By Claire Foy-Smith BBC News Online

Gill works as an adoption counsellor

Gill Ragsdale was nine months old when she was given up by her parents into local authority care and adopted.

Her strict Pakistani Muslim father and European mother could find no solution to bringing her up together - they were unmarried when she was born in 1962.

Her adoptive parents always told her she was adopted and she tried to trace her natural mother from the age of 18.

But it was only when her natural mother and father tried to find her, when she was 21, that they made contact.

Patchy services

A PhD student, she volunteers as a counsellor for the National Organisation for Counselling Adoptees and Parents (NORCAP).

It offers emotional support, advice and an intermediary service for adopted children, natural and adoptive parents.

These are the services that were patchy in the past but will be rolled out across the country.

The letter wasn't the shock, it was the telephone conversation Gill Ragsdale One man's reunion happiness

Like Gill, whose first contact with her natural mother was a "fraught" experience, all NORCAP counsellors have personal experience of adoption.

The law change promises an intermediary for people to help in the contact-making process.

Gill welcomes this move, saying the first contact can be a shocking time when much hangs on the success of a phone call or letter.

When the first letter arrives, she said, "you know what it is.

"It is quite a shock. But the letter wasn't the shock, it was the telephone conversation.

"The one thing that had never crossed my mind was that they would be married with other children."

Emotional over-investment

After her adoption, Gill's parents married and had two more children.

Her mother traced her when she was 21.

"She was very emotionally invested in me as a baby," she said.

"It was making her ill, worrying what had happened to me.

"My father agreed to it, it was marital therapy."

Gill sees her parents, now in their seventies and living in Pakistan.

'Ramifications'

She sees her natural brother and sister but is still not publicly recognised by her father.

"I accept it," she says. "I am not thrilled about it. But I understand that this is a very traditional kind of family.

"If I were acknowledged there would be ramifications."

As a counsellor, she says each party to adoption faces special issues.

"We prepare the person that's asked for the service, help them think through what the impact will be for them, how they will deal with the response."

No matter how bad the news is, you just need to know Gill Ragsdale

Mothers who gave up their children can be "emotionally over-invested" in a person they last saw as a baby.

And adopted children need to prepare to deal with possible rejection from someone who already gave them up.

For them she says, the need to question origins can start in the playground.

"You feel at a disadvantage in quite ordinary conversation with people, that you don't know the answers to questions that other people do.

"You feel less solid.

"No matter how bad the news is, you just need to know."

Fraught time

Adoptees can also be angry because they do not comprehend the kinds of pressures their parents were under at a time when adoption was the only option.

And that anger wells up at the highly-charged time of making contact.

For adoptive parents, the fear is they will have to share, or at worst lose, a child.

Those who adopted before the law changed in 1975, were assured it was a scenario that could not happen.

"They feel threatened and they feel resentful, that it's not right and fair, it's a breach of contract," she said.

Own attitude

Gill's experience means she gives empathetic support and advice.

It has also shaped her own attitudes.

She cannot have her own children but would not consider adoption.

She said: "I can't emotionally get my head around adoption.

"I think my personal experience within my family was very fraught and it's left me with a deep uneasiness about it.