Essex woman reunites with long-lost brother on ITV's Long Lost Family
Jayne Hadlow traces and meets her brother Andrew, fulfilling their late mother Kathleen's dying wish after more than a decade of searching
An Essex woman has fulfilled her mother’s dying wish by finally meeting her long-lost brother on ITV's Long Lost Family. Jayne Hadlow, 60, learned that she had a brother, Andrew, who was born in 1962 and placed for adoption after Kathleen, their mother, faced pressure from her strict parents. Jayne and her siblings had never met him, and Kathleen died in 2011 before the family could reunite.
Kathleen told Jayne the truth when she was 19. “You’ve got a brother; his name is Jeffery, and I had him adopted,” Kathleen said, according to the account of the episode. Kathleen, then 21, had given birth to Jeffery while living under the weight of her parents’ disapproval of an unmarried pregnancy. After the birth, she returned home only to find that the baby had been adopted by another family. “I can’t imagine the pain of that,” Jayne recalled of her mother’s experience, a memory that lingered for decades. Kathleen carried that sorrow with her for the rest of her life and made finding Jeffery—and telling him he was loved—her mission before she died.
As Jayne pieced together her family history, she visited her mother’s home in Liverpool, where she was raised, and learned more about the circumstances around Kathleen’s pregnancy and the family’s strict Catholic backdrop. The grandparents, who disapproved of the pregnancy, arranged for Kathleen to be sent away to the Isle of Wight during the later stages of the pregnancy, with the baby later returned to base in Liverpool. The episode notes that the pressure from her parents contributed to Kathleen’s heartbreak and her decision—the lasting memory of Bonfire Night, when their father took Jayne and her brothers out to celebrate, contrasted with their mother’s sadness when she stayed home, a ritual that would hint at deeper family tensions.
With help from ITV’s Long Lost Family team, including host Nicky Campbell and co-host Davina McCall, Jayne’s search began to move from speculation to a confirmed trail. The team discovered that Jeffery had been adopted by a couple in the Lake District and that his name was later changed to Andrew. They then located Andrew, who was living in Bristol, and arranged for him to be contacted about a sister who had been seeking him for years. Nicky Campbell traveled to Bristol to share the news that Andrew had a birth sister who was eager to meet him, while Davina McCall delivered the message to Jayne back in Liverpool.
Andrew described his upbringing with his adoptive family as positive; he said he had a great childhood and felt part of that family, which helped him resist searching for his birth relatives for many years. “I never went looking, it was that loyalty,” he said of his decision to stay within his adoptive family. Yet the moment he learned that his birth sister was seeking him, his perspective shifted, and he agreed to meet the family he had not known from birth.
On screen, the emotional moment of discovery unfolded as Davina arrived to share the news with Jayne that her elder brother had been found. When Jayne saw an image of Andrew, she was struck by the resemblance to their mother and exclaimed that she finally felt connected to the story that had haunted her for years. Andrew, upon meeting Jayne and her brothers Stephen and Jamie, expressed warmth and gratitude for being welcomed into a family that had waited so long for him. He said, “It’s just incredible, the connection is there, and the instant warmth. They couldn’t have made me feel more welcome if they tried. It was fantastic.”
For Jayne, the reunion brought a sense of closure and renewal. “As soon as I walked into the room, I just knew instantly that he was a part of me. He was part of our family,” she said after meeting Andrew. She added that she felt she had answered her mother’s request and believed Kathleen would be “looking down” and “so happy” to see the siblings together at last.
The episode’s ending captured a family in the moment of reunion, with the siblings embracing and vowing to “get on and fit in what we’ve missed in the past 30 years.” Long Lost Family airs on ITV1, with new episodes continuing to explore the stories of families separated by adoption and distance, offering viewers a careful balance of factual reporting and human-scale emotion in a culture-and-entertainment context.