It now accepted good practice that children should be told that they are adopted - but a report by an adoption helpline has revealed that many adoptive parents are still shying away from telling their children about their past.

TALKadoption, which is aimed at adoptees under the age of 26, has analysed its service and among its most striking findings are the amount of calls received from people under 18 who have only just found out they were adopted.

Although TALKadoption is designed to meet the needs of adopted people aged under 25, in the first two years about 40 per cent of adopted callers were over 25 - the oldest was 79. The helpline received more than 3,000 calls in its first two years.

Among adopted people up to age 12, about a quarter of the calls were from children who thought they may be adopted or who had just found out.

Its report - Tell Me Who I Am - said many youngsters who had recently found out they were adopted were upset and confused.

"It is clear that the secrecy, shame and stigma traditionally associated with adoption are still operating," said the report.

One caller was a 12-year-old girl who had found a birth certificate at home with different surname on. She had tried to talk to her parents but they told her it was rubbish and had locked the certificate away.

"Children should certainly know if they are adopted. Adoption practice for many years has required that adoptive parents are given a full history of their child's background," said the report.

"Potential adopters are taught the importance of talking about adoption, including telling children they are adopted as early as possible, in a way they will understand.

"If they do not find out till later, the discovery will probably damage their sense of identity and security as well as the relationships within the adoptive family.

"However, a disturbingly high percentage of adopted people - of all ages - rang TALKadoption saying they had only recently heard about their adoption. Many were very distressed.

"They had often found out not from their parents but from something somebody else said, or by finding documents they did not understand.

"Even if their parents had told them, most found it very difficult to talk to them about it. At the very least they talked of being embarrassed, and uncomfortable with the news. More often they were shocked and angry."

The report suggests that many of the young people calling would have been placed as toddlers or pre-school children and should have had life story books prepared for them at the time of placement.

"No young person mentioned any such book, which suggests that books were put away and not used by their adoptive families to give them information about their birth families and backgrounds," said the report.

"It is possible that some had been told they were adopted when they were too young to understand what adoption really meant. However, even if this was the case it is clear they had not been given any follow-up information.

"This is just one indication that many families find it virtually impossible to talk about adoption, let alone keep the issue 'live' in the home so that children can absorb information gradually.

"Adoption always involves loss - loss of a child, of a parent or parents, of the ability to bear a child, or of a brother, sister or other relative.

"Many callers to TALKadoption discuss their feelings of loss and sadness, and are trying to deal with the consequences. Many feel they need to make sense of their world and their identity.

"Many also have an overpowering desire to find 'lost' family members, which is offset by the fear of rejection."

For many callers, the helpline was the first opportunity they had had to discuss adoption and its impact.

The authors of the report - Sue Greenwood, a post adoption worker for the Manchester-based charity After Adoption, and Sarah Forster, a counsellor and the manager of TALKadoption - said their report demonstrated the need for more support for all sides of the adoption triangle and they called for local post adoption services throughout the UK.

Adoptive families also needed continued support to help them talk openly about adoption while birth parents needed independent support.

Clearer policies were also needed on giving young adopted people below the age of 18 and birth siblings access to appropriate information about their own adoption or adoption of birth brothers and sisters.

TALKadoption, set up in 1997 by the Post Adoption Forum (a consortium of post adoption charities) with funding from the National Lottery, can be reached on 0808 808 1234 or by visiting their website.

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