Five years ago, through a series of television programmes on the work of Barnardo's, thousands of adults who had spent time in the agency's care learned for the first time that they could gain access to their birth records. Gill Pugh and Gillian Schofield report on a small-scale qualitative study which looked at the experiences of 12 people who subsequently sought and received information. They examine their backgrounds and motivation for searching, the process by which they found out about their history, the impact of receiving information on their sense of self, and relationships with those closest to them, and the implications for practice.
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