Recently, Lib Dem Voice has been snowed under with hits and comments from new readers, all expressing their anger in the face of the Baby P tragedy. (If you’re a regular, you won’t find anything in this post you don’t already know – fear not, normal LDV service will soon be resumed, but this does seem something of a special case).
If you’re one of those new readers, I’d like to suggest ways you can put your anger to good use. We can all talk endlessly about who’s to blame, what should be done with killers, what should happen to the social workers. But the reality is that none of that will bring Baby P back. You cannot change what is already done by talking.
But you can help prevent this from happening in your town. You might feel powerless. But believe it or not, you’re a citizen. You have the power to hold your own local authorities, your local councillors, and your local MPs to account – whether you’re a mother, a father, a grandparent, or even still a child yourself. You’ve probably never thought about getting involved in local politics before. Perhaps you’ve never even voted because you don’t believe you can ever change anything.
I’m asking you, bearing in mind that there may be children in your neighbourhood who are suffering and are still very much alive and saveable, to give it a try. If the government isn’t doing something right, you need to be the person asking why. You have a vote for your local council and for your MP, you pay your council tax, the council and its services are there to serve you. You have the right to demand answers of them.
Here are a few suggestions (regulars might like to contribute others in the comments):
- Find out the names of your local councillors. You can do this here. All councillors should hold regular sessions where their constituents can approach them about any worry or problem they have. Talk to your councillor about your concerns and ask him or her to find out about the record of the Child Protection Services in the area. Or, you could go straight to the services yourself and then approach your councillor if you find anything that worries you (see 2 and 3).
- Get in touch with your local Child Protection Services (they ought to be in the phone book under “council”) explain your concerns and ask how they can reassure you that nothing like the Baby P tragedy could ever happen in your town. They ought to be able to tell you about their ratings system – whether they’re Excellent, Good, Satisfactory or Inadequate.
- Of course, ratings can be wrong – Haringey itself was rated as “Satisfactory”. So get a fresh perspective. Find your local newspaper website (they probably come through your door; if not google the name of your town along with “local newspaper”) and do a search on it for “child protection”. That ought to find any past articles about local mistakes or serious cases. Call the newspapers and ask them what they know about the case, and what happened afterwards. Were lessons really learnt? Were any mistakes dealt with properly? If the newspapers don’t know, they might be able to point you towards the right people to approach to find out.
- Write to your MP. You can find out who they are and how to contact them here. Ask them to sign the two Early Day Motions on child protection put forward by Lib Dem MPs John Hemming and Lynne Featherstone.
- Go to the local campaigning section of the NSPCC website. The NSPCC has ten local campaign co-ordinators who run campaigns about problems in their area. Find out if your nearest co-ordinator is running any events, petitions or other campaigns that you could donate time and skills to.
- Join the Facebook groups for Baby P and encourage others to take practical action as well – tell everyone about your local investigations on the Facebook wall.
- Don’t give up until you’re satisfied. You have rights – exercise them.
Just a note: it’s very important to be firm but polite. This is an emotional issue, but keep it professional. You have a right to demand answers, but you don’t have a right to be rude or abusive. If any local officer is rude or unhelpful to you, ask to be told about the complaints procedure (all councils have one) and complain. If any elected representative (MP or councillor) is rude or unhelpful to you, make sure you vote in your next local elections and in the next General Election to get them out of office.
Lastly, please come back to this site and tell us what you’ve done, and how it went. Any result, however small, is a step in the right direction. We can’t ever stamp out incompetence and mistakes altogether. But the more we hold our public services to account and demand they do a good job, the better they will be, and the less likely it is that any other child will be failed by the system as dismally as Baby P was.
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61 Comments
On no. 3 – PLEASE don’t ring your local paper. Read it, perhaps.
“Could this tragedy happen in our area?” is a classic story that I’m sure local journalists will be already working on in many areas.
If you don’t think they are and want to help them along, ring a local councillor from your council’s main opposition and ask him to reassure you it’s not an issue in your area.
If he is concerned, call a local councillor from the ruling group and ask them to respond to the allegations. THEN ring your local paper, tell them you have a story – who you called, what they said and why you’re concerned/upset/angry.
They will doubtless do 1, 2 and 4 for you and print it in their next edition.
If it’s not on the website, a local paper probably won’t have back copies they can search for past cases. And, if they do, a reporter who could be covering housing and planning scandals will instead spend three hours in a back room leafing through stacks of yellowing paper. Alternatively, they’ll tell you to call the council.
Alix- you’re quite right, we should feel more enpowered to work together to protect children, and that residents who have any concerns should contact their local councillors, or the MP. We’ve all witnessed angry parents swearing at or slapping their children about, and wonder how we can intervene to point out its unacceptable- I know I’ve tried on occasion, and its hard. When I was an Opposition councillor in Hackney, I had a number of social workers, and trade unionists come to me because they felt that there were individuals employed to work with children in the council’s care who should not have been, but, at the time there was a culture of fear amongst staff in Hackney (just as there seems to be in Haringey) where staff feared being vicitimised if they spoke out. I wrote to the chief executive, and the head of the child protection board, asking that the individual be investigated, and I’m still not sure to this day how seriously it was taken. It was hard work getting any response, but I plugged away. I was told that the individual concerned quietly left, and that senior social services managers, were more busy investigating who the whistleblower was!
I was given platitudes as to how well social services was being run.
In the case of Baby P, we’ve read that the childminder, and neighbours of the mother and her boyfriend, all saw them playing with him, and of course did not witness any abuse. It was all done behind closed doors.
Social workers in charge of children on the at risk register, MUST monitor the child very closely, especially as in this case the childminder was reporting cuts and bruises on a daily basis, that don’t seem to have been followed up.
One thing I’m puzzled about was why the whistleblower- Nevres Kemal, who I’ve met in the past, didn’t write to the Lib Dem opposition councillors, or Lynne Feathersone, when she wrote to David Lammy, and other ministers. She clearly had no confidence in the Labour administration, so why not go to opposition councillors, where there would be no danger of closing ranks for political expediancy?
I suppose one positive that may come out of this is that all the media and political hype has ensured that the circumstances will not be swept quietly under he carpet, as I suspect Haringey was hoping it would be, following their own ‘internal’ inquiry.
Merel
If you read my blog you will see she did get her story to me (albeit after she got no response from ministers) and I was so worried by it that i first wrote to George Meehan (Labour Leader of the Council)and raised three cases including Ms Kemal’s which all demonstrated the pattern of social services closing ranks and turning the tables on the whistleblower.
No response. So then I demanded a meeting and when I got there George Meehan had asked Ita O’Donovan to be there (Haringay Chief Exec).
I raised the issues again in more detail, including my concerns that children were at risk – and they basically thanked me for bringing my concerns and clearly did sod all thereafter. THey always say they are satisfied with everything.
My current concern is that when the media fury and public outrage dies down – nothing will change. That’s basically what happened after Victoria Climbie.
But if Ms Kemal did hte right thing and took it to the highest authority in the land – Government appropriate Ministers and I did hte right thing and took it to the most senior politician and officer who actually have the power to take action – and they did nothing – then the whole thing stinks of collusion. Labour GOvernment and Labour Council.
That is why the focus next week has to put pressure on Ed Balls who has said he is angry and will take action (when he gets the report of the urgent investigation) whatever action is needed.
