Episode 11 Family Finders

Families can be driven apart for all manner of reasons.

I had no information at all about where my mum went.

And when you do lose touch with your loved ones...

You don't know who you are, where you've come from.

..finding them can take a lifetime...

I might have a brother that's still living here.

..especially when they could be anywhere - at home or abroad.

And that's where the family finders come in,

from international organisations...

Hi, it's the Salvation Army Family Tracing Service.

..to genealogy detective agencies...

For someone to say that it's changed their life,

it makes coming to work really, really special.

..and dedicated one-man bands.

It's a matter of how much effort you really want to put into it,

how badly you want to solve the problem.

They hunt through history to bring families back together again.

Finding new family is wonderful.

In this series, we follow the work of the family finders...

Suddenly, you get one spark of breakthrough and there they are.

..learning the tricks they use

to track missing relatives through time...

I didn't think I'd ever find sisters but I have.

..and meeting the people whose lives they change along the way.

I've been waiting to meet John my whole life.

Since we've met, I feel part of a family again.

You've just completed my life for me.

Families can lose touch for all sorts of reasons.

A relative may have moved abroad,

sometimes people just drift apart,

but in the most extreme circumstances,

families must make the ultimate sacrifice and split up

because it may be the only route to a better and more secure future.

Today, we follow two such cases.

Iwan's search is for the birth mother who gave him up

as a three-day-old baby, in order to give him

the opportunities in life she felt she couldn't provide.

"You may decide to tell Ewan all this yourselves one day

"or you may give him this letter to read.

"But, in either case, he can be assured

"that his mother was very concerned for his future welfare."

I couldn't just...turn away and not look at him

and not at least have one cuddle.

So, I did, and I fell in love with him.

I'm going to cry now.

And we meet Hussin who,

after the trauma of fleeing a home being torn apart by civil war,

left his family behind and put his own life on the line

in search of a safer future for them all.

I'm started crying, she started crying, my mum.

Everybody started crying because I know this journey is very bad.

Maybe you die, maybe you lose your life, it's not very safe,

but I have to.

36-year-old Iwan Williams grew up in Lincoln.

From a young age, his parents were open

about the fact they had adopted him.

They told us the story about how a baby comes from Mummy's tummy

and all that sort of thing and they said, "Well, you didn't,

"but we still love you

"and your natural parents couldn't keep you for whatever reason."

I, at least, have the memory of being very confused.

There's a huge sense of, "Well, who am I?"

that sort of lingers over you.

It wasn't until Iwan was in his late teens

that he learned some details about his birth family.

His adoptive father gave him a letter

he had been keeping for him since his adoption.

In the letter were details about my natural mum and my natural dad

and the circumstances around my birth.

It says, "Dear Mr and Mrs Clark, you already know that Daniel was born

"at the Pilgrim Hospital, Boston, and his delivery was normal.

"Sarah, Daniel's mother, is a 15-year-old grammar school girl

"who had home tuition during her pregnancy.

"Sarah's family were very supportive

"and offered to help her care for her baby,

"but she felt she was too young to give him the security

"and upbringing that she should wish him to have.

"You may decide to tell Iwan all this yourselves one day

"or you may give him this letter to read but, in either case,

"he can be assured that his mother was very concerned

"for his future welfare."

I think I was dumbfounded when I first got it.

It's like, "Oh, this is a bit of real information about ME." Um...

But it's on paper. That's weird.

Another couple of years passed before Iwan resolved to act

on the information he had been given about his adoption.

I decided I wanted to find out a bit more about her

and I looked into the process of finding out her name

and all this sort of thing

and I came across something called the Adoption Contact Register,

which you pay £10 or £15 to and they tell you

whether your natural parent or parents have put their names

on this register so, in effect,

giving you the permission to contact them.

And she HAD put it on there.

Having the name of my mother given to me

by this Adoption Contact Register goes in the face of all the...

all of the fear that you have,

all of the, "They didn't want me", and all the rest of it.

It says, "Actually, get in touch if you want."

Iwan now knew his birth mother's married name, Sarah Wroot,

and an address.

He had everything he needed to make contact but then, he hesitated.

