BORN in secret to a wealthy, unmarried Indian woman, Jacquita Hinton was given up for adoption and taken in by a pair of retired variety artists.

It was an unconventional and difficult start in life, which set the tone for the years ahead.

Jacquita endured racist bullying at school and broke with tradition when she became first a dairy farmer and then a lorry driver.

And she says it is thanks to her adoptive parents that she gained the strength of character to make the most of herself.

Now she hopes to make a difference, just like they did.

She has started volunteering with the Derby branch of Barnardo's to gain the right experience to adopt a child.

The 50-year-old, from Oakwood, said: "I've never wanted children of my own, I've always wanted to adopt.

"I've always known it would happen at the right time and now is the right time.

"I'd like to help a child who unfortunately has had a lot of labels put on them, maybe autistic or with learning disabilities, because I know that, with the right care, labels can be taken off."

Jacquita was adopted through a private agency in Knightsbridge, London. Such adoptions are now illegal.

Her biological mother was from a high-ranking Indian family and fell pregnant after meeting a man with a Spanish and Portuguese background while studying at university in England.

Jacquita said: "There were only two people in the family who knew I'd been born – my mother and her mother, the woman who would have been my grandmother.

"No one else knew about my birth because it was a disgrace."

Aged two, she was adopted by Robina and Reginald Hinton, who decided to adopt after losing a baby through a miscarriage.

They had toured the country performing as variety artists before settling in a Suffolk village, where Mrs Hinton worked as a dance teacher and her husband as an artist.

Jacquita said: "When you adopted an ethnic minority child in those days, you had to apply for a disabled child because that's what we were classed as.

"But my mother was a very pioneering woman and she broke down a lot of barriers. She had a very tough exterior and dealt with whatever she had to deal with.

"Try and imagine my parents walking down the road with a baby with my skin colour.

"My mother was accused of having been with one of the black Americans from the nearby air base."

Jacquita had three adopted siblings – a brother 15 years her senior and a younger brother and sister – and they were all aware they were adopted as soon as they were old enough to understand.

But Jacquita says she was the only one who truly accepted the situation.

She said: "I was the one whose adoption was totally successful. Being adopted is a very complex, very emotional situation and some people will accept it, whereas others won't.

"My younger brother wanted to find his biological mother and shoot her, that was his attitude."

But Jacquita never wanted to meet her biological parents.

She said: "As far as I'm concerned, I've only got one mother and father. I don't need to be curious about my biological parents, I know all I need to know. "

She says part of the reason she and her mother became so close was because of the difficulties they had to face in the small Suffolk village.

She said: "We went through a lot together. I had to cope with racist remarks and being beaten up every other day at school. When I cut myself the children wanted to see what colour my blood was because they'd been told it was black."

Nowadays, local authorities try and match adopted children with parents from the same racial background but, despite her childhood problems, Jacquita dismisses this approach.

She said: "I've never heard so much rubbish in all my life. I couldn't have had better parents."

Because of the problems of bullying, she was home-schooled for a few years before attending a fee-paying secondary school.

She left aged 18 and spent seven years working in dairy farming in Norfolk, despite the industry being dominated by white men from farming backgrounds.

She said: "My mother always told me to do what I wanted and never take 'no' for an answer."

It was during that time she first volunteered, working for three years at a youth club whose members were mainly from a local children's home.

After giving up farming, she again defied her gender and ethnic background and got a licence to drive lorries, which led to her running her own driver-training business.

She moved to Derby 14 years ago.

But last year the downturn in the economy and a problem with her back forced her to give it up.

This came as a massive blow, particularly as her mother had died, aged 90, a few months earlier.

However, it meant she finally had the time to focus on adopting.

She trained as a volunteer "child advocate", giving one-to-one support to vulnerable young people, and also contacted Barnardo's.

Now she works with the charity's after-school club and its Befriending Project.

The latter involves going into family homes to support them.

She said: "It's a whole new lease of life for me and it's one which I very much welcome."