Co-Chairs: Dr Ruth Beecher, and Dr Claudia Soares
Across Britain during the three decades following the end of the Second World War more than 250,000 children born to mostly young, unmarried mothers were adopted by married couples usually unable to conceive naturally. These adoptions were closed, meaning the child's birth identity was legally severed from their mother and replaced with a new adoptive one. Births often occurred in mother and baby homes hidden from view to preserve secrecy, anonymity and respectability. Throughout, what were perceived as the best interests of the child were used to justify the place of adoption within the postwar welfare state.
Over the past two decades birth mothers have challenged prevailing narratives of choice, social stigma and parental pressure, highlighting their experiences of coercion and the lack of consent. More recently, adult adoptees have similarly publicly punctured the illusion of being chosen by adoptive parents and saved from the taint of illegitimacy by showing the collective harms of severance, the loss of identity, and the enduring stigma of adoption.
This talk explores the shift in public understanding of the past around historic postwar adoptions and the successful campaign for an apology, including the role of archival evidence and research in demonstrating complicity as well as pushing for contemporary accountability from those involved. Whereas the triangle in adoption theory is typically seen as between birth mother, child, and adoptive parents, the institutional one discussed in the talk follows a similar, interwoven set of relationships built between church, state and the social work profession.
The session will be a mixture of presentation, discussion, and Q&A.
This event is free for all - including non-members
| Ticket Type | Price | Cart |
|---|---|---|
| History & Practice SIG - Child welfare and the historic forced adoption | £0.00 |
Dr Claudia Soares is a Modern British and Imperial historian specialising in nineteenth and twentieth century histories of family and childhood, the emotions and material culture, poverty and welfare, health, disability, and wellbeing, and migration and environment.
She joined Newcastle holding both a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship and a NUAcT Fellowship.
Claudia’s British Academy funded project, 'In care and after care: emotions, institutions, and welfare in Britain, Australia, and Canada, 1820-1930', brings a history of emotions perspective to understand residential care experiences, to address the performance of emotion and affect in care provision, and individual and collective responses to institutional life. As a transnational project, that draws on 'new' imperial history approaches too, this research contributes to a growing body of scholarship that considers the two-way dialogues, circulation, and development of welfare practices on a global scale. I am currently preparing my second monograph from this research.
In June 2024, Claudia took up a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship for a new project called 'Caring Communities: Rethinking Children's Social Care, 1800-present'. This project uses historical and contemporary sources in innovative ways to generate new understandings about the role, value, and meaning of children's care through time, and importantly offers new ideas about what children's care could look like in the future. The project develops an innovative, interdisciplinary framework that combines approaches from historical research with creative, arts based methods and participatory practices to provide a major cultural and affective history of children's care between 1800-present.
Claudia is a co-convenor of the Life Cycles Seminar that takes place at the Institute of Historical Research at Senate House, London, and the Bodies and Emotions Strands for the Social History Society.
Having previously worked in the third sector for a number of years, Claudia is particularly interested in the long history of the development of children's care and welfare provision more broadly, and present day social work and welfare practices experienced by a number of vulnerable and marginalised groups.
Dr Michael Lambert is a Lecturer in Medical Humanities at Lancaster Medical School. His research explores the inner workings of the welfare state in twentieth century Britain and its Empire, particularly child welfare, poverty and motherhood. He served as an expert witness for two parliamentary inquiries into historic forced adoption in 2021/22 and 2026 and contributes regularly to local, national and international media coverage of the issue. The work underlying these contributions demonstrated state and church complicity in historic forced adoptions, underpinning campaigns spearheaded by birth mothers and adult adoptees, securing formal apologies from the Church of England and the UK Government in June and July of 2026.
Dr Ruth Beecher’s current project focuses on the histories of abuse, trauma and recovery from survivor and practitioner perspectives (Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales 1950s to present).
Between 2018 and 2024, Ruth investigated the role of health professionals and feminist survivor activists in relation to early intervention in child sexual abuse in Britain, 1970-2000, using archival research and new oral histories. Her research and teaching interests include the history of British and American health and social care, with an emphasis on the history of children and families, the history of the professions and the history and politics of gender, sexuality and sexual violence.
Ruth is co-chair of the international Challenging Research Network, a group of researchers and academics who work in complex, emotionally demanding, and politically charged research territories.
Ruth is the founder and a trustee of the heritage charity Úna Gan a Gúna: Irish Women’s Oral History Collective. This is a feminist collective dedicated to ensuring that the memories, experiences, and lives of Irish and diaspora women are documented and preserved. Ireland’s history has traditionally focused on the lives of men, Úna seeks to make it richer and fuller by gathering, preserving and sharing women’s stories.
Prior to 2018, Ruth was a leader in local government, she programme managed local policy initiatives and translated national policy into successful practice on the ground, both in children’s services and working across into other sectors particularly housing, health and employment.
Opportunity to network with others and know I am part of a community of people committed to working for children and families; challenge to keep up to date and evidence-informed in my practice; sounding board with others for considering how best to improve policy and practice