I just kept that information for years. I didn't do anything with it.

I think it takes a lot of courage to do it.

And I think, I think I had to grow up a bit more

and probably get rid of a lot of the fear of,

"Who are these people and why did they give me up?

"Do they actually want me?"

After going to university, Iwan eventually ended up in London

and began a career in recruitment.

After a few years of working in the city,

he decided to take a break from the rat race.

It was then, just over two years ago,

that his thoughts turned again to his birth mother.

After having decided that...

..I would change the course of my life, or working life,

I'd had a chance to have some time not working

and it became apparent that actually finding out who I was

was more important, at that particular time, than anything else.

Iwan's first port of call was to return to the adoption agency,

where his birth mother had left her details several years before.

The beginning of the search was going back to the letter

from the Adoption Contact Register,

getting her address from there and trying that out.

So, after 34 years of having no contact with...

..either of my natural parents, I'd written this card.

I knew that the first name that I'd been given was Daniel

and I think I wrote on the card the name that she'd given me

and my date of birth, so then she would be under no illusions

as to who it was and why this random card came through the post.

After posting the card, Iwan heard nothing back.

And I think it was maybe three weeks, a month later,

I thought if there was going to be anything,

it would have been by now and then I had the thought,

"Hold on, that address was really, really old.

"How do I go about finding out more about this?"

Realising the address he got from the Adoption Register

could now be years out of date,

Iwan's next step was to ask his local council for help.

So, I approached Tower Hamlets Council,

where I was living at the time and they said,

"Yes, you can apply for a thing called a birth record."

They gave me this, which is an adoption case sheet,

which is enormous and has all sorts of details about who she was

and how old she was and where she lived.

Lots of health stuff, where her doctor was and how healthy she was.

I was getting a picture of her through this

and through the original letter I got

when I was 16 or 17, or however old I was.

And I think, when I had this, when I got this adoption record,

that was when it solidified in my mind, without any doubt then,

after I had all of this, it was,

"Right, I'm definitely going to find her."

With every new piece of information,

Iwan was building up a better picture of his birth mother

but he was still no closer to finding her.

It wasn't until he met an amateur genealogist online

that it looked like his search might finally come to fruition.

It was only a few days after meeting Iwan

and I said to him, "Do you want to call me Mum?"

And he did straightaway.

Not every quest to reunite a family

starts with a search through the records.

Hussin Zahra knew exactly where his loved ones were,

but had to overcome barriers separating them

which were both physical and political.

Just five years ago, Hussin and his family

lived comfortably in the Middle East.

I grew up in Syria.

It's very nice place and everybody has own house and own business.

And I tell you, is very nice city

and the summer, you can get all the fruits there, you know.

Everything is ready there and everything you can get it easily,

because the land is very good.

I married my wife 19 years ago

and I bring the children

and I have six children - four girls and two boys.

And I start also to build my work there, in a shop,

a big shop in appliances for houses.

And the business is very good.

But, in 2011, war broke out in Syria,

when a democracy demonstration ended in violence,

which spiralled into civil unrest.

EXPLOSION

Life in Syria became unbearable for much of the civilian population,

many of whom started to leave the country to seek safety,

crossing the borders of Syria into the neighbouring nations

of Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq.

More than 4.5 million people have fled Syria

since the start of the conflict,

making it one of the largest refugee movements in recent history.

Hussin made the difficult decision

that his family should leave their home in Syria

and seek a new life in another country.

Too much guns and too much bombs and stuff.

Very dangerous and I cannot leave and they starve, my children,

so I take the decision

everybody have to go from my country straightaway.

I leave everything.

Just one day, I tell them, "You have to be ready tomorrow.

"We'll start to go because, you know,

"there's no guarantee in the next day what happens."

Actually, it's very hard to leave your house

and you leave the business and you leave your farm and everything

because all my life, I build all these things,

so just one day, I lose everything.

It's very hard for me to leave everything but I have to

because I need to save our lives, I have to save my children's lives.

It's not very easy.

Together, Hussin and his family made it

as far as the relative safety of Egypt

but they decided there wasn't a future for them there either.

So, I tell my wife I have to go from this country

to look for another country.

