Being separated from my twin and parents from birth had a huge impact on me [Video]

Nearly 18 years in foster care left Sadie Harpur with a sad but heartening story to tell. Dublin-born Sadie found herself – along with twin sister Kizzy – in her first foster home before her first birthday because her birth parents couldn’t cope.

She tells of troubled periods of high anxiety when she suffered from learning difficulties resulting from undiagnosed dyslexia along with bouts of depression, self-harm, suicidal thoughts, violent outbursts and was repeatedly bullied.

Sadie was described as “mentally below average” in documents she later accessed under the Freedom of Information Act, even though this was not the case. She was promised counselling on numerous occasions – but never got it.

Here, she tells of how she wrote her new book, “The Hidden World of a Foster Girl”, which explores the challenges she faced in her personal life, and the survival skills she employed to get beyond her tough …