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Episode details

Radio 4,15 Apr 2026,28 mins

40 years to find my birth father

Life Changing

Available for over a year

Growing up, Karine Burns always knew she was adopted, and that her mother had been sent over to the UK from Ireland. Karine had a joyous childhood, loved dearly by her Scottish parents. But after the arrival of her first child, she started to think seriously about her birth mother - about how hard it must have been to give a baby up for adoption, so far from home. Her mammoth 20-year search for her birth parents involved passionate appeals, detective work and rejection - until a breakthrough changed everything, just in the nick of time… Karine tells her incredible story to Life Changing’s Dr Sian Williams. Producer: Tom Alban.

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