Donor Conception Network - Stories
HOW TO TELL PROJECT
- Project Background
Major Grant Awarded to Produce 'How to Tell' materials
Donor Conception Network has been awarded a £61,000 grant to research and produce materials supporting parents in how to tell our children about their donor conception origins. This is the first time the Network has received a major grant in our 11 year history.
The grant was announced on 13 th October by the National Family and Parenting Institute, which is managing the Parenting Fund made available by the Department of Education and Skills. www.parentingfund.org The Fund has been allocated following an open competition and the award to the Network is one of only 135 successful applications out of 795.
The project is to be managed by Olivia Montuschi, a founder-member of the Network who has been closely involved with all the organisation's activities ever since. Olivia is a trained counsellor and has a background in writing and editing parent support and child development materials and training professionals to work effectively with parents.
The aim of the project is to produce materials to support both those of us who intend or have started telling our children at a very young age, and also those who originally planned not to tell, but now as their children become teenagers or young adults face the need to do so. The forthcoming changes in the law relating to donor anonymity have stimulated many families with older donor conceived children into rethinking the issue of telling. Callers to our help-line and emails via the web site are increasingly asking for help in sharing information with young adults. Parents are also aware that in four years time donor conceived young people will be able to confirm information about their conception by consulting the register maintained by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.
Telling young adults about their origins after keeping them secret for so long can raise complicated identity issues and has the potential to undermine trust in families. We recognise that parents need a range of supports to be in place for them to feel confident about sharing this information in ways that maximise and promote family unity.
There are currently no materials available world wide for this particular group of parents or indeed for adult donor conceived people themselves. The 18 month long How To Tell project will involve research with donor conceived adults, relevant professionals and parents of DC children and young people of all ages. Five workshops will be held in different regional areas and we hope that many of you will be willing to come along to share your experiences of talking with your children. We are particularly interested in hearing from fathers of DI conceived children about their developing relationship with their children.
Following the research phase we will produce a range of leaflets available in paper and web format. These will be available on a dedicated How To Tell section of our web site where parents will also be able to exchange experiences.
In addition we will also make a visual aid in a form to be decided by the project group in collaboration with 'A Different Story' film maker Liesel Evans.
