A child of the state Lemn Sissay
having spent 18 years as a child of the
state in children’s homes and foster
care you could say that I’m an expert on
the subject and in being an expert I
want to let you know that being an
expert does in no way make you write in
light of the truth if you’re in care
legally the government is your parent
loco parentis Margaret Thatcher was my
mother
let’s not talk about breastfeeding Harry
Potter was a foster child pip from Great
Expectations
was adopted Superman was a foster child
Cinderella was a foster child Lisbeth
Salander The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
was fostered and institutionalized
Batman was orphaned Lyra Belacqua from
Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights was
fostered Jane Eyre adopted Roald Dahl’s
James from James and the Giant Peach
Matilda Moses Moses Moses the the boys
in Michael Morpurgo friends or foe alum
in Benjamin Zephaniah refugee boy Luke
Skywalker Luke Skywalker Oliver Twist
Cassie in the concubine of Shanghai by
honking Seeley in in in Alice Walker’s
color purple all of these great
fictional characters all of them who
were hurt by their condition all of them
who spawned thousands of other books and
other films all of them
were fostered adopted or often it seems
that writers know that the child outside
of family reflects on what family truly
is more than what it promotes itself to
be that is they also use extraordinary
skills to deal with extraordinary
situations on a daily basis how have we
not made the connection and why have we
not made the connection between how has
that happened between these incredible
characters of popular culture and
religions and the fostered adopted or
orphaned child in our midst
it’s not our pity that they need
it’s our respect I know famous musicians
I know actors and film stars and
millionaires and novelists and top
lawyers and television executives and
magazine editors and national
journalists and dustbin men and
hairdressers all who were looked after
children fostered adopted or orphaned
and many of them grow into their adult
lives in fear of speaking of their
background as if it may somehow weaken
their standing in the foreground as if
it was somehow kryptonite as if it were
a a time bomb strapped on the inside
children in care who’ve had a life in
care deserve the right to own and live
the memory of their own childhood it is
that simple my own mother and I should
say this here she came to this country
in in the late 60s and she she was young
she found herself pregnant as women did
in the late sixties they found
themselves pregnant and she sort of she
had no idea of the context in which
she’d landed
in the 1960s I should give you some
context in the 1960s if you were
pregnant and you were single you were
seen as a threat to the community you
were separated from your family by the
state you were separated from your
family and placed into a mother and baby
homes you were appointed a social worker
the adoptive parents were lined up it
was the primary purpose of the social
worker the aim to get the woman at her
most vulnerable time in her entire life
to sign the adoption papers so the
adoption papers were signed the mother
and babies homes were often run by nuns
the adoption papers were signed the the
the child was given to the adoptive
parents and the mother shipped back to
her community to say that she’d been on
a little break a little break a little
break the first secret of shame for a
woman for being a woman a little break
the adoption process took like a matter
of months so it was a closed shop you
know seal deal an industrious
utilitarian solution government the
farmer the the adopting parents the
consumer the mother the earth and the
child the crop it’s it’s kind of easy to
patronize the past to forego our
responsibilities in the present what
happened then is a direct reflection of
what is happening now everybody believed
themselves to be doing the right thing
by God and by the state for the big
society fast-tracking adoption so anyway
she comes here 1967 she’s she’s pregnant
and she comes from Ethiopia that was
celebrating its own Jubilee at the time
under the emperor haile selassie and she
lands months before the Enoch Powell
speech the rivers of blood speech she
lands months before the Beatles released
the White Album months before Martin
Luther King was killed it was a Summer
of Love if you were white if you were
black it was a summer of hate so she
goes from Oxford she sent to the north
of England to a mother and baby home and
appointed a social worker she it’s her
plan you know I have to say this in the
housing it’s her plan to have me
fostered for a short period of time
while she studies but the social worker
he had a different agenda
he found the foster parents and he said
to them treat this as an adoption he’s
yours forever his name is Norman no
No um so they they they they took me I
was a message they said I was a sign
from God they said I was Norman Marc
Greenwood now for the next 11 years all
I know is that this woman this birth
woman should have her eyes scratched out
for not signing the adoption papers she
was an evil woman too selfish to sign so
I spent those 11 years kneeling and
praying I tried praying I swear I tried
praying God can have a bank for
