85-year-old wasn't able to kiss newborn goodbye when giving her up for adoption

An 85-year-old woman who gave her newborn up for adoption to a mother and baby home after falling pregnant as a teenager has opened up about the heartbreak of not even knowing if her daughter is still alive despite spending decades trying to track her down. Appearing on tonight's episode of ITV's Long Lost Families, Jean laid bare the ordeal of not even being able to kiss her little one goodbye. Aged just sixteen in the 1956, she was sent to the Good Shepherd Mother and Baby Home by her parents after she fell pregnant by her first boyfriend, Tony. The institution was established by a moral welfare association connected to the Church of England. It was one of the many homes designed to provide refuge for unwed mothers -which were years later embroiled in scandal after it emerged they produced high levels of infant mortality, misogyny and stigmatisation of some of society's most vulnerable.