Hussin made the heart-wrenching decision to leave his wife, Sana,

his four daughters and a baby son alone in Egypt.

Hussin planned to make the dangerous 2,000-mile journey

to the UK, in the hope of finding asylum

and safety for the whole family.

But he wasn't going alone.

He was taking his nine-year-old son, Mohammed,

and his ten-year-old nephew, Ali, with him.

I decided with my wife to go from Egypt to England

but when I need to go to England, it's long way.

Everybody crying, you know.

Of course, it's not like this, you know, to go.

I'm started crying, she started crying, my mum,

everybody started crying,

because it's no guarantee to see us again.

Maybe I lose my life in the sea.

Maybe I lose it for another way, I don't know. So, it's...

When you start to go, the decision is very, very difficult, you know.

Hussin paid to make the perilous passage

across the Mediterranean Sea,

a journey that had already claimed the lives

of hundreds of other refugees.

I know this journey is very bad. Maybe die, maybe you lose your life.

It's not very safe, but I have to, so I go in the ship.

I stay in the sea around 12 days, but in these 12 days,

I cannot forget ever in my life, because it's very, very, very hard.

The journey was long and frightening and, after four days,

the passengers ran out of food and water.

The people there, they lied to us.

They tell us, "There is food, there is drink, don't worry.

"Just three or four days the trip, and very safe."

They lied to us and we stay in this trip 12 days.

Four days in this twelve days, four days,

they don't know where we'll be going, you know.

They lost in the sea and they finish the water and they finish the food.

I take some food with me, I take some water with me,

but all is finished and, you know, I try to save the water and food

for my son and for my nephew, but, you know, it's finished.

After 12 harrowing days at sea, the boat landed in Italy

and from there, they travelled over 1,500 miles to Calais.

After paying for one night in a hotel,

Hussin's money had finally run out and they were forced to join

the hundreds of other refugees living in makeshift camps.

And Calais, also, we stay 15 days there,

but it's my money finished there,

and all the people, like refugees, they need help.

I feel very, very difficult. I know it's very hard for me and for them.

Hussin, his nine-year-old son and his nephew were stranded,

sleeping rough in Calais.

It had been over a month since he had left his family in Egypt.

He couldn't legally get to Britain and he couldn't go back to Syria.

Life is very difficult there and I cannot manage to leave there.

Hussin had risked everything to make it to the UK

to give his family a better future,

but now it looked like his gamble had fallen short,

just in sight of the shores he was seeking.

36-year-old Iwan was looking for the birth mother

who had given him up as a baby so he could have a better future.

For anybody, the desire to meet a natural parent is just inherent.

But Iwan's search had hit a dead end.

He turned to the internet for help.

And came across a group, run by some amateur genealogists,

and one of the people in the group told me

that because my mother's first married name was so unusual -

Sarah J Wroot, which has that unusual spelling

with the W on the front of it -

that it was very easy for her to be found.

In fact, it took just a few hours

for the internet genealogist to find a match,

but with another chance to meet his birth mother, Iwan hesitated again.

He asked the genealogist for advice.

As soon as she told me, she asked me, "What are you going to do?"

And I said...

I think, in the message box, I wrote, "Argh, I don't know!

"What SHOULD I do?" And she said, "Well, you could write a letter."

I said, "No, YOU write it." And...

I was all nerves then. I think I was...

I think I remember writing that and physically shaking,

being so nervous.

And she said, "OK, I'll write a letter for you."

The amateur genealogist wrote to Iwan's mother, Sarah,

and awaited a response. The wait wasn't a long one.

A couple of days later,

Iwan and Sarah were speaking on the phone for the very first time.

My world just exploded.

I was shaking from head to toe, I was in tears, I was happy,

I was...shocked, scared.

I was all over the place! I was a mess - a happy mess!

We spoke and we spoke for something like...

'Oh, it was a ridiculous amount of time. It was hours.'

And we chatted on social media for about the same length of time.

It was something like four or five hours,

so I don't think either of us got any sleep that night.

'It was like finding your best friend, in a really gentle way.'

It was exceedingly significant.

I'd never felt close to anybody, really,

'um, not growing up - at least, not for a long time.'

