February 2018

It's admissions season, and across the country, thousands of admissions officers sit in front of screens, reading files full of transcripts, test scores, extracurricular profiles, letters of recommendation, and, of course, essays. I was once one of these officers, spending emotionally exhausting 12-hour days reviewing thousands of applications from Ivy League hopefuls over a span of five months. When I was a new admissions officer, the importance of each application component was drilled...

The date of the last time I used heroin correlating so closely with my daughter's birthdate felt like a horrible secret, like the worst math in the world.' To other mothers, I'd confide the minimum: "I'm in recovery," or "I 'got clean' before I had my daughter." I felt invested in a false narrative fairy tale of my recovery having happened overnight, as if the moment I found out I was pregnant the dark part of my life ended and the beautiful part began. In reality, my past and future bucked...

https://www.grandparentsplus.org.uk/Handlers/Download.ashx?IDMF=75a6b874-6666-4224-8770-48905670dbaf The Kinship Care: State of the Nation Survey This report is based on a survey of members of the Grandparents Plus Kinship Care Support Network, which includes almost 4,000 kinship carers. The results are based on responses from 671 kinship carers living in England and Wales, making it the largest ever survey of its kind. Carried out in February 2017 using both online and postal...