Ashley John-Baptiste grew up in foster care believing he was an only child. Then, out of the blue, he received a message from a brother he never knew he had. He set out to explore what being split from siblings means to those who have been in the foster care system.
As a toddler, I was placed in the care system. By 18, I had been moved between four foster families and a residential care home in south-east London.
It’s really hard to describe what it was like growing up in so many different homes. It felt like being under a cloud of rejection – no sense of family, no sense of belonging. I did meet my birth mum when I was 10, but never met my dad. I always wondered why I wasn’t adopted – was it ever a possibility?
Living in that residential home with other children gave me my first taste of brotherhood, but we had no control over our relationships in the long term. We would be moved, and disappear from each other’s lives.
Children who are placed in foster care are given “life story” sessions by their local authority – this is where a social worker tells a child what they know about their family background and history. I was around seven when I had mine, and I was told I was an only child.
So it was a huge shock when, in my mid-20s, a man messaged me on Facebook to tell me he was my older brother. I can still remember the visceral sense of confusion I felt when I first saw his message. I had to re-read it several times.
It took me a while to respond, but when we spoke we established that we had the same dad but different mothers, that there were more siblings out there and – most overwhelming for me – that we lived in the same area. All this time, my brother had been living close by.
