Baby girls who were switched at birth back in 1967 at an NHS hospital are in line for compensation in a first of its kind case in the UK.
The newborns, now both grown women, were switched at West Midlands hospital shortly after birth, leaving their families none the wiser.
It was only when the sibling of one of the women took a DNA home testing kit that the truth came to light – 55 years later.
Tony received the kit as a Christmas gift in 2021 and when he carried it out, he was shocked to find a different name was listed as his full sibling.
He contacted the woman, who has not been named to protect her identity, listed as his sister. They realised she and another baby girl had been born around the same time in the same hospital.
Cases of babies being accidentally switched in hospitals are rare. A 2017 Freedom of Information request stated there were no documented cases of babies being given to the wrong parents.
Prior to the 1980s, maternity wards identified babies with handwritten tags and cards on cots (Stock image)
Prior to the 1980s, maternity wards identified babies with handwritten tags and cards on cots. Since then, radio frequency identification (RFID) tags have been used to keep track of and identify newborns on wards.
The NHS trust which oversees the hospital admitted liability but the level of compensation is yet to be agreed.
NHS Resolution, which deals with complaints against the NHS, told the BBC the switch was an ‘appalling error’ and that it had accepted legal liability.
It added that the case was ‘unique and complex’ and that it was still trying to determine the amount of compensation.
Tony’s mother, Joan, told the BBC she was admitted to West Midlands hospital in 1967 due to high blood pressure, and that she was induced.
Her daughter was born at around 22:20 before being taken away to the nursery for the night so the new mother could rest.
A few hours later, just after midnight, another baby girl was born.
The next morning, Joan was handed a baby girl who was not her biological daughter. But despite the infant having fair hair unlike the rest of her family, Joan and her husband thought nothing of it.
The families took their new additions home and raised them, not knowing they were not their biological daughters for 55 years.
The truth was revealed when a DNA home testing kit was taken by Tony (Stock Image)
The daughter that Joan raised, believing her to be her own, now have a strained relationship. But Joan is adamant that the DNA results do not change anything.
‘It doesn’t make any difference to me that she isn’t my biological daughter’, she said. ‘She’s still my daughter and she always will be’.
Shortly after the DNA results came through, Tony and Joan met their biological sister and daughter.
‘It just felt right’, Joan told the BBC. ‘I thought, she looked just like I did in my younger days’.
Her biological daughter now faced the practicalities of changing her birth certificate and documentation as, being born before midnight, she was a day older than she previously thought.
‘My birth certificate is wrong, my passport, my driving licence – everything is wrong’, she told the BBC.
She added that she and her new family are now very close. They have been on holiday to Ireland together to look into their biological roots and spent last Christmas together.
‘I’d like to spend as much time as I can with them, of course, but that time is gone’, she said. ‘It was taken away’.