Tuesday 5 November 2013

Established subscribers and all new readers start here!

Although this blog is new the idea of a mutual support network for former or current adopted, Children's Home or fostered children certainly isn't!
 
Back in October 2009 Ella and I started an email newsletter that went out to 16 people. Almost all the subscribers were friends of ours from the Children's Home where we had lived from the start of year 10 at school until we "timed out" at 18.

Right from the start we sent it out by blind copy. This meant that nobody was able to see who else was receiving the newsletter and, more important, all contact details were kept confidential. Several of the readers had nasty people in their past who they never wanted to meet again so this seemed like a sensible precaution to take. All subscribers also decided to adopted a system of "user names" which they always used when contributing to the newsletter - this seemed to give everybody involved an extra sense of security.

The years went by and the number of subscribers gradually crept up to three figures. Most of these new readers found out about us by personal recommendation and were often already known to a reasonable number of the existing readers who would then vouch for them.

But by 2011 the system was beginning to creak mainly because Ella and I took something of a calculated risk by allowing people to be put on the mailing list purely on the basis of a single recommendation from a current member. With hindsight what happened was almost inevitable - we picked up a few trolls and a few religious fanatics. WobblyOnes was a troll who also used a sock puppet Minority Views. Straightlaced was anti-lesbian while ChrisE and DaveK were both anti-atheists. Luckily they didn't do too much damage before being ejected from the group!

In June 2013 we had a meeting of most of the hard core members at LuluBigTits' house in Birmingham. We all agreed that "it was time for a change" mainly because when we did pick up new readers they were so pleased to find us and so willing to get involved that we knew we were meeting a demand. What we needed was a clear promotional strategy and easier access so that more people could join us - we needed a blog! And here it is!

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