{"id":17186,"date":"2024-11-16T07:00:50","date_gmt":"2024-11-16T07:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/nursing-homes-used-for-secrecy-panel-finds\/"},"modified":"2024-11-16T07:00:50","modified_gmt":"2024-11-16T07:00:50","slug":"nursing-homes-used-for-secrecy-panel-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/nursing-homes-used-for-secrecy-panel-finds\/","title":{"rendered":"Nursing homes used for ‘secrecy’, panel finds"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\"GettyGetty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The former Marianvale Mother and Baby home in Newry<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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The investigation into institutions for unmarried mothers in Northern Ireland has found some evidence that pregnant women and babies may have spent time in private nursing homes as a \u201cmeasure of secrecy\u201d.<\/p>\n

An investigatory body, the Truth Recovery Independent Panel<\/a>, is seeking testimony and gathering evidence about mother-and-baby homes, Magdalene Laundries and workhouses.<\/p>\n

Panel co-chair Professor Leanne McCormick has said there is evidence of private nursing homes being used to house pregnant mothers, whose babies were then adopted.<\/p>\n

It is thought at least 10,500 women were sent to the institutions, commonly known as mother-and-baby homes<\/a>, in Northern Ireland but incomplete records mean the figure may be higher.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Professor Leanne McCormick from the Truth Recovery Independent Panel<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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More than a hundred people have so far come forward to the panel, which is gathering information confidentially in a non-confrontational setting.<\/p>\n

The panel is in the first stage of the investigation set up by the devolved government.<\/p>\n

The work will feed into a public inquiry<\/a> \u2013 which will examine alleged abuses including forced adoptions.<\/p>\n

Professor McCormick said: \u201cWe have become increasingly aware of pregnant mothers spending time in private nursing homes, and babies being adopted from those.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt means the authorities may not be aware of the situations in the same way as they would have been if they were in local hospitals.<\/p>\n

\u201cOften we have seen that women and babies may have been staying longer in these private nursing homes while decisions clearly are taken about what will happen next.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes babies are staying without their mothers while decisions are made.\u201d<\/p>\n

She explained that the use of private nursing homes for births was more common before the NHS was founded in 1948.<\/p>\n

But the practice did continue afterwards, into the 1960s and 1970s.<\/p>\n

More than ten thousand women and girls passed through the institutions<\/a> in Northern Ireland between the 1920s and the 1990s.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

‘For years I didn’t tell anybody’<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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\"Catriona<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Catriona Cunningham<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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Two nursing homes which have come up in the panel\u2019s work are Antrim House in North Belfast, and Bayview in Londonderry \u2013 both of which closed a number of years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cMother-and-baby\u201d institutions in Northern Ireland were mainly run by religious orders.<\/p>\n

They included three \u201cMagdalene Laundries\u201d in Belfast, Londonderry and Newry<\/a> \u2013 in effect, workhouses where pregnant women and girls were made to carry out demanding duties.<\/p>\n

Survivors have been using creative expressions of their experiences to try to help encourage more people to seek help and contribute testimonies.<\/p>\n

Caitriona Cunningham has written the play, The Marian Hotel, which is touring Northern Ireland and is set at Marianvale in Newry.<\/p>\n

The lead character, Kitty, is based on Caitriona herself, who was in the institution from 1979 to 1980.<\/p>\n

She described life there as \u201cvery regimented\u201d with \u201ceverything geared towards having your baby adopted”.<\/p>\n

Caitriona said she was one of the \u201cfew lucky people\u201d because \u201cI got my daughter back when she was three months old.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut for years, I didn\u2019t tell anybody that I was in Marianvale.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore recently, it was in my mind all the time. I was thinking about the other women.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started to write down wee notes and now this play is what it\u2019s come to. It\u2019s amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Trauma support<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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Exhibits on display in The Sunflower Project in the Linenhall Library<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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Trauma support workers are attending every performance.<\/p>\n

The artistic director of Sole Purpose Productions, Patricia Byrne, explained: \u201cThey will be there to give help to anyone who will be impacted or might be feeling emotional about what they see.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said she hoped bringing stories which had been secret for so long onto a public stage would help to lessen stigma.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe play is very much a call to people who may have been impacted by mother-and-baby institutions to come forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Survivors have also put together an exhibition of original art and artefacts associated with the institutions in an exhibition, \u201cThe Sunflower Project\u201d, which is currently on display at Linen Hall Library in Belfast.<\/p>\n

The exhibits \u2013 such as a christening robe, toys, and letters – captures the sense of love, loss and loneliness which they experienced.<\/p>\n

The issues are also highlighted in a film which is in cinemas this month.<\/p>\n

Small Things Like These \u2013 based on the novel by Claire Keegan – focuses on a Magdalen Laundry in County Wexford the Republic of Ireland in the 1980s<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Cillian Murphy plays a character, Bill Furlong, who is troubled by what he notices happening at the institution.<\/p>\n

Professor Leanne McCormick is appealing for people who lived close to the institutions in Northern Ireland to contact the Truth Recovery Panel.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re interested in anybody who had any connection with these institutions.<\/p>\n

For example, there are neighbours who might have been aware of laundry going in and out.<\/p>\n

\u201cClergy may have brought people to these institutions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are also magistrates, GPs, social workers, probation workers, midwives in local hospitals, builders who worked at the institutions.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnybody with any understanding could help us to piece together these stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also said the panel was keen to hear from people from the Protestant community \u2013 because most women who had come forward were in institutions run by Catholic organisations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"GettyGetty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The former Marianvale Mother and Baby home in Newry<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

What were the mother-and-baby homes?<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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A network of institutions across the island of Ireland which housed unmarried women and their babies at a time when pregnancy outside marriage was viewed as scandalous.<\/p>\n

There were more than a dozen such mother-and-baby homes in Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n

Three of them had Catholic-run workhouses known as Magdalene Laundries, where women frequently had to do exhausting, unpaid labour.<\/p>\n

A number were the victims of sexual crime, including rape and incest, and \u201cstrenuous physical labour\u201d was expected of residents late into their pregnancies.<\/p>\n

Many women and girls were separated from their children by placing them in children’s homes, boarding them out (fostering) or through adoption.<\/p>\n

There was also the issue of the cross-border movement of women and children in and out of the institutions.<\/p>\n

The last institution in Northern Ireland closed in 1990.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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Getty Images The former Marianvale Mother and Baby home in Newry The investigation into institutions for unmarried mothers in Northern Ireland has found some evidence that pregnant women and babies may have spent time in private nursing homes as a \u201cmeasure of secrecy\u201d. An investigatory body, the Truth Recovery Independent Panel, is seeking testimony and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17187,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[3374,73,215,6828,6827],"class_list":["post-17186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-news","tag-finds","tag-homes","tag-nursing","tag-panel","tag-secrecy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17186"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17188,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17186\/revisions\/17188"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}