved up for when i was older but nothing made any sense because i had no memories of my birth family .I started working with an adoption support worker who talked to me and my adopted mum about finding out more info for me. He looked into my files and told me more and then wrote to my birth mum and went to meet her to suss her out. The whole thing was very slow and took about 18 months till I finally met Looking back I think I needed to have some control over my life.i hadnt had a choice about being adopted or a choice about which family I went to. Teenagers dont have control over much anyway but I needed to do something for me on my own terms.During this time I was part of a group of adopted teenagers that met up every week to do work for the council on what teenagers think of the services they get. It was really good to meet up with others my age in my situation. It was good that we had a job to do because I wouldnt have been happy about being part of a group that just talked adoption all the time.Looking back i just felt on my own back when i was 15. I didnt know who to approach for help and was glad it all worked out in the End. The older I have got and the more control I have over things the better I have felt about everything.

Now youve heard some of our stories here are some of the ways we think school life can be made better for us

Forever learningWe believe all schools with adopted people as well as other children who are fostered or in care should have.

Training for teachers, by specialists to help them understand the issues for us and why we sometimes get anxious, sad, feel mixed up, empty, confused, angry and lonely.

Presentations and assembliesfrom adopted people so other students understand it.

Lessons about adoption we learn about LBGT, different cultures and religions why not adoption/ fostering and children in care?

To have someone in school who actually understands what adoption might mean to us and it not just be any person who is available.

If its out in the open we feel we can talk about it, rather than feeling ashamed or bottling it up because were scared we will get bullied for it or people wont understand.

8We are not looking to get away with murderWe know that being adopted is not an excuse for our behaviour

We believe that if schools and their teachers understand adoption and know who ALL the adopted people in their school are then this might

Stop teachers making snap judgements on our behaviour, ask us what would help and speak to us first if they intend to contact out parents.

Provide us with support rather than a punishment. Often we need someone to talk to and listen. Someone who understands our situation and can help us deal with our emotions.

Stop the bullying by being more open and honest about adoption and improving how bullying is tackled.

Help us meet with other adopted teenagers. Often there are other adopted teens in our school, but we dont know who they are. We have loved meeting other people and making new friends.

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This presentation was brought to you by AT-ID

This group was formed in 2014 to give adopted teens a voice and an opportunity to have in say in what they want.The group met regularly over a year and worked incredibly hard to create a resource that they believe will benefit many adopted teenagers.The main aim is to create connections and friendships and give adopted teens a safe space to be themselves.

There are 5 main parts to the project

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