Then we will see if he acts in Labour’s interest – or the children at risk in this country.
I know exactly what Meral means about officers showing more interest in hunting down a whistleblower than investigating the whistleblower’s concerns. I saw this happen in the 90s when I was an opposition councillor in Southwark (when it was Labour controlled) and I tried to follow up some very nasty incidents that had taken place in a residential home for the elderly.
What saddens me about much of the ‘discussion’ about Baby P on Lib Dem Voice is the lack of interest in analysing what happened within that family (and particularly in the mind of that young mother). What cocktail of events and cruelties in her own life led to such a dreadful outcome?
Ruth: Perhaps Haringey social workers spent lots of time analysing what happened within that family and be understanding of the mother – to the detriment of the welfare of the child.
I think there is little point in trying to speculate on the “cocktail of events and cruelties” in the mother’s life that led to this outcome. There are people in this world who are just plain bad. This woman appears to have shown few of the normal instincts of a mother.
If you believe that that it’s not the fault of those individuals that they became bad and that they were moulded by external events, then maybe through public policy we can influence potential future bad people for the better – but in 20 year’s time.
In the meantime, we need to try to affect that the things that we *do* have control over, for the sake of at risk children next week, next month and next year.
It does not take a social worker to figure out that a young mother with a child under three and with a live-in unemployed boyfriend who is not the father of the baby, is a high-risk formula for the welfare of that child.
The needs of the vulnerable child are paramount: not the mother or the “family” – that seems part of what went wrong here.
John Hemming has a web site too. This points to the relevant part.
Lynne – I actually read your blog just after I’d posted my contribution above. You clearly did the right thing, no question, and all the evidence from Nevres points to a lack of interest or commitment from Haringey to investigate.I know what thats like. I think the media and public reaction to all this has been, if anything, worse that it was with the Victoria Climbie case, not least because it wasn’t supposed to happen again, and certainly not in the same borough! I do hope that Ed Balls and the government will take decisive action once all the facts are known. Its not a question of heads rolling, but accountability. The senior officers concerned in the Climbie case, also just walked away to higher paid jobs, while the junior social worker responsible was scapegoated.
I believe that its time that health professionals were more closely involved with going into homes and monitoring children at risk. If trained social workers can’t see the signs of physical abuse then perhaps health visitors can.
Clive – of course you are absolutely right. The needs of the child are paramount and this child’s suffering could and should have been detected. We need better systems in place – of course we do.
However, it is surely right to seek to prevent as well as cure. The “normal instincts of a mother” were corrupted in this case – to analyse why just might help us prevent this happening again.
Post-natal depression in its most extreme form can prevent a mother from bonding with a child or even recognising it as her own. It makes it quite possible to look at your baby and not love it, not identify with it and not want it. I have experienced this as have many women. The support for women in this position is often abysmal. I was lucky – my husband (a former child protection social worker) was wonderful and I got better. Had I had an uncaring, absent or abusive partner who knows what might have happened.
Of course I accept that better post-natal support might not have prevented Baby P’s mother from becoming what she became but it certainly would not have made the outcome any worse. Intensive post-natal support could clearly have saved three-month-old Delayno Mullings-Sewell and his two-year-old
brother Romario whose mother was suffering from post-natal depression in its most desperate form when she killed them.
Alix,
I think this is an excellant article with very good practical suggestions. For what it’s worth; have a LibDig 🙂
Social services plead shortage of staff and financial resources as excuses for overlooking torture of children(even after 60 visits to baby P ).In other European countries they take children from parents only if they have been severely physically(including sexually) abused but in Britain we waste most of out valuable resources fighting cruel cases in secret courts to remove children and even new born babies for “risk of emotional harm” and similar lesser reasons. The parents of baby P WOULD NEVER HAVE GONE TO COURT to fight for his return if he had been taken earlier as parents that violently physically abuse their children avoid courts like the plague !
Physical torture KILLS KILLS KILLS !!!
Emotional abuse does NOT
Poor school attendance does NOT
A cluttered house does NOT
Witnessing domestic violence does NOT
Hostility to the “professionals” does NOT
A parent with learning problems does NOT
Where therefore should the “SS” priorities lie?
I’m only asking !!
I would have thought myself it was MORE IMPORTANT to concentrate on preventing babies being tortured rather than the more common rush to remove babies AT BIRTH from mothers whom some highly paid psychobabble merchants have decided might at some future date emotionally harm their babies ! Crystal ball gazing ??
Meral is right. Health visitors can make a big difference. It is worrying to see their services so thin on the ground.
Non-Londoners and those in two-tier areas note that the responsibility for child protection falls to the upper tier (ie county) council, not their district council!
“Early Day Motions”
Oh great, just what the world needs. More pointless EDMs at a significant cost to the taxpayer which achieve absolutely nothing.
http://www.lettersfromatory.com
Letters from a Tory: At least an EDM will get the matter raised in parliament and kept in the public (and politicians) eye.
I haven’t seen this topic on your (or other Tory) blogs.
I live around the corner from Climbie’s estate – it is still a dumping estate for haringey housing department to rent out. it was built on land owned and sold by the council and so the squalid dwellings are the result of a crudbucket council. The labour party may want the Cllr Santry to take the blame, but the reality is that council officers/complaints procedures and even contact with the police, have all been adulterated and are “unfit for purpose” in all manner of ways – from undermining and bullying social workers with good records who want to (and have the bravery to) complain, it was apparent that the “council system” is set up to fail the complainant and praise the council (and councillors’s) publicity machine. The problem is so imbeded in Haringey that where one sees very long term mismanagement it is because there is a team of poor staff who act collectively to always do what they have always done, and some of that is bully, and victimise the person with conscience. Haringey is not just rotten at the core it is ROT, as people who gain fame and status from being on a board or two, get to work on national boards and so we have the ROT distributed to the arts, to the charity commission and to the audit commission. The ROT is “what the public dont know about wont get us sacked, so cover up, shut it up and send a glossy photo out”.
The way to make sure your local council is doing its job properly – as far as we can, anyway – is to make sure the politicians are accountable and empowered by their electorate.
DON’T bombard the council with vague questions about “could it happen here….” or “what are your procedures” etc.
DON’T annoy your local paper with questions about what may have happened in the past.
DO contact your elected representatives and discuss any concerns you have with them
DO attempt to find out what your council is discussing and what decisions they are due to make/have made in your name. Do this through your elected councillors. If they don’t seem to know, keep pressing the point. They ought to know, that’s what they’re there for.
DON”T get involved in angry, vague campaigns against the council.
DO offer whatever support you can to those who are trying to make things better.
The Baby P case is truly shocking but unfocused anger will do no good. We need practical, constructive ways to make those who act on our behalf more accountable to us, the electorate.
You are entirely right that we all have the right but trying to excerise it and get justice for a child is to face the arrogance and indifference of faceless bureacracts at this obscene million pound funded Children’s Services who have betrayed Lord Laming and have bred into over funded oligarchies.
What is needed is a back to basics fundamental upholding of a child to have their welfare paramount. That is not the case. Until it is day by day children will suffer and some like Baby P will have thier voices silenced.
