In March 2016 I went to Kings Cross to meet with someone I had been talking to on Twitter for a year. Needless to say, my family were horrified! I have just been looking back over our preparatory conversation – lots of nonsense about what we both looked like and whether we would be wearing a rose to recognise each other. Reader, we both survived the experience and became good friends, working together to raise awareness of child to parent violence and abuse and the lack of support particularly for older adolescents and young adults post adoption. 

This last weekend, ‘J’ – because it was her I met, founder of The POTATO Group – and the rest of the POTATO committee, put on a conference in Birmingham: Far, far beyond the adoption order, Lessons from lives impacted by trauma. Organised entirely by themselves, while simultaneously parenting traumatised young people and adults, it was by far one of the most powerful and moving presentations I have ever seen.