The Welsh Government is expected to apologise to mothers who were forced to give away their children against their will for two decades. From the 1950s to the 1970s, unmarried women across the UK were subjected to forced adoptions, after being sent away to "mother and baby homes".
It is thoughts thousands of women were shamed into giving up their babies, some of whom were only allowed to spend days with the newborns before never seeing them again. A UK Parliament inquiry in 2022 estimated that between 1949 and 1976 185,000 babies were affected across England and Wales. The joint committee on human rights of MPs and peers found many women were shamed and coerced into giving up their children.
Deputy Social Services Minister Julie Morgan MS gave an apology in a personal capacity in January but the formal apology expected in the Senedd on April 25 will come a month after Scotland's former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon's apology on the same issue.