I speak from the experience of my own son’s abuse by a children’s service and my weapon against them is a play to bring this whole issue into focus.
we must as a nation go back to basics…the family is splintered…we will always have problems in society..but maybe if we looked back over our shoulders we could learn a few valuable lessons here…a majority of humans will harm children that do not belong genetically to them….familys need to work together as do neighbours…we live now in a society that has no respect for life…a disposable attitude to everything….and maybe just maybe the good old days were just that….This little boys life must not be in vain….we should all learn to be kinder….we were not meant to behave in this manner
Really useful post, Alix. Thanks!
The isolationist attitude of local govt in this and other subject areas has unfortunately been reinforced over the 1997-2007 period by the attitude from the very top. It is going to take time for the change at the top to trickle down, particularly where there are two-tier authorities. The Information Society helps us – and I remember one senior civil servant (who was close to retiring) telling me about 5 years ago that the only way to bring about change in some LAs is to shame them. Go to it, Ed Balls!
I don’t know a lot about social work. I don’t know how difficult it is to tell abuse from neglect, to cope with squalor and exhaustion, to get every decision right. Pretty difficult, I dare say.
I do know a little about what happened on a UK power station when the accident rate got embarassingly high and somebody decided to do something about it. They announced that the next contracting firm to suffer an accident would all be off site, out of the job, immediately, whatever the reasons or excuses might be.
This was a breathtaking case of rough justice. It did, however, produce a marked improvement in the safety record.
If you are paying someone in social services £100K per year, is it too much to require them to move jobs if a child dies on their watch?
Part of the problem is that cases like this have resulted in more complexity and paperwork (done by computer now) and formal procedure, because that’s what happens when there’s a public hue and cry “something must be done”. That “something” inevitably turns out to be more bureaucracy which ties down the professionals and stops them from doing real intuitive work.
The reality is that we have to accept that occasionally the wrong decision will be made. I know a little bit about this area of work, and yes, it is very difficult. It doesn’t help that the downmarket media are forever swinging between “social workers are evil because they snatch kids from their parents” and “social workers are evil because they didn’t snatch this kid when they should have done” depending on whatever was the last tragedy.
We have seen that Baby P was argued about in many meetings and communications between various professionals. Large amounts of money was spent on this. I have not seen anyone make the case that someone proposed “Baby P stays with his mother” because that person made a personal profit from that decision rather than the other. Taking a kid into care is not something that should be done lightly, so it should be treated as a last resort. There may have been some sloppiness, some of that based on tiredness – if day in day out you deal with dozens of cases of incompetent parents making a mess of bringing up their kids, vicious boyfriends whom the mother seem unaccountably attached to, people who are druggies, dirty, watch too much television, shout at each other, hit each other, smell bad, speak poor English (even though it is their only language …) etc etc, you do get worn down by it.
Investigations should take place sure, to see where things went wrong, if there was any one place where one decision was made and it should have been the other, if there was a point where someone clearly didn’t do their job. But I have not yet seen a convincing argument that any of the professionals involved in this case were bad people, or deserved the abuse that has been thrown at them by the downmarket media and those whipped into a frenzy about the case. Sometimes it just has to be accepted, things go wrong, people make one decision because it seemed right, in hindsight they should have made the other.
i think you need to send a message that this will not be tolerated people out there are dying to have cildren who can’t but yet this sad woman has taken a life of an innocent little boy, it should never have been allowd to reach murder!
I am pregnant execting a little boy and if i had a single bad thought in my mind i would not go through with it why is she even allowed to be apart of the general public,
lock her up and throw away the key.
NOONE has the right to harm a child – a child should NEVER be smacked. Noone has the right to make a child sad or unhappy. Each child has a guardian and their duty is to protect the child. If you are one of those out there who has hit or smacked a child in the past – for whatever reason (and being tired, annoyed, frustrated or drugged up to the eyeballs is no excuse) STOP! There is NO Justification for it whatsoever. To hit or harm a child is bullying and loss of control. An adult has a duty to be a GOOD ROLE MODEL. This means giving a child LOVE, UNDERSTANDING,and RESPECT. Baby P was given none of these but I know he, as small as he was, would have tried to love his abusers (a toddler will hold out his arms for someone to accept his love – Shame on all those who contributed to his pain torture and subsequent death….and those so called professionals sitting in their comfortable offices at the top – yes you -you who did nothing to help this toddler when you had the chance – you are equally to blame. Baby P and all those children who have been failed by all these so called ‘adults’ must NEVER be forgotten. If you had the chance to save this child’s life and didn’t – get out of your job and let someone more competent do the job. I beg you.
A loving granma
Nobody seems to notice what stares a foreigner like myself in the eye, that there is a large number of people who have children because it gives them access to various benefits, free housing being the most important. This free housing is used to attract and retain various boyfriends, regardless of the children’s interest. Until this will be tackled (by offering single mothers some type of hostel accommodation with social work support on site)there will be more horrible things happening to children and more break down of family and society.
Most people seem more intent on wreaking vengeance on the murderers of baby p than preventing the same situation occurring again; May I therefore make a suggestion?
Social services plead shortage of staff and financial resources as excuses for overlooking torture of children (even after 60 visits to baby P ). In other European countries they take children from parents only if they have been severely physically or sexually abused but in Britain we waste most of out valuable resources fighting cruel cases in secret and costly courts to remove children and even new born babies at “risk of emotional harm” and for similar lesser reasons.The parents of baby P would never have gone to court to fight for his return if he had been taken earlier as parents that violently physically abuse their children avoid courts like the plague !
Physical torture KILLS KILLS KILLS !!!
Emotional abuse does NOT
Poor school attendance does NOT
A cluttered house does NOT
Witnessing domestic violence does NOT
Hostility to the “professionals” does NOT
A parent with learning problems does NOT
Where therefore should the “SS” priorities lie?
I’m only asking !!
I would have thought myself it was MORE IMPORTANT to concentrate on preventing babies being tortured rather than the more common rush to remove babies AT BIRTH from mothers whom some highly paid psychobabble merchants have decided may at some future date emotionally harm their babies !Crystal ball gazing ?
If all the resources of child protection were used to examine thoroughly (looking for visible bruises and burns,) say once a month, all those children suspected of having been seriously physically or sexually abused thousands of children’s lives would be saved.At present our resources are wasted fighting in courts to remove happy healthy children from their parents for risk of emotional abuse and similar non life endangering symptoms.Only parents that truly love their children fight through the gruelling ritual of the secret family courts and against all common sense they nearly always lose If they dare to protest publicly more than 200 parents a year are jailed (answer to a parliamentary question) for breaking the “omerta” wall of secrecy ! !If only mothers facing a life sentence by losing children to forced adoption had the right to a hearing by jury most of the present injustices would disappear.In short ,what is needed is simply concentration on eradicating physical child abuse and hearings by jury who would rarely take children in other cases siuch as “emotional abuse”,cluttereddwellings, poor school attendance etc.
>Physical torture KILLS KILLS KILLS !!!
Emotional abuse does NOT
Poor school attendance does NOT<
You are entirely wrong to consider that the only concern should be physical, as a father of a vulnerable autistic son induced by his seriously ill mother’s instructions and delusional beliefs, I will say to you that the damage of that abuse not only leads to social exclusion from school and development but leads to severe pyschological damage which has left its scars after eighteen months before a mother was sectioned.
The Childrens Act quite rightly defines harm as physical and harm that is not physical and also impairment of emotional and developmental well being.
