About
Why Your Story Matters exists
When I talk about “the system”
When I talk about ‘the system’, I am talking about the system as I experienced it.
I am not speaking for every adoptive parent, every family or every professional.
I am speaking as a dad.
An adoptive dad who entered this journey wanting to give a child a safe, loving and permanent family — and who then experienced what it was like trying to find help when our family needed it.
What I share comes from what I saw, what I heard, the meetings I sat in, the questions I asked, the decisions that affected us and the impact those decisions had on our family.
There were good people along the way. People who cared. People who tried to help.
My story is not about blaming individual professionals.
It is about my experience of the system around them.
Others may have experienced it differently. I hope they did.
But this was my experience.
My experience.
My journey.
My story.
I share it not to attack the system, but because I believe we can learn something by listening to what it feels like to live on the other side of it.
This is my experience.
It doesn’t have to be yours.
Your Story Matters grew from my experience, but it isn’t here to suggest everyone’s experience is the same.
Your experience may have been difficult.
It may have been positive.
It may have been somewhere in between.
All of those experiences matter.
Because understanding a system shouldn’t only come from what the system records.
It should also come from the people who experience it.
I’ve shared my story because I believe lived experience can help us ask better questions.
Now there is somewhere for yours.
Systems collect enormous amounts of information.
- Waiting times
- Assessments
- Referrals
- Outcomes
- Targets
- The sleepless nights
- The school missed
- The work given up
- The effect on brothers and sisters
- The strain on relationships
- The loss of trust
But some of the most important consequences are never recorded.
Your Story Matters exists to make that impact visible.
Not to decide who was right or wrong.
Not to blame individual professionals.
But to ask a different question:
What was it actually like for the person living through the system?
Because better systems start by understanding the lives affected by their decisions.
Want to know how this works and who's behind it? Read our Trust & Transparency commitments.