We talk to Delma Hughes of Siblings Together about why children often lose their brothers and sisters, as well as their parents, when they go into care
Delma Hughes is an art therapist. She’s also the third of seven siblings, all of whom went through the care system. Having such a large family ought to have been a source of strength, but instead Hughes says ‘I barely saw them for 15 years. At one point I went into a children’s home at a moment when this older girl was leaving. She was my sister, but I didn’t know.’
Now in her forties, Hughes says that little has changed – it’s still very hard for children to see their siblings if they are placed apart, or if one is adopted and the other is not. She’s campaigning for siblings in care to keep a real relationship.
One answer is Siblings Together – a summer camp for children. For a week they climb, paint, make things for each other and have a good time. They also use phototherapy to help them hang onto their memories. Hughes say ‘you can’t expect children who’ve been apart sometimes for years to just rush into each other’s arms. There’s often unfinished business, or they might just feel like strangers. An activity holiday gives them a different focus. At the beginning of the week, they are very cautious – by the end, they are often sitting in each other's laps.’
Hughes acknowledges that sometimes siblings might not want to see each other – ‘there may have been bullying for instance, and if a child wants space, of course you should listen and respect that.’ But more often children are desperate to meet but don’t know their rights.
She thinks that the system can sometimes be risk averse: ‘you might get two siblings who meet and start rowing, or just pulling each other’s hair. This is normal child behaviour – but it can end up with someone deciding that they are a ‘risk’ to each other and severing contact.'
'Even now you can go five, ten years and not see your sibling'
When sibling meet-ups do occur, it’s sometimes in very difficult circumstances. ‘You might get one social worker coming down the motorway with one child, the other meeting them in the middle for an hour. That sort of meeting doesn’t tell you anything except that your sibling is still alive. It can be more painful than not meeting at all.’
With fostering replacing children’s homes as the 'norm' in care and the abuse scandals of the 1980s, good homes were closed as well as bad. Hughes argues that when this happened, it made it inevitable that larger families would be split up. ‘Many foster carers can take two children maximum – the only way that larger families can stay together is if they return to the children’s home model in some cases’.
It means too, that when children leave the care system, they are likely to be placed in different accommodation by different authorities, when they may be far more happy, stable and supported all under one roof.
Well into adulthood, Hughes tracked down all her brothers and sisters and they sometimes meet. But it’s clear that they’ll never recover the sense of family that they might have had. ‘We have a huge 15 year gap during the most important years of our lives – we have no shared memories. Our children are all talking to each other on Facebook and connecting, but we’ll never have that.’
She says her camps arose from years of research through the Careleavers Association, as well as drawing on the best ideas of Unicef and sibling camps in the USA. This year Siblings Together are creating more camps, with 22 children in each. Camps uniting UK siblings are also run by the charity Shaftesbury Young People, who have three planned for this year.
Recently Children's Rights Director Roger Morgan has been talking with hundreds of children about their contact arrangements to highlight what's working well and what's not. The right of children in care to see their siblings has been enshrined in law since at least 1989, but like so much activism in the care system, Siblings Together is not working towards new rights, it’s simply trying to compel the ‘corporate parent’ to fulfil its existing obligations.
Julie (8) and Robert (5) went into care after the traumatic death of their birth mother. Within months, Robert was adopted and separated from his sister. Over the next few years Julie was moved to a variety of foster families and changed social worker many times. Although contact between Julie and Robert had been agreed by the courts, it had become almost non-existent because no-one really cared about their relationship. Aged 13, Julie was placed with foster carers who finally realised her distress at rarely seeing her brother. She had been afraid of forgetting what her brother looked like and kept running away.
Once Julie's foster carer managed to arrange much more regular contact there were immense improvements in the behaviour of both children. Now 24, Julie says that her relationship with her brother has 'saved her life' during and after care, especially when she suffered a nervous breakdown. Even though they have lived apart, they are 'family'.