Social workers have a difficult but not impossible job but they work in a culture that is rotten from the bad apples of bureacracy and the focus is entirely away from the children. Every day children suffer at the hands of this system, it is corrupt simple as that and it betrays the notion that a childs welfare is paramount.
Oh dear Mike I can only repeat that physical torture kills and emotional abuse does not !
If baby p had suffered emotional abuse instead of having his spine snapped,his fingers sliced off so it was easier to place the pliers to rip off his fingernails ,and punches in the face and body so hard that he swallowed a tooth,and broke 12 ribs he would still be alive today !It’s a question of priorities ! Death or possible mental hardship.Nobody can prove emotional harm or worse still risk of emotional harm but no parent can deny it effectively so vague and unspecific it is when some “expert” says parents just might emotionally harm a child long into the future
Nevertheless, babies are still taken at birth from mothers that have bever harmed anyone.Nobody can sensibly prefer a broken back and death to “psychological damage !
Lastly why all the form filling and calls for new revised procedures?A simple but thorough regular physical examination of children at risk by health visitors or social workers would have saved. the life of baby p and countless other babies and young children.
That however is a solution too simple and would be too effective for the faceless and graceless bureaucrats in the “child protection racket”
oh dear Ian
you are missing the point, the damage from all harm that is not physical is equally as damaging as physical harm, short of death that is, they are both given equal weight in the definition of signficant harm by the legislation to protect children. They are not airey fairy definitions but based on solid medical evidence to pass them off as fanciful is in an insult to the welfare of children seriously impaired and damaged by such treatment. Hopefully you are not a social worker and live in the real world.
OH DEAR MIKE !
Physical Harm KILLS,Emotional harm does NOT !
They cannot therefore as you claim be given equal weight !
I repeat that baby P would be alive today if he had suffered nothing worse than emotional harm,so “equal weight” is rubbish !
When the SS take babies at birth from mothers whom some charlatan predicts “might cause their child emotional harm” that is the real world and it is political correctness gone mad because how can any mother defend herself against the psychobabble of a highly paid prophet?
Sack the lot.
Mike
Your ignorance is really quite worrying. No emotional abuse does not kill; it can and does however cause long-lasting, if not permanent, damage to a child/young person’s development. This can include congitive development, the ability to form and negotiate relationships in later life and the ability to parent your own children: Attachment theory underpinned by a raft of research into children denied the opportunity to develop a bond with a primary carer supports this. As for accommodating children at birth ‘using a crystal ball’ – the reason that most children are accommodated at birth is due to serious issues of substance parental misuse and/or long parental histories of inability to care for previous children. This includes a parenting history of physical abuse to previous children. A recent research study commissioned following Lib Dem MP John Hemming’s and others’ claims of child snatching by social services departments to meet targets, found that in only 2.5% of 386 recent child care proceedings brought before court was there not either a care or supervision order imposed suggesting that rather than ‘crystal ball gazing’ social services departments had well founded, and evidenced, concerns about those children’s care. No doubt had any of these departments allowed parents to take care of their children without applying to court and the child had then been harmed, the right-wing press and yourself would have casting blame in their direction yet again. Finally while there do appear to have been unacceptable and ultimately tragic errors in the case of Baby P – the detail of who, when and why needs to wait until we know more – your idea of examining children for bruises again betrays your ignorance – a) this does happen where there are child protection concerns but b) it is not at all easy to either establish or prove on the balance of probabilities (the standard required in court, quite rightly, to remove a child from their parents) that a child has been harmed through physical injury, rather than via normal play or an accident. Unless of course you want to accommodate any child with any kind of bruise or marking on them? In which case we need to find child care placements for almost all the UK’s child population. If you think child protection work is so straight forwardwhy why don’t you try doing it for six months, and then I’d suspect you might hesitate before promulgating your glib, ill-informed views.
Sorry I’ve just realised my previous comment should be addressed to Ian and not Mike.
And if anyone’s interested in opposing the use of Baby P’s murder as an excuse with which to scapegoat social workers you can sign a counter-petition to The Sun’s at:
http://www.socialworkfuture.org/?p=31
Read more on:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?sid=ccf7797f09e3d4f2f1055478719f1806&refurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fs.php%3Fref%3Dsearch%26init%3Dq%26q%3Dbaby%2BP%2Bcase%26sid%3Dccf7797f09e3d4f2f1055478719f1806&gid=36084627715#/group.php?gid=36153242012&ref=ts
OH ROBIN !
Talking about bruises and probabilities when a child was visited 60 times and ended up with a broken back ,missing fingertips,missing fingernails,12 broken rib.
Any concerned person could at any stage in the last couple of months have seen something was very wrong.If you read what I wrote it was simply that children AT RISK (on the register) should be properly examined for torture,broken limbs,or MASSIVE(not trivial) bruises and burns.
AS for emotional harm, the SS favourite catchall ,I still ask if anyone can deny that if the harm suffered by baby p had been emotional instead of physical he would still be alive today;Get your PRIORITIES right and admit that saving lives is more important than saving hurt feelings !
There were no care or supervision orders on the pregnant mums I have helped when the SS ruthlessly snatched their children at birth(sometimes before delivery of the placenta!) sheer wickedness;In court parent’s statements always began “I HAVE no criminal record,no problems with drugs or alcohol,no mental problems and no learning difficulties”as per my site http://www.forced-adoption.com ! Still the SS quoted risk of emotional harm ! Several like Fran LYON ESCAPED TO IRELAND OR SWEDEN before the birth and have since done very well !The “ss” are on the whole a disgusting lot who deserve those initials as all the decent ones get out when they realise the corruption endemic in the service
Ian
As for the Baby P case – yes there were serious failings but we need to wait for the full details to come out before jumping to half-baked conclusions and giving into knee-jerk reactions that will do nothing to improve the child protection system in the country, if anything quite the opposite. What I particularly object to is people like yourself trying to use this tragic and horrendous case as part of a pre-meditated crusade to undermine the social work profession (and the fact that you describe social work services as “wicked”, “disgusting” and label them “SS” is unfortunate and indicates your evangelical and unbalanced approach to the matter). Looking at the wider picture Britain went from having one of the worst rates of child murders a developed country in the 1970s to one of the best now, which suggests that, contrary to your claims, the overall child protection system is working better than before and better than in most other countries.
As for the issue you are really concerned about, your claims of unfair and ‘forced’ adoption, I again repeat that research published this year into those claims showed that child protection services had well founded and evidenced concerns about those parents ability to care, and in around 75% of cases neglect and not flimsy claims about possible future emotional abuse (something you seem to have a bit of an obsession about – where is your evidence??)was the primary issue of concern. Your claims that social work services place children in care at birth without either parental consent or a court order doesn’t ring true either – it would be illegal to do so and it beggars belief that any social work department of social worker would act in this way. Again I challenge you to substantiate this claim with some evidence rather than quoting hearsay and engaging in mud slinging.
I worked in children and families social work for five years. Placing children in care was one of the most difficult things I have done in my life and those decisions were taken after detailed assessment of parenting capacity involving the parent(s), lengthy discussion within the social work department about the best thing to do, and consultation with other relevant professionals. The number of children I placed in local authority was a tiny proportion of those I worked with and I also agonised over a number of cases where we left children with parents in situations where there were strengths within the family unit but also difficulties and therefore risks to the children, but we were rightly trying to give that family every chance to remain together with supports. Your own claims (and I see you live in Canada and have no first hand experience of the UK child protection system) are so far removed from my own experience and from any acutal evidence I’ve seen that I really do wonder whether they have any basis in fact.
