Woman abandoned in Birmingham shopping bin as baby follows family decades later

A university teacher who was abandoned as a child under a hedge in Birmingham has been able to trace her family decades later with the help of ITV’s Long Lost Family.

Liz Deutsch was just six weeks old when she was discovered under a hedge in Birmingham. Carefully dressed in hand-knitted clothes and wrapped in a knitted blanket, she was found in a shopping basket near Edgbaston Croquet Club on Richmond Hill Road in 1965. Her birth mother remained unidentified and Liz entered foster care duration, where he stayed until he was 16 years old.

Liz has carved out her own journey, progressing from A-Levels to a PhD at the University of Manchester. She later gained the position of Professor of Nursing Practice through a partnership between Coventry University’s Center for Research in Care Excellence (CCE) and University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust.

She saw her quest to uncover her family history featured in ITV’s Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace after contacting the program four years ago.

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Reflecting on the experience, Liz recounted receiving a call from the show’s producer proposing filming, which culminated in the episode airing on ITV. She shared her anxiety about the show: “I said I wasn’t going to watch it because I was really nervous about seeing myself on TV,” reports Coventry Live.

She recounted: “I said I’d go for a walk and do anything to pass the time, but I watched it and felt relaxed while watching, the production team did it so sensitively; the whole process was exhausting but completely revelatory. and simply stunning.”

On learning the identity of her birth mother, Liz expressed that it was “the best gift I could have ever asked for,” adding, “My reaction now is that it satisfied the parameters of understanding where I came from. I feel liberated; not because of the stigma of being in foster care because that’s a massive life issue, but it brought me some comfort and I don’t regret it.”

Revealing her bond with Christine, her second cousin found during the show, she noted: “We’ve stayed in touch and have a gentle touch. She was brilliant and sent some lovely emails and the photo album you see in the shout out she researched. herself and she did a phenomenal job.”

Adding to her findings, Liz claimed: “I want to find out more now, my birth father is likely to be in America. I have potential DNA connections and I need to follow them up.”

Despite challenges in her early life, including medical experts saying she would never walk due to back and leg problems, Liz triumphed over adversity, achieving remarkable physical feats such as the 180-mile walk on Offa’s Dyke and the Thames Path.

Liz expressed her desire for her journey to serve as a beacon of hope, noting: “In foster care, no one is necessarily going to help you find your way when you leave care. I have had to make my own way since the age of 16 and I want to leave that success as a legacy and I hope that my positive attitude towards life can be a benefit to our students.”

She continued: “Only two per cent of children who have been in care go on to university degrees and my message is that children in foster care are still children, they can go out there and achieve something. Most of us are very capable and quite simply. I need a chance my big chance was to come to Coventry University and the opportunities I feel have given me that.”

Long Lost Family: Born Without A Trace is now on ITVx.