Since retiring from a career as an international adoption and fostering specialist, Jennifer Cousins has volunteered as a therapeutic counsellor with newly arrived asylum seekers. She has been deeply affected by many of their stories. Jennifer has written a social-work column for the Guardian, won prizes for travel writing, has published books, journal articles and pieces on disability, adoption and fostering, and has had several flash-fiction pieces published. She has recently finished a novel about identity, adoption and displacement. Jennifer is the co-leader of a u3a creative writing group that focuses on flash and micro-fiction, humour and short poems.