Oh Ian!
Please tear up your subscription to the Daily Mail!
It’s interesting to see that you’ve used the ‘political correctness gone mad’ line.
I’m sure there are a few UKIP forums that are more appropriate for such cliches.
Establishment judges make decisions to take thousands of babies for risk of possible future emotional abuse.
Extract from The Times, Aug 23 2007: “Emotional abuse” has no strict definition in British law. Yet it now accounts for an astounding 21 per cent of all children registered as needing protection, up from 14 per cent in 1997. Last year 6,700 children were put on the child protection register for emotional abuse, compared with only 2,600 for sexual abuse and 5,100 for physical abuse. Both of the latter two categories have been falling steadily. Meanwhile emotional abuse and “neglect” – which replaced the old notion of “grave concern” in 1989 – have been rising. Both are catch-alls. But emotional abuse is especially vague. It covers children who have not been injured, have not complained, and do not come under “emotional neglect”.
6: No jury would take babies from mothers for adoption by strangers because some expert made predictions of their future behaviour.
Most of the worst cases and critical articles are from the Times and Telegraph and the quote above is a good example.
It is typical eveasion to say we should wait for the report before we comment ! Mr Balls announced that the report will be secret! If 60 visits failed to spot extensive bruising disguised by chocolate ,missing fingernails and fingertips followed by a snapped spine we don’t need a report to know that all those who made those visits did not make even the most cursory body inspection.(probably intimidated by the sadiistic boyfriend !) .Any concerned parent drawn from the public would have spotted THESE INJURIES immediately !
Other European countries do not have FORCED ADOPTION (Baroness Hale, House of Lords recent decision)I doubt their murder rate is better than that in the UK .It is common sense that parents who beat up and injure children do not fight in the courts to keep them and conversely that those who do suffer that process do love their children and should usually win but thanks to compliant judges they nearly always lose in cases where juries would have given an opposite decision.
HARRINGEY SACKED THE WHISLEBLOWER AND OBTAINED A COURT INSTRUCTION FORBIDDING HER FROM TALKING.pARENTS IN FAMILY COURT CASES ARE GAGGEED TO STOP THEM FROM REVEALING INJUSTICES PUBLICLY and now Ed Balls says the baby P REPORT WILL BE SECRET AND NOBODY MUST KNOW THAT THE BABY’S NAME WAS PETER OR THE WORLD WILL COME TO AN END! Secrecy and Cover up are the priorities not the children’s welfare;
EVIDENCE YOU WANT EVIDENCE ??
Courts won’t reveal rulings in adoption cases
By Ben Leapman, Home Affairs Correspondent, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 1:44am BST 08/08/2007
Pauline Goodwin’s baby was taken from her but she was denied a copy of the judgment. The court service has now apologised
Family courts are refusing to tell mothers why their babies are being taken away and put up for forced adoption.
Two mothers have told The Sunday Telegraph that their pain at losing their children was made worse by not knowing the grounds on which judges took the decisions.
Both women had their requests for copies of the judgments turned down repeatedly. As a result, they were prevented from launching legal battles to win their babies back, because appeals cannot be lodged without -written judgments.
Critics claimed that the cases are an extreme example of the secrecy that runs throughout the family court system. Earlier this summer, the Government abandoned plans to open up hearings to the media.
John Hemming, the Liberal Democrat MP and chairman of Justice for Families, said: “It seems quite strange that somebody can have their child removed and adopted, and the system will not give reasons.
“This arises from the secrecy of proceedings and the fact that people are allowed to misbehave professionally in the family courts without any fear of sanctions against them.”
The cases are the latest in a series highlighted by this newspaper which have raised concerns about the workings of the family courts and social services.
It included a professional couple who had their daughter taken away because the mother has a history of mental illness and the father was “confrontational” towards social workers, while another couple were told they cannot have their two daughters back despite being cleared of allegations of abuse.
Last year, 2,120 babies were taken for adoption before their first birthday, almost three times as many as a decade ago. Adoptions leapt after councils were offered cash incentives to increase the number.
One of the latest cases involved Pauline Goodwin, 39, from Merseyside, who suffered a breakdown after her marriage ended. As she struggled to cope, her baby girl, born in 2005, was taken away by social services at birth.
At a court hearing in June last year, held at a time when she was temporarily homeless, Judge Wallwork ruled at Liverpool Family Court that the baby should remain in foster care.
The mother says she was told that despite the outcome of the case, the judgment would not be critical of her. However, in the 14 months since the hearing, her repeated requests to obtain a copy of the judgment have proved fruitless. She has been told by social workers that her daughter has now been adopted.
She said: “They had my baby adopted, then they said they make no findings against me, but they won’t give me the court order. I need the judgment because I want to lodge an appeal. It’s supposed to be within 28 days but it has been more than 12 months.
“If they give me the transcripts I can prove the whole thing was wrong, and my baby wouldn’t be where she is now, she would be with me.”
Sharon Harkness, 37, also from Merseyside, won the first round of her courtroom battle when social workers tried to take her baby son away. In August 2005, at the High Court in London, Mr Justice Holman turned down a bid by a local authority to take the boy, then only three months old, into foster care.
However, at Liverpool Family Court in November, Judge Roddy reversed the earlier decision and granted the council a care order. The baby was removed from his family and is now living with prospective adoptive parents.
In the intervening 21 months, repeated requests by Mrs Harkness for a written judgment have been refused or ignored. She said: “It’s within my rights to at least see the kind of care order they’ve put my son on. It’s like they’ve taken my baby and forgotten to give me the receipt.”
At one point she tried to go to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, only to be told that the court could not consider her case because she had no written judgment on which to base it.
At the end of last week, after The Sunday Telegraph took up the cases with the Judicial Communications Office in London, officials issued an apology within hours and finally pledged that both women would receive the vital documents within days.
In Miss Goodwin’s case, a spokesman said: “Her Majesty’s Court Service would like to apologise that in this case, the transcripts were not provided as requested. There appears to have been a breakdown in communications. The transcription company will prepare the transcripts next week and once they are approved by the judge, the court will send them out.”
Regarding Mrs Harkness, the spokesman said: “There was an ambiguity in the original order which had not been corrected and caused a delay in the process. The transcript has now been produced and is with the judge, prior to being sent to the family next week.”
Pauline (story and photo above) has learned a lot during her 3 year struggle with the “SS” .She now helps and advises other parents in distress and also organises demonstrations.
My baby will be taken from me the moment it’s born
The daughter of teachers and with a glittering academic future, Fran was delighted when she became pregnant. But social services discovered the illness she thought she’d put behind her – and will confiscate her daughter when she is born…
Fran Lyon is due to give birth to her first child – a daughter she has already named Molly – on January 3. But the prospect, far from being one of joyous anticipation, fills her with a dread that keeps her awake at night.
It’s not because Fran doesn’t want the child. She does. Desperately. And not because she is frightened of the pain of labour. She is prepared for that.
It is what happens afterwards that fuels Fran’s anxiety. And there can be no preparation for that pain.
For within 30 minutes of birth, barring any medical complications, Molly will be handed by doctors to social workers. They have instructions to take away Fran’s newborn baby and place her in foster care.
