When the state takes your child

25 June 2005

Alasdair Palmer talks to a mother whose daughter has been forcibly adopted — and who, in common with thousands of other women, now faces the agonies of separation

‘There is no worse experience for a mother than to lose her child,’ says Rachel Drew softly. ‘I think about her all the time. I keep photographs of her with me....’ She pulls four pictures of a smiling six-year-old child from her wallet. ‘These pictures are all I have left.’

The last time Rachel Drew saw her daughter Charlotte was on 19 May last year. It is a date etched on her heart. She speaks of it as the time when ‘I lost my baby’. Yet her daughter, who will celebrate her eighth birthday in the autumn of this year, is not dead. Rachel Drew knows she is alive and well: her child has been forcibly adopted into another family. In the summer of 2003, Ms Drew’s local council applied for a forcible adoption order, and the judge assigned to the case granted it. Charlotte is now with the new parents chosen for her by the council. The final formalities will be completed later this year.