And...suddenly having this...

..you know, all-encompassing conversation

about the whole of my life...

um, with this woman I'd never met who was my mother...

..was amazing.

34 years after he had been given up for adoption,

Iwan had finally found his birth mother, Sarah.

And now they had made contact,

Iwan learned the full story of why he had been put up for adoption.

It began when, as a teenager, Sarah discovered she was expecting a baby.

I was really scared. I was 14, you know.

I was so confused, so I hid it for as long as I could.

I was getting dressed and Mum walked in and saw my tummy

and she went back upstairs and, bless her,

the only thing she could say was,

"Have you been doing something you shouldn't?"

So, yeah. And then it all came out.

Although her family were supportive,

Sarah had to make a decision about whether to keep her unborn child.

My mum and dad said it was totally my choice but if I kept him,

I'd be responsible for bringing him up,

looking after him and everything,

because my mum needed to work and dad as well.

Um, so he would be totally my responsibility. Um...

But I made the decision that he was going to be adopted

cos I couldn't give him a proper family, I couldn't give him a dad

and a mum, you know, in a secure...

..environment. It was all about what HE needed

and it wasn't HIS fault that I got pregnant,

but he was a little boy that needed security

and I wanted him to have more than I could give him.

I'd made the decision, before I went in to give birth,

that I would have him

and I wouldn't look at him and I wouldn't cuddle him,

cos I thought, "I'll get too attached and it will be too hard."

And I gave birth to him and I just had to hold him.

I couldn't just turn away and not look at him

and not at least have one cuddle, so I did, and...

Yeah, I fell in love with him.

I'm going to cry now.

I did, I fell in love with him.

SHE SNIFFS

And I haven't stopped loving him since.

I can still feel it.

I've got a photo of me holding him in the hospital in the bed,

on my shoulder, and I can still feel.

You never lose that. Yeah...

Sarah named her baby boy Daniel

and cared for him for three days in hospital.

Eventually, the time came to leave Daniel.

The day my dad came and picked me up, I was in bits.

The ward sister had come into the, um, the room...

..and wanted to take Daniel away

before my dad came and picked me up, and I wouldn't let her.

I said, "No, he's staying with me

"until my dad gets here and takes me home."

And Dad came in. Poor old Dad.

Watching me, I think that was the hardest bit for him.

I was just a mess and he had to be strong and take me home

and that was...

The worst bit was walking out of the hospital

cos I felt like I was abandoning him.

The guilt is less now

but you never stop feeling guilty ever.

Sarah moved on with her life

but the baby boy she had to give up was never far from her thoughts.

I got married at 19 and then, two years later,

I had my son Jonathan and we were in Peterborough then

and I remember coming home.

I panicked cos I thought, "Oh, I'm responsible for this one."

I rang my mum and I said, "I need you."

Mum came over and I can remember saying to my mum,

with tears down my face, "I can keep this one. This one's mine."

Yeah, that was hugely emotional. It helped heal the hurt that...

Because I had Daniel and I had nothing to love at the end of it.

You'd think about him on his birthday,

you'd think about him at Christmas.

I'd do things with the children, you know,

and "I wonder how Daniel is. What does he look like?

"How tall is he? What does he like?"

You know, when the kids are having a strop, "I wonder if HE has a strop."

You know. You always... He's always there, in the back of your mind.

I wonder...

And I think the biggest thing was, "What does he look like?"

34 years later, Sarah was finally about to find out.

After the phone call,

neither Iwan nor Sarah wanted to waste any time in meeting up.

We met at London Bridge station.

Bless her, Mum was a bit of a wreck, but she was fine.

And there was lots of hugs and lots of tears and it was amazing.

It was the most amazing day of my life.

I was a bag of nerves.

I was stuttering and spluttering and we laughed about it in the end

and I kept calling him "Daniel" and he said, "It's fine.

"I don't care what you call me." Um, but, no... And it was...

It's almost like you knew each other.

It was really weird, it was surreal, you know.

A 34-year-old guy turns up, he's my son,

but there's a bond, there's an instant bond.

It was... It was amazing.

And we just hugged and we held hands immediately.

I wasn't letting go of him.

And it was just natural.

The first time I met her, I fell in love with her completely,

um, which sounds weird, but, you know, it's not.

It's perfectly natural and she's absolutely amazing.

It was only a few days after meeting Iwan and I said to him...

"Do you want to call me 'Mum'?" And he did, straightaway.

She asked me what I wanted to be called and I said,

"Well, Iwan, that's my first name. That's all I've always known

"and I think that's the easiest thing going forward, for me."

She sometimes calls me Daniel, which is funny.

And it's not just a mother Iwan has found.

He's now part of a family he never knew he had.

I've also met my half-sister and my half-brother

and they're lovely, really, really nice.

Loads of character, both of them.

I finally got my photograph of all my three children together.

That was a hell of a day. That was good.

I waited 35 years to have a photograph

of Iwan and Jonathan and Hannah all together with me.

I've inherited, I think, quite a large family -

certainly larger than any family I've ever known.

Iwan and Sarah are still in the process of catching up

on over 30 years of life,

so today, they're meeting up to share some more memories.

We're off to a cafe to meet Mum

and then we're going to have a look at the house where she grew up.

I've never been to any of these places.

I don't know, personally, the places

that she grew up in and all of that,

so it will be nice to see Boston and, hopefully,

the weather will clear up, but I don't hold my breath for that.

-Hello.

-Hello.

-How are you?

-I'm good, thanks. How are you?

-I'm all right.

To help fill in the years spent apart,

they've both brought some photos,

including one of a teenage Sarah

just a few months before she gave birth to Iwan.

-That was doing an operatic...

-Oh, yeah.

-I was actually pregnant with you then.

-Wow! I'm in there.

-Yes.

But no-one knew.

-And these are ones from later.

-Oh, look!

-You're so cute!

-Mmm.

-You're very much like that now.

-What?

-Like making a mess?

-Loud and lairy!

-Yeah.

THEY LAUGH

We're just very content where we are now.

When we first saw each other and everything,

it was a bit...up in the air

and it was very emotional and it was a rollercoaster,

but now we're just so comfortable with everything.

We're just like any other family members, any other mum and son.

It's just comfy, it's good to be with each other

and have each other in each other's lives, just natural.

To have a mother who is... who's remarried

-and also been very open about it...

-Mmm.

-..is a really rare thing.

I was never going it hide...

-I can't imagine you being ashamed of it or hiding it either.

-It happened.

-It was an accident.

-Yeah.

-And here we are.

-Yeah.

-All done.

-Yeah, I know.

-And I'm very pleased, I'm very happy.

-Yep, so am I.

The next stop for mother and son is the house where Sarah grew up,

where she discovered she was pregnant with Iwan

and where she made the decision to give him up

so he could have a better life than the one she could have provided.

Crikey, this brings back memories!

I bet it does.

-There it is.

-This one here?

-Yeah. It hasn't changed much.

That's where you lived. It looks like a lovely house.

-It was a happy house.

-Yeah.

-Yeah, although we went through some emotional times.

-Sure.

Does it bring back a lot of memories for you, coming back here?

Yeah, and it's not as hard as I thought it was going to be.

-That's nice.

-I think, now, cos I've got you...

-Yeah.

-That's...

That's the main thing.

..put all that into perspective,

cos I thought, "Golly, is this going to be really emotional

-"and difficult?" And it hasn't been.

-I wondered if it would be that.

-It feels like it's the right thing to do now.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-I know what you mean.

-Cos we're both in the place

-where we can deal with it and cope with it and...

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

Now I feel like I certainly have a mum

who I can talk to about anything, which is amazing.

I've never had that before.

Iwan coming back, it has made me think, "What if, if I'd kept him?"

But if I had kept him, I may not have met my ex-husband

and had Jonathan and Hannah, so I've got no regrets.

And both of us have said what happened happened,

the past is the past, what we've got now is the future

and that's the important thing.

Since meeting my mum, I'm a lot more settled in myself

and I definitely have a sense of identity.

It's really nice having someone in your life

who you look like and that you ARE like.

I think you grow up with discussions about nature versus nurture

and you might have these ideas about it

but you really don't have any clue

about what that really means, practically...

..or emotionally, and then, finally, for all of that to sink into place,

-is amazing.

-Now I've got him, Iwan's here forever.

SARAH LAUGHS

Yeah, we've always said we'll never lose each other again. Yeah.

He's family.

Hussin Zahra, along with his nine-year-old son, Mohammed,

and his nephew Ali, had left their family in Egypt,

after fleeing their war-torn home in Syria, in search of a better future.

Hussin was heading to the UK

to secure asylum and safety for his family,

but had been stuck in Calais for a month.

With the very last of his savings,

he decided to take his biggest risk yet.

Some people, they tell us, "You have to go only in this way,

"by lorry, because no way to enter the UK, only in this one."

So, they took us and they brought us in the lorry

and we enter the UK like this.

When we reach the...the UK,

and I start knock the lorry from the back.

I start to knock too much, to open to the door for us to go out.

You know, I stay in this lorry around 12 or 13 hours, you know.

It's very difficult.

But there is some traffic and there is some people in the car,

he hear the voice when I talk in the lorry,

so they call the police and the police later on,

he stop the lorry and we go off from the lorry like this.

Off the ferry and in the UK,

the lorry was pulled over by the police

and Hussin, his son and his nephew were taken into custody.

When the police opened the door and they tell us, "Come out," I'm happy.

They saw I have two children and me, straightaway take us,

put us in the car and take us in safe place, you know.

Hussin and the boys were allowed to stay in the UK

while their applications for asylum were processed.

They settled in Birmingham

but, although Hussin and the boys were safe for now,

the rest of their family were still stuck in Egypt.

When I arrive in England,

I feel very, you know, afraid, about my family,

because I leave them there and they don't have anything there.

They don't have enough money to eat.

2,000 miles away, and fearing for the family he had to leave behind,

Hussin felt powerless. But there was one glimmer of hope.

I reach this city and I contact the Red Cross.

Er...

And they start help me about to join my family here.

The British Red Cross is one of the world's best-known

international humanitarian organisations.

Relying on a huge global network of volunteers,

they provide help to people in crisis, both in the UK and overseas.

There about 17 million volunteers globally.

In British Red Cross, there are about 30,000 volunteers,

all in local areas, doing different services,

like independent living, emergency response,

first aid and, of course, international family tracing.

They are committed to restoring contact between families

separated by armed conflict, disaster or migration.

We've reunited people

from all over the world, from Afghanistan, Syria, Eritrea,

Ethiopia, Sudan - everywhere, really, everywhere.

We always rely on the local expertise

of the volunteers on the ground in different countries to help us,

and every country has a different way of tracing.

The Red Cross tracing service handle over 1,000 cases a year,

finding and reuniting families.

And it was to the Red Cross, that Hussin now turned for help.

But he had no idea

if they would be able to reunite him with his family.

Hussin had claimed asylum on arriving in the UK

and that's a very complex process in itself,

because you have to prove to the Home Office

that you fled persecution and you're interviewed

and everything you say is being cross-checked.

So, once you are granted protection in the UK,

when you have refugee status, then you become eligible

to apply for family reunion, but the criteria is very narrow,

so it's another complex process that starts.

Every day it took for Hussin's application for refugee status

to be considered, was another day apart for the family.

Finally, it was confirmed.

But that was just the beginning of a complex process

to bring the rest of his family to the UK

that had no guarantee of success.

Red Cross support worker Fabio took on the case.

When Hussin approached us

in the first place, he was absolutely lost

in a sense that he said,

"I don't know what to do." At that time,

he was looking to apply for his family to come to the UK,

so to go through the family reunion process, which is a complex one.

He had no access to legal advice and there is no free legal advice

for such situations and that was challenging.

But immediately, it did emerge that his worry was about his family

and I think what he told us, at that stage,

was an incredibly worrying situation.

A huge international team was involved with the case.

Our aim was, obviously, to reunite Hussin with his wife

and the rest of his children, so it was quite a massive effort, really,

not just for us, here in the branch in Birmingham,

but also for our colleagues in London, in our head office,

the family reunion travel assistance team

and, indeed, our partner agency in Egypt, in this case.

So, a number of people involved, all focussing on the same problem.

Trying to get families back together

means getting approval from a string of government departments,

such as immigration, visa and border control.

Applying for family reunion

when you are a refugee is a very complex process.

Gathering relevant documents

to be able to prove that you are who you say you are,

that you are related to your family members,

as you say you are related,

that you're married to your wife or your husband,

because the Home Office asks for original documents

and that can be very tricky for families who have been on the move,

who have had to flee, if these documents existed, actually,

because in some of the countries,

there are no birth certificates or marriage certificates.

The final stage of the process involved, first of all,

making sure that there were no other obstacles.

100 telephone calls, maybe,

and numerous emails with our head office

and communicating that back to the family here,

back to the family in Egypt,

so all of those things were behind the scenes

before we actually met the family.

It's been seven months since Hussin left his wife and children in Egypt

and started his epic journey to the UK.

Today, his family is finally making the same trip,

except they are making their journey by plane.

With the help of the Red Cross,

they have been granted permission to join Hussin, Mohammed and Ali.

It's long time, you know, I don't see them

and it's more than, now, seven months. I very miss them, you know.

It's too much I miss them, so I wait,

but at least now they come here now together

and we'll be same, we'll meet again all the family.

THEY SPEAK IN NATIVE TONGUE

HE SPEAKS IN NATIVE TONGUE

THEY SPEAK IN NATIVE TONGUE

To see my family, to hug them, I'm very happy, you know, very happy.

Really amazing, I think,

and privileged to be a witness of that, really -

seeing that sense of coming together again after such a long time

and, more than anything else,

the idea that we are safe, a sense of safety.

The Red Cross will be very, very fantastic,

because I saw from them a lot of help,

so I'm very appreciate to them to help me.

When we find people and when you hear about the first contact,

that feeling is just incredible,

because I think we can all relate to it.

I think most people have someone in their lives that they cherish

and so, when you see people actually being put back together

or speaking to someone for the very first time, it's incredible.

It's been seven months since Hussin and his family were reunited

and they're now building a future for themselves in the UK.

The horror of their time apart is fading and the joy of their reunion

has already become a treasured family memory.

Very stressed there when they wait, so when will be coming together,

so it's amazing, you know, amazing show.

It makes me feel...happy.

SHE SPEAKS IN NATIVE TONGUE

-HUSSIN TRANSLATES:

-She feels very happy

because it's finished the time for the...you know, the waiting

and for all of the bad things has gone already now,

and now starts a new life and everybody join with together now,

so they feel, she feels very happy.

Today, Red Cross case worker Fabio has come to visit Hussin,

his wife, Sana, and their children,

to see how they're settling into life in Britain.

I know it's been quite a journey to come to a new place.

It's a new city.

I just wanted to check that everyone in your family are OK.

Yeah, actually, everybody now they go to school

and they start now to be in English.

For 11-year-old Mohammed, having survived the warzone,

a treacherous journey, and eight months without his mother,

life is very different.

Hussin can finally see a safe and secure future ahead

for him and all his children.

Have you made any friends in here now, Mohammed?

-Do you have any friends here?

-Yes.

-Yes?

There seems to be a smile on your face which is nice to see.

-Do you like the school?

-Yeah.

-Yes? What's your favourite subject?

-Science.

-So you want to be a scientist one day?

-Yeah.

-Oh!

Very clever, you know, and he do very good in the school

-and everybody happy there with...

-Mmm, the teacher?

Yeah, the teacher, they're happy too much from him.

I'm just curious to know how can you see your future?

What would you like to see to happen?

To work very hard here, to build us again, you know.

To do some business here, to do something for the family.

It's incredible to see that whatever Hussin and his wife

and, indeed, the others in the family do is for their children,

to make sure that they will have a better chance.

Thank you very much for you.

-I appreciate that.

-No...

-You work very hard for my family.

For us, seeing families back together means a lot,

because it's really what gives sense to people's lives,

being supported by your family.

Hopefully, it will allow you to also build a better future.

We are happy when we see families back together.

You help us too much, you know. Thank you very much.

TODDLER CHUCKLES