The 22-year-old will then be transferred from the maternity wing to a gynaecological ward, because Northumberland Council has decided that Fran – who has never harmed anyone in her life – is potentially a risk to other mothers and their babies.
Fran has no idea if she will be able to touch her baby, even for a minute, before leaving hospital alone, or if she will ever get her daughter back. Her biggest fear is that she won’t, and that Molly will be put up for adoption.
‘It is incredibly upsetting not knowing if I will be allowed even to hold my baby,’ says Fran, a charity worker. ‘Until social services became involved in my life, I was having a normal pregnancy and was full of excitement.
‘They have taken away what should be the most precious time in my life – and I will never get that back. I’m already in love with my baby. I can feel her moving, I talk to her. I’ve bought her baby books and clothes. You just can’t undo that attachment.’
Fran is an intelligent and articulate woman. She has nine A- starred GCSEs, five grade A A-levels and is in the third year of a neuroscience degree at Edinburgh University – which she is completing at home in Hexham, Northumberland.
However, what concerns Hexham Children’s Services, which is part of Northumberland Council, is Fran’s medical history.
Having had a difficult relationship with her parents, who are teachers in good state schools, from the age of 15, she started selfharming. Fran spent three years – on and off – in psychiatric hospitals.
Her problems appear to have begun when she was raped by an acquaintance at the age of 14. Diagnosed with a borderline personality disorder, she was discharged from a therapeutic facility in 2002, where she had spent 13 months, and spent nine months as an outpatient.
Today, she needs no medication and, according to her former psychiatrist, Dr Stella Newrith, ‘has made a significant recovery to the point where her difficulties are indistinguishable from those of much of the general population’.
In a letter to Northumberland Council, Dr Newrith, who treated Fran for a year when she was 16 and has known her for many years, stated: ‘There has never been any clinical evidence to suggest that Fran would put herself or others at risk, and there is certainly no evidence to suggest she would put a child at risk of emotional, physical or sexual harm.’
Furthermore, she said: ‘I would view the removal of Fran’s baby as an extraordinarily heavy-handed gesture. It is also my professional opinion that doing so would be an infringement of Fran’s human rights, as it would be much the same as removing a child from someone from the general population.’
Yet on August 16, a child protection case conference recommended that Fran’s baby should be taken away at birth – a decision based in part on the contents of a letter from consultant paediatrician Dr Martin Ward Platt, who has never met Fran and could not be present at the meeting.
In his letter, Dr Ward Platt states that ‘even in the absence of psychological assessment, if the professionals were concerned on the evidence available that [this woman] probably does fabricate or induce illness, there would be no option but to put the baby into foster care at birth pending a post-natal forensic psychological assessment’.
However, he warned that it was necessary first to establish as far as possible whether or not Fran does suffer from this illness – something Fran claims they have failed to do.
Fran has never been diagnosed with this condition, yet she has nevertheless been deemed by Northumberland Council as someone likely to suffer from Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy, a controversial and unproven condition in which a parent – usually the mother – makes up or induces an illness in her child to draw attention to herself.
And so, unless a judicial review next week rules in Fran’s favour, her baby Molly will almost certainly be taken away at birth.
‘I can understand why they might have concerns about my past, but the speed with which they have come to this conclusion, despite the evidence of my own psychiatrist, is terrifying,’ she says.
‘I was at the case conference and it lasted just ten minutes.
‘This letter from Dr Ward Platt was given to me just five minutes before the meeting started, and when it was produced, the chairman said there was no point – in the light of what this letter stated – even considering the other evidence which I wanted to present, which was letters of support from psychiatrists.
‘I think they simply panicked, and when people panic they make, in my opinion, bad judgments. I left that meeting numb with shock. I’d had absolutely no time to digest the letter or argue my case, and I was so horrified at what they’d said that I just couldn’t even begin to respond to it.
‘I have never harmed anyone in my life. I have no criminal convictions. I believe I can be a good mother to Molly – but they are not even prepared to give me a chance to prove that.
‘I have offered to stay in a mother and baby unit after Molly’s birth for as long as they want, and to be monitored. I would be prepared to stay there for 18 years if it meant I could be with my baby. But that, it seems, is not even an option.’
Fran’s case is far from unusual. Two thousands babies under one year old were taken from their parents last year by social services – three times the number ten years ago. Critics believe councils are doing this to help meet government adoption ‘targets’.
Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming, chairman of the Justice for Families campaign group, certainly thinks so.
‘How can it be in the child’s best interests to take a baby away from its mother at birth? The reason why they do it is because it’s much harder to take away a baby the longer it spends with its mother, and a healthy newborn baby is so much easier to find adoptive parents for.
‘It is estimated that 97 per cent of babies taken away from their mothers at birth, on the basis that the mothers are “capable of emotional abuse”, are never returned to them – and that is simply scandalous.
‘Of course, there are cases where it is right to do so, but the whole public family law system is corrupt because of the secrecy which surrounds it. Decisions are based on opinion and conjecture, rather than fact and evidence.
‘What does Fran’s case tell us? That no woman who has been raped or had mental health problems can be allowed to have a baby, even years later?
‘What could be more traumatic than for a mother to have her baby taken away at birth? It’s monstrous. That, in itself, can cause mental health problems, which is then used by social services against the mother as a reason not to return the baby. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.
‘There has been a massive increase in younger babies being taken into care, before there is even any evidence of harm – and you have to ask why that is.’
Despite her own troubled past, Fran Lyon is convinced she can be a good parent, and is desperate to prove that. From the start, she has been open and honest with social workers about her medical history, but she feels this has been used against her.
Although she describes her childhood as ‘difficult’, she refuses to elaborate, other than to say that she is close to her mother and younger brother, but has no contact with her father.
The catalyst for her severe mental health problems was, she says, the rape she suffered when she was 14.
She told police that she was attacked while working as a Saturday volunteer in a charity shop in Northampton, when the shop’s founder – a middle-aged man – drove her to an empty warehouse supposedly to pick up supplies for the shop.
When Fran reported the rape, he was interviewed by police. Three more women claiming they, too, had been attacked came forward and agreed to testify against him. However, in 2001 the man killed himself before the Crown Prosecution Service could decide whether to proceed.
‘After the rape, I became clinically depressed,’ says Fran. ‘I lost a huge amount of weight and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital after trying to kill myself with an overdose of tablets. It wasn’t a cry for help; I wanted to die because of what he had done to me.’
She spent the next three years, on and off, in residential psychiatric hospitals in Oxford, Nottingham and London after being diagnosed with a borderline personality disorder, in her case characterised by self-harming, instability and suicidal tendencies.
For the final 13 months, Fran went to a therapeutic residential clinic, where she attended individual psychotherapy sessions and group analysis before being discharged as an outpatient.
By the time she was 18, she appeared to have put her problems behind her.
She started to flourish, taking five A-levels at Orpington College in Kent and applying to study neuroscience at Edinburgh University.
At the same time, she worked for two mental health charities, Borderline and Personality Plus. It was through that job, two years ago, that she met the man who is the father of Molly.
‘Of course, I was worried when I fell pregnant. I wondered how we would cope as a couple, because we weren’t living together,’ says Fran.
‘But once that wore off, I was excited. I would go shopping with my mum to baby departments, buying books and looking at prams.’
But a few weeks ago, all normality ended. Social services suddenly became involved when Fran phoned the police after what she describes as a ‘disturbing incident’ with her partner. Fran’s relationship with him ended immediately.
