TORN APART

A report into the impact of
sibling separation in the UK
care system today
TORN
APART

A hidden national scandal
Today, in the UK, there is a hidden national scandal which has echoes
of an almost Victorian approach to child welfare, but it is happening
here and now in 21st Century Britain.
It is this simple fact: seven out of every ten children who are placed in
care who have brothers and sisters will be separated from them simply
because they have been placed in care. There is no choice, no comeback,
it’s just done. This causes huge emotional costs to the children and
long-term losses for both the children and wider society.
The emotional cost is the fracturing of family ties. The pain, anger and
sense of loss that the individual separated from their brother or sister
will feel can obviously be intense and can last a lifetime. Over a third
(34%) of children separated will rarely if ever see their siblings again.
The long-term losses result from the diminished life chances that are
a likely effect of being placed in care if they are not offset by strong
support networks.
Siblings Together addresses this issue both by campaigning to highlight
this national scandal and by actively re-uniting siblings through our
projects and camps.

Some facts and figures
about sibling separation and children in care
10
OUT OF
EVERY
CHILDREN
7 40,000
placed in care, who have brothers
and sisters, will be separated from
them simply because they have
been placed in care.
There are approximately
children in care separated from a sibling,
and a further 4,000 children entering
care each year are separated
from siblings.
The emotional cost of this separation is considerable.
Over a third (34%) of children separated will rarely
if ever see their siblings again.
The cost to the UK economy of
failing children in this way is huge.
It is an unfortunate and undeniable
fact that once a child is placed in care,
their life chances can be
drastically reduced. Statistically they
are far more likely to become
dependent on the state in some way
in adulthood because of educational
under achievement and become
classified as a NEET.
(Not in education, employment or training)
If just over a third of children in care
separated from their siblings fall into the
NEET category, which is in line with the
national average, then Siblings Together
estimates the cost to the UK economy
of this separation could be in excess of
£800
MILLION 1
1 Based on the average individual life-time public finance cost of NEET estimated at £56,300 in the University
of York report on ‘Estimating the life-time cost of NEET’ commissioned by the Department of Social Policy
and Social Work and the Department of Health Sciences published 2010.

The Siblings Together Survey
Siblings Together recently undertook an online survey to find out what adult
sisters and brothers really thought about each other and how they valued
the sibling relationship.
The survey found that:
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Most respondents thought that having a brother or sister helped prepare them
better for life. Three in four of those polled (75%) said that having a sibling helped
them make friends with other people more easily, 71% said it helped them in
their adult relationships, 69% said it helped them deal better with school life
and nearly a half (49%) said it helped them in their work life.
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20% of siblings say they keep in touch daily in adult life, 36% stay in touch at
least once a week and 29% stay in touch at least once a month. Only 15% stay
in touch less frequently.
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11% of siblings would most like to see their sisters or brothers by spending holidays
together, 12% said meeting on their birthdays and 8% said spending their
Christmas’s or similar religious festivals together.
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Days spent together at home (56%) and family holidays (35%) were cited as the
most precious memories of their sibling relationships in childhood.
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Asked if they were to meet their sibling tomorrow, ‘what would they most like
to do? ’, 37% said they would like to go out for lunch or dinner, 33% would just
like to meet for a chat and 13% would just like to meet each other’s families.
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How R U sis/bro? Text is the most likely means adult brothers and sisters keep
in touch today. It was cited by 40% of respondents as the most likely way they
would use to contact each other.
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Nearly a third (30%) said they would most likely get in touch by telephone,
13% would message each other via a social network like Facebook or Twitter
and 8% would use email.
Methodology: The survey was carried out online via a Surveymonkey questionnaire. 287 adults participated in the survey.

Q
Do you think that having a sister or a brother has helped you in life
by making you better prepared to deal with the following:
Answered: 287
School life
Making friends
with others...
In your adult
relationships...
In your
working life
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Yes No Not sure /Don’t know Not relevant

What we do to address the issue
Siblings Together organises and runs a series of projects that actively reunite children
in care separated from their brothers and sisters. The aim is to create a series of scalable
projects that can be replicated annually and expanded nationally in order to engage
as many children and young adults in care as possible. They also represent revenue
opportunities for the organisation as places on our various projects can be part paid
for, and even paid for in full, by social services and fostering agencies looking for such
opportunities for children and young adults in their care.
Currently our activities focus on four key areas:
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Residential Camps: an opportunity for siblings to go on holiday together and
bond whilst engaging in a range of high energy, creative activities. Our camps
provide holidays which are active, nurturing, fun and creative. We aim to provide
adventure and to create memorable and meaningful experiences which sibling
groups can share together and cherish forever. Our camps are for looked after
brothers and sisters ages 7-18 years with a maximum of 25 young people per
camp. We have a staff ratio of one to every two children at camps.
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Monthly Activity Days (MADs): an opportunity for siblings to get together at a
local youth centre on a monthly basis. We started piloting these in 2011 and are
now attracting around 30 children regularly to our monthly meetings at the
activity centre in Camden which we use as a base. We are currently extending
the programme to two additional locations, and are looking for resources to
enable us to respond to requests to roll it out further.
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Siblings Together Buddying: a new project run in partnership with Family Action.
The project will provide volunteer befrienders for separated sibling groups,
enabling them to meet monthly for enjoyable activities the young people
themselves select.
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Creative Connections: Siblings Together organises a range of other exciting
opportunities for young people in care and care leavers which are not exclusive
to sibling groups. An example of this work is that Siblings Together, supported
by the Arts Council England, the Arvon Foundation, and private donations,
provides week-long residential creative writing courses for young people in care
and recent care leavers. We run similar projects in theatre with the Young Vic and
a ‘tall ships’ sailing adventure trip, in partnership with the Jubilee Sailing Trust.

Real-life stories of
sibling separation
In childhood, many people can imagine
losing their mother or father and the
upset this could cause. However, few
will anticipate what it would be like
suddenly to be separated from a sibling
and the trauma that might result, nor
the long-term impact it may have on
their lives.
“
My only family is her and
now you have taken her
away from me,...
”
This is Jackie’s Story who can now reflect
on what it was like to be separated from her sister.
Jackie from Birmingham, today a mother of two and
a self-employed child minder, knows exactly what
it is like to be separated from a sibling and the
lifetime trauma it can cause.
Her younger sister was ‘taken away’ from her twice
as a result of being placed in the care system. The first time,
Jackie was just six when her three-year old sister was taken into care
following a report by the NSPCC over concerns about family issues. The sisters
were reunited shortly after when, sadly, Jackie was herself also placed in
care as the issues continued and the family further disintegrated.
Memories of the first separation, though still raw, are now distant compared
to the second separation, which hit Jackie hard and still provides deeply
painful memories.
This happened when the Jackie was aged 12. At the time, both sisters were
in still in care but living together. They were invited to the USA to visit an
aunt. Social services agreed to the trip, which, although it held out the
prospect of a possible fostering and some degree of family reunification,
was not a success for Jackie who did not enjoy her American experience.
In contrast her sister loved it.
However, a few weeks later when they were both back in the UK, Jackie learnt
that her sister had been invited back to see her aunt for a Christmas visit.
Jackie thought nothing of it until she was told that her sister was not returning
and had in fact secretly returned to join her aunt in the USA to see if the
fostering offer might work. Jackie, when told her sister had returned to her
aunt for this reason, without her knowledge, was devastated. “My only family
is her and now you have taken her away from me,” Jackie remembers
screaming at the social worker she felt was part of the perceived deception.
“It was never the same after that,” Jackie recalls. “It ruined the family bond.”
The fostering did not work out and Jackie’s sister was eventually placed in
care in the USA. Now an adult, Jackie’s sister has since returned to the UK
and, although they have spoken and met following the return, they have lost
touch and have not seen each other for over 15 years.
“Although she came back, the damage was already done,’ Jackie says. “We
had changed, hardened, felt let down … the list goes on.” Sadly, Jackie’s story
of sibling separation resulting in a permanent breakdown in the relationship
is all too typical. Statistics show that over a third (34%) of children in care
separated from their siblings rarely, if ever, see their sisters or brothers again.
“Even as an adult, I could not help thinking that it was all in some way my
fault,” Jackie says today. “But over the past two years I’ve looked at this and
come to realise I’m not to blame. But it still hurts,” she told Siblings Together.
“Now I just think how dare they have done this to me. You can’t fix what
happened to me,” she added. “But if telling you can change the outcome of one
single child in care today then I’m glad to have told this story. I look at my own
children today and I burst with pride. I can see that they have so much because
they have each other.”

Robert
David
Real-life stories of
sibling separation
This is Robert and David’s Story,
they can now reflect on their experience.
London-born brothers, Robert and David,
were first placed into the care system in the
late 1970s when they were just three years and eighteen
months old respectively. At the time, both their parents were
struggling with drug-related issues. Initially the boys were both fostered with
the same family. Their foster parents, Mike and Faith, provided what David
remembers as a ‘very loving house’ in the remote rural location of Painswick
in Gloucestershire. It was to become his childhood home.
However, this was never meant to be a long-term fostering arrangement and it
was simply not practical for the family to foster both the boys going forward, so
social services arranged for Robert to be moved to a new set of foster parents,
Evan and Anne. Even today, for Robert the pain of this move and the separation
from his brother clearly smarts and he finds it hard to understand why it happened.
“I’ve always questioned why I was chosen to go but all I’ve ever got is different
stories,” he says.
“
I feel my life between the
age of six until about 14
is a kind of no man’s land
”
Luckily his new foster parents, who had two sons several years older than Robert,
also provided what he describes as a ‘loving environment’. ‘They welcomed me
into the house and showed me a lot of love. The elder boys and I did a lot of
things together and always made me feel part of the family,” he says.
During the separate fostering, the boys did occasionally meet, but these meetings
were rarely successful and the brothers often ended up fighting. Robert thinks
it was the isolation David went through that made the difference. “It was tough
for him.” Robert says. “I always felt he was alone and bullied.” David remembers
Robert as “the six or seven year old in the playground who protected me.”
For David, life took a dramatic turn when aged just six he came out of the care
system and went to live with his mother who was now separated from Robert
and David’s father. This was not a happy experience for David who spent the
next few years running away from home and flitting in and out of the care
system. He remembers this time as an experience of ‘abuse’ and was regularly
in trouble at school for fighting.
When living with his mother and her new partner, David was a witness to
domestic violence. When he intervened, his mother turned on him rather than
her partner. “I thought I had saved her, but she saw it otherwise, so I ran away
and called Childline.” He was placed back in care in adolescent units in Victoria
Park, Southwark. “Mike and Faith found out I was there and came to find me so
I saw out my teenage years with them.”
“I was 19 when Robert and I started to get closer again’” David says. It was the
sudden and tragic death of their mother that began to bring them together.
David remembers the pain of the day vividly. “It 24 November 1997 when I got a
phone call telling me Mum had died and it was Robert who had discovered her
dead in her own home. I know the shock of this really affected him.”
“It was shortly after this that Robert had got a flat and we started going to music
concerts together and meeting friends. It was a fractured relationship, but we
did get back together. My brother is a very generous character, but we are polar
different. I feel my life between the age of six until about 14 is a kind of
‘no man’s land’ so now I look at Mike and Faith and think that’s what family
should be,” he says.

A word about our volunteers
Siblings Together’s activities rely on support
from committed volunteers. We are always on
the lookout for new enthusiastic volunteers to
become a part of the team.
Our volunteering cadre includes social workers,
youth workers, students, musicians, poets, artists,
and performers, all working together to deliver
well-balanced and creative initiatives. We have
a wide range of volunteering opportunities that
suit a range of skills and availability.
All volunteers are required to undertake child
protection and other training, and to have an
enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS)
check done. We also require that they adhere
Quilts
We have grown a network of quilters who enjoy
making quilts for the children and send them into the office
in the months approaching each camp. Every single child at
camp leaves with a quilt which becomes part of the memory
of being at camp with their siblings.
to the policies for staff and volunteers laid out
in our handbook. These are designed to ensure
a safe and enjoyable experience for all.

A call to action – how can you help?
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£350 enables us to fund the costs of training and supporting a volunteer working
for a year on one of our MADs programmes. The volunteer will befriend and
support a group of separated siblings attending the programme, ensuring they
get the full benefits of the MAD.
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£800 gives a child or young adult the chance to attend one of our weeklong
residential camps. Our camps provide holidays which are active, nurturing,
fun and creative. We aim to provide adventure and to create memorable and
meaningful experiences which sibling groups can share together and cherish
forever. Our camps are for looked after brothers and sisters aged 7-18 years.
We have a staff ratio of one mentor to every two children at camps.
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£14,000 enables us to run a high quality one-week creative connection
programme providing unique opportunities for self-expression and building
communication skills and confidence for a group of 14 children in care or
care-leavers.
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£18,000 would enable us to establish a new tailored MADs programme, providing
separated siblings regular contact throughout the year at a stable location,
supervised by fully trained staff.
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£20,000 enables us to organise an additional week-long residential camp
providing up to 25 children and young adults the chance to be reunited with
their siblings in a supportive environment with skilled mentors.
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£50,000 a year would enable us to employ a full-time campaigns manager and
fund a campaigns programme. This would allow us to highlight the issue of sibling
separation in care, and the actions needed to resolve it, to central and local
government, social services, fostering agencies, the media and the public at large.
We urgently need partners and financial supporters to enable us to expand our work,
build the formal evidence base, and increase our campaigning, so we are resourced
to put right the profoundly destructive and unjust situation currently facing so many
siblings in care.
For further information, or if you would like to volunteer to help or make a donation,
please contact:
Siblings Together Charity Head Office
351 Southwark Park Road, London SE16 2JW, United Kingdom
Telephone: 020 7394 8708
Twitter: @siblings2gether
Email: admin@siblingstogether.co.uk
Website: www.siblingstogether.co.uk
Facebook: Siblings Together https://mydonate.bt.com/charities/siblingstogether