Christmas but I would always answer
myself yes of course she’d gone and then
I was supposed to determine whether that
was the voice of God or it was the voice
of the devil and it turns out I’ve got
the devil inside of me who knew
so anyway two years sort of passed and
they had a child of their own and then
another two years passed and they had
another child of their own and then
another time passed and they had another
child that they called an accident which
I thought was an unusual name and I was
on the cusp of sort of adolescence so I
was starting to take biscuits from the
tin without you know without asking I
was starting to stay out a little bit
late at cetera et cetera now in their
religiosity in their naivety my mom and
dad which I believe them to be forever
as they said they were my mom and dad
conceived that that I had the devil
inside of me and what I should say this
here because this is how they engineered
my leaving they sat me at a table my
foster mum and she said to me you don’t
love us do you at 11 years old they’ve
had three other children
I’m the fourth the third was an accident
and I said yeah of course I do because
you do foster mother asked me to go away
to think about love and what it is and
to read the scriptures and to come back
tomorrow and give my most honest and
truthful answer so this was an
opportunity if they were asking me
whether I love them on
then I mustn’t love them which led me to
the miracle of thought that I thought
they wanted to me to get to I will ask
God for forgiveness and his light will
shine through me to them how fantastic
this was an opportunity the theology was
perfect the timing unquestionable and
the cancerous honest as a sinner could
get a mustn’t love you I said to them
but I will ask God for forgiveness
because you don’t love us Norman clearly
you’ve chosen your path 24 24 hours
later my social worker this strange man
who used to visit me every couple of
months he’s waiting for me in the car as
I say goodbye to my parents I didn’t say
goodbye to anybody and my mother my
father my sisters my brother’s my aunt’s
my uncle’s my cousins my grandparents
nobody on the way to the children’s home
I started to ask myself what’s happened
to me it’s not that I’d had the rug
pulled from beneath me as much as the
entire floor had been taken away when I
got to do for the next four five years I
was held in four different children’s
homes on the third children’s home at 15
I started to rappel and what I did was I
got three tins of paint Airfix paint
that you used for models and and I was
it is a big children so I’m a big
Victorian children’s own when I was in a
little turret at the top of it and I
toured them red yellow and green the
cause of Africa down the tiles you
couldn’t see it from the street because
the home was surrounded by beech trees
for doing this I was incarcerated for a
year in an assessment centre which was
actually a remand Center it was a
virtual prison for young people um by
the way the years later my social worker
said that I should never have been put
in there I wasn’t charged for anything I
hadn’t done anything wrong but because I
had no family to inquire about me they
could do anything to me
I’m 17 years old and they had a padded
cell they would March me down corridors
in LA size order they I was put in a
dormitory with a confirmed Nazi
sympathizer all of the staff were
ex-police interesting and ex probation
officers the man who ran it was an
ex-army officer every time I had a visit
by a person who I did not know who would
feed me grapes once every three months I
was strip-searched that home was full of
young boys who were on remand for things
like murder and this was the preparation
that I was being given after 17 years as
a child of the state I have to tell this
story I have to tell it because there
was no one to put two and two together I
slowly became aware that I knew nobody
that knew me for longer than a year see
that’s what family does
it gives you reference points I’m not
defining a good family from a bad family
I’m just saying that you know when your
birthday is by virtue of the fact that
somebody tells you when your birthday is
a mother a father a sister a brother an
ounce an uncle or cousin a grandparent a
master someone and therefore it matters
to you understand I was 14 years old
tattooing myself into myself and I
wasn’t touched either physically touched
I’m reporting back I’m reporting back
simply to say that that when I left the
children’s home I had two things that I
wanted to do one was to find my family
and the other was to write poetry in
creativity I saw light in the
imagination I saw the endless
possibility of life the endless truth
the permanent creation of reality the
v.v the place where anger was an
expression in the search for love a
place where dysfunction is a true
reaction to untruth I’ve just got to say
to you all I found all of my family in
my adult life I’ve spent all of my adult
life finding them and I’ve now got a
fully dysfunctional family just like
everybody else but I’m reporting back to
you to say quite simply that you can
define how strong a democracy is by how
its government treats its child I don’t
mean children I mean the child of the
state thanks very much it’s been an
honor
you