Ashley Rhodes-Courter was three when her childhood came to an abrupt end. The daughter of a struggling teenage mother, her life had been blighted by fecklessness and her parent’s regular brushes with the law.
But when social services stepped in to take the little girl and her younger brother Luke away, she found herself shuttling between foster homes while her mother fought to prevent her children from being adopted.
After more than a decade of living with carers, including several convicted criminals, she was finally adopted and, now 29, says she is furious that it wasn’t allowed to happen sooner.