‘The case was referred to social services and I was interviewed by two social workers, who said from the beginning that they would have to look at the whole family, not just one person in isolation,’ says Fran.
‘At that first meeting, they asked about my concerns regarding the baby’s father, but then it became clear through their questions that their investigation was centred on me. I have never made a secret of my mental health problems. I felt I had nothing to hide.’
Fran was co- operative, she says, because she naively thought children’s services would offer her help and support. She was stunned when she received a letter informing her that a child protection case conference would be held on August 16.
‘That’s when I became frightened and thought for the first time: “Are they going to take my baby away from me?”
‘I couldn’t believe how everything had happened so quickly. When you are up against a big system such as social services, it is very easy to feel overrun and overwhelmed.’
Realising the seriousness of the situation, Fran instructed a solicitor and contacted her former psychiatrist, Dr Stella Newrith, who offered her full support.
A second psychiatrist, who Fran knew through her charity work, offered a character reference stating: ‘I have no doubt that her diligence and capacity, particularly in dealing with complex emotional situations, will stand her in good stead for the rigours of parenthood.’
Yet these testimonials, Fran says, were never even read out at the conference after Dr Ward Platt’s letter was produced.
Northumberland Council insists that two highly experienced doctors – another consultant paediatrician and a medical consultant – attended the case conference.
Neither they, nor anyone else present – including Fran solicitor – made any objection. Feeling stunned and intimidated by what she had heard, she felt unable to speak out.
Everything she wanted to say will now be heard – with the help of a new solicitor who specialises in such cases – at appeal.
According to MP John Hemming, Fran should win her case; but there is no guarantee that she will. Both he and Fran are particularly concerned that last week social workers contacted the psychiatrist who provided a character reference for Fran. They believe this was done with the intention of ‘pressurising’ the witness into withdrawing his support, and undermining Fran’s appeal.
It was seemingly suggested by a social worker to the doctor in question that Fran had given incorrect details about her health to hospital staff: in short, doubt was cast on the reality of an ectopic pregnancy Fran suffered on Christmas Eve two years ago.
‘Is it ethical for social workers to go behind my back and speak to my witnesses, discussing my private confidential medical history and suggesting to them that I might have made things up?’ says Fran.
‘I did have an ectopic pregnancy, and I have the scars to prove that I had abdominal surgery.’ Mr Hemming goes further, describing such behaviour as akin to witness nobbling. He also claims it is not uncommon for social workers to pressurise witnesses – a punishable practice in the criminal courts.
‘There is a culture in which the end is seen to justify the means, and sometimes the means employed would not be tolerated in any other court of law,’ he says. ‘Yet if anyone tries to speak out, they are guilty of contempt of court. The whole family court system, because of the secrecy which surrounds it, is vulnerable to bad practice. Social workers are under pressure not to lose cases.’ Northumberland Council, while legally prevented from speaking about individual cases, insists there is nothing sinister in their actions.
A spokeswoman said it was the court whichwould make the ultimate decision, after hearing legal representation from both sides. ‘Safeguarding children is our top priority,’ said a spokeswoman. ‘We speak to all sides without bias or pressure. ‘We would welcome a review of the family court arrangements, and support transparency, as long as this is in the best interests of the children.
‘Safeguarding arrangements have been praised as good following a rigorous inspection by a number of Government departments. It was specifically noted that “good action was taken to enable parents to keep their children safe in the home and the communityî. Our duty to safeguard children is our only motivation, and we strive to keep children with their families wherever possible, or extended families if that is not possible.
‘We do not have numerical targets for adoption; nor have we received any financial rewards in relation to adoption figures.’
As for Fran, the final four months of her pregnancy are filled with stress and uncertainty, and the nagging terror that her worst nightmare will become a reality and her baby daughter will be snatched away from her. ‘Some days I feel positive,’ she says quietly.
‘But others I feel totally overwhelmed. All I am asking for is a chance to prove that I will be a good mother.’
Sadly, that wish may not be granted her.
PS i am a British subject with a law degree from Oxford University. I live and work in Monaco (which is NOT in Canada as claimed !) running my language school there.
I also help mothers who have no criminal records or problems with drugs or alcohol to avoid their babies being “confiscated” at birth (sometimes flight is the best option!) or being put into care as fodder for the adoption racket. http://www.forced-adoption.com
Ian
The fact that you have a law degree from Oxford and are a British citizen is neither here nor there; you clearly have no first hand experience of the UK child protection system and appear to have little or no evidence base for your views. Holding off knee-jerk reactions is according to you ‘evasion’; I would say on the contrary it’s dangerous to jump to responses before we have full information, particularly if they’re responses based on ill-informed views. The independent review that Ed Balls ordered reports back next week. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to wait for its findings.
I asked for evidence (EVIDENCE? YES I WANT EVIDENCE!) of your claim that social service departments were taking children out of parents’ care without a court order in place as this would be illegal. You’ve produced none – indeed the cases you quote above all had clearly been through a court process. The first case you mention is one where the social service department applied to court to have a child placed in care and the court turned this down. The department then had to produce more evidence and re-apply to court which considered the case and decided that the child was at sufficient risk for them to be accommodated in local authority care. Surely this suggests the system is working properly in terms of checks and safeguards?
In X Council v B and others emergency protection orders) [2007] 1 FCR 512, the judge noted, amongst other points that :
“An EPO, summarily removing a child from his parents, is a draconian and extremely harsh measure, requiring exceptional justification and extraordinarily compelling reasons. Such an order should not be made unless the court is satisfied that it is both necessary and proportionate, and that no other less radical form of order will achieve the essential end of promoting the welfare of the child. Separation is only to be contemplated if immediate separation is essential to secure the child’s safety.”
The research into claims from people like yourself that children are being placed in care to meet adoption targets found that:
“There is no evidence that the local authorities brought care proceedings without good reason. Many families had lost the care of children in previous proceedings.”
http://www.justice.gov.uk/publications/research030308.htm
John Hemmings’ claims about adoption targets etc. were also debated in Parliament in April this year and rejected by the vast majority of MPs.
You quote from parents whose children were subject to care proceedings. I didn’t expect, nor did it happen that the parents whose children I placed in local authority care turned around and said “Yes I see you’re quite right about the risks to my child. You’re doing a good job, well done.” They were devestated, resentful, angry and hurt and much of that emotion was directed against the social work department and social workers. While the views of such parents are important and they have every right to voice them, I don’t think their views alone provide an objective perspective on what has happened in care proceedings. If there are concerns about the way care system has operated, in an individual case or more generally, they need to be supported by evidence. You claim that parents who physically abuse their children would not oppose court proceedings to take their children away. This is criminally naive. What do you base it on? I suppose by the same reasonsing you think only people who are innocent of murder charges plead not guilty to them?
While I think the tone and some of the content of John Hemmings’ intervention deeply regrettable, I think he has made some valid points on the secrecy of family court proceedings and expert evidence. Regarding the transcripts of court proceedings, let me firstly note that one of the primary reasons for this is to protect the identity of the children invovled, many of whom have experienced abuse, from being published. I do however think there is no reason for anonymised transcripts of family court proceedings not to be released, and my understanding is the government is looking into this at the curent time. As for expert witnesses – I think there is an issue with ‘expert’ witnesses being used on both sides in family court proceedings and I think Hemmings’ point about expert evidence in court proceeding needing to be evidenced-based, for example on the basis of peer-reviewed research, is spot on. Neither Hemmings or the right wing press which have lined up so readily behind him to attack the social work profession have produced evidence of the systemic failures they claim however and your own interventions on this page have been full of inaccuracies and unhelpful, ill-advised and ignorant comment which makes reasonable debate about this most important issue very difficult.
I’ll finish with two examples of this. You make the emotive claim that social workers rush in and take babies from mothers ‘even before the placenta has been delivered’. I know of no social worker who would do this nor any maternity hospital that would allow it. When accommodating a child at birth, the social work department will leave the baby in hospital until informed that the baby is ready for discharge, which will usually be at least a number of days after birth. They will then take the baby to their foster placement. In the period in hospital the parent(s) will, in all but the most execeptional and risky of cases, be able to see the child in the hospital and once placed in care the social work department has a clear legal duty under the Children Act 1989 to facilitate contact between the child and their parent(s) and needs to assess whether there is any chance the child can return to parental care. Only after this assessment is completed and the department has clear evidence which can hold up in court that those parents cannot provide proper care for their child will a social work department be able to successfully apply to have a child adopted. The parent is given legal representation during this process and a guardian ad litem, an indpenedent person usually from a legal background, is there to see that the child’s interests are safeguarded during the process. This hardly ties in with your claims of social workers rushing in (no doubt Goose-stepping) to rip children from the delivery tables for their parents never to see them again. Are there individual cases in which the system gets it wrong? Yes as it’s not and cannot be a perfect system. If you want to prevent children being abused, rather than wait until they’ve already been seriously harmed, you need to make a predcition about a parent’s ability to care based on assessment of parental history including history of parenting previous children where appropriate. That process of assessment and prediction is not an exact science. All a social worker can do is produce an assessment based on the best evidence of parenting capacity they have. The parents have the right to oppose that assessment with legal representation.
Secondly let me deal with your point about emotional abuse. It has no definition in law you state. So what? A child being placed on the child protection register is an internal social service department measure not a legal measure and it has no legal status. It is a means for social service departments to recognise that a child is at high risk and to set up a plan of intensive support to reduce that risk. Cases I know of where children have been placed on the reigster category of emotional abuse include parents being extremely verbally abusive to children on a regular basis causing them extreme distress and affecting their self-esteem and development (e.g. repeated and severe negative comment about the child’s abilities, characterisitics and identity; telling the child on a regular basis that they are not wanted in the family; threatening the child on a regular basis that they will be placed in care); and children being in a household where there is severe domestic violence and the children witness it again causing them extreme distress and impacting on their development. Do you think it’s acceptable for children to experience this treatment Ian? If the social work department wants to move to get a care or supervision order on the basis of their concerns about emotional abuse they need to then evidence those concerns in court within the framework of legal definitions. If they fail to the court will not grant an order.
I have no problem with people challenging or questioning the child protection system. But I think they have a responsibility to do so in an informed and reasoned way. On both those criteria your contributions fall badly short.
i can only repeat physical harm kills and emotional harm does not so priority and resources should be directed to stopping murders !I advise on around 2 new cases per day who contact me by email or phone so after around 1000 over the last 3 years I get to know what the “SS” are going to do to parents even before they actually do do it !Hers is more evidence and more questions!
questions that SHOULD be answered by social services or by family court judges but which have so far been systematically ignored!
1: It must surely be the right of parents and anyone else in a democratic country wishing to complain against injustice to go to the media with details of everything that happened to them in the family court Most judges in family courts refuse leave to appeal and solicitors always back them up so the idea of appealing when leave has been denied is nearly always a “non starter”. Parents are at present denied their democratic right to go to the media to get public and political support followed by possible reform! How can this be justice?
2: Harriet Harman,(minister of state, Department of constitutional affairs )said in Parliament “Last year something like 200 people were sent to prison by the family courts, which happens in complete privacy and secrecy.”
Surely those who still deny these facts cannot believe she was lying to Parliament! How can imprisonment with no public process be justice?
3: Extract from The Times, Aug 23 2007: “Emotional abuse” has no strict definition in British law. Yet it now accounts for an astounding 21 per cent of all children registered as needing protection, up from 14 per cent in 1997. Last year 6,700 children were put on the child protection register for emotional abuse, compared with only 2,600 for sexual abuse and 5,100 for physical abuse.
How can taking newborn babies for “risk of emotional abuse” possibly be justified when the effect is to punish parents and abuse their babies not for anything they have done but for something that some hired prophet thinks they might perhaps do in the future. How can this be justice?
4: Any burglar facing a prison sentence of 6 months or more can demand a hearing before a jury so how can it be right or just that parents who risk losing their children for life to “forced adoption” are denied this option. Juries consider complicated medical evidence in cases such as murder, and compensation for injuries, also complicated tax laws in cases of fraud, and insider dealing. The simple decision whether a mother accused of risk of emotional abuse should keep her newborn baby or not would I think we must all agree be more likely to favour the mother if considered by a jury but records show that such cases nearly always favour the social services if decided by a judge. That is probably why juries are banned from the family courts but allowed to decide libel cases in other civil courts! To take a newborn baby from its mother and give it away for adoption by strangers is a far far worse punishment for her than any jail sentence as it condemns the mother to a life sentence and the baby to probable death later in life if it should require a kidney or bone marrow transplant or other medical attention in which a birth family member was needed but could not be located! How can this be justice?
The 4 obvious reforms would be:
1: Remove the gag from parents involved in family court proceedings.
2: Forbid judges in the family courts to imprison any parent without a public hearing.
3: Abolish “risk” as a reason to remove children from a sane parent unless in addition to risk it can be clearly shown and proved that such children have already suffered significant physical harm.
4: Any parents facing the possibility that their children could be removed for long term fostering or adoption without parental consent should have the right to demand that the final decision be made by a jury not a judge.Better still abolish forced adoption altogether!
Re K D [1998] 1 AC p.812 letter B Lord Templeman stated; ‘The best person to bring up a child is the natural parent. It matters not whether the parent is wise or foolish, rich or poor, educated or illiterate, provided the child’s moral and physical health are not endangered. Public authorities cannot improve on nature.’
YouTube Row over Social Services Baby Threat
By Ben Leapman, Home Affairs Correspondent, Sunday Telegraph, August 19 2007
A heavily pregnant woman is at the centre of an extraordinary legal battle with social workers after she secretly recorded them threatening to take away her newborn baby.
Vanessa Brookes, 34, who is due to give birth early next month, smuggled taping equipment into a meeting with social services officials, fearing they would try to take her baby for forced adoption.
advertisementShe recorded a social worker telling her and her husband Martin, 41, that even though there was “no immediate risk to your child from yourselves”, the council would seek a court order to place the child in foster care.
Mother and baby would be allowed “two or three days” in hospital together, but should not leave the premises until social workers came to remove the infant. In a desperate attempt to keep their baby, the couple have published the recorded conversation on the internet.
Calderdale council, in West Yorkshire, last night accused them of breaching the Data Protection Act by recording its staff without their knowledge or consent. The council said it had begun legal action to have the recording removed from the YouTube website. Mrs Brookes said: “Even puppies and kittens aren’t removed from their mothers at birth. Social workers always record everything, so why shