My Kids Needed A Granny ...So We Adopted One!

How One Woman is Filling a Void for Some Families.

- Julie Jacobson

Jo Hayes had just had her first baby in a strange country, literally half a world away from her parents, when the idea to connect families with surrogate grandparents first came to mind.

That was in 2010. Fast forward to 2017 and the now-single mum-of-two once again found herself pining not just for her own mum but for a grandma who lived close by to become part of the family.

“All my family are in the UK, dotted all over the place – my mother is in East Sussex, my dad’s in Kent, my brother’s in Warwickshire and my sister’s in Surrey. When I had my daughter, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I just felt I needed my mum and had this idea about finding one here.”

The idea remained exactly that − a thought in the back of Jo’s mind – until two years ago when she and her partner, who share Sophie (8) and Hunter (4), split up. While their dad is still very much part of their lives, and their paternal grandparents live in Taumarunui and Tauranga, Jo (46) says she felt very isolated and alone.

“That was the turning point for me,” she tells. “It was very much an, ‘I’m so alone’ kind of scenario. It felt like there was this massive void for me and for the kids as well.”

Jo launched her charity, Surrogate Grandparents, which helps to find grandparents for families around the country, and also found herself a New Zealand mum and grandma in 66-year-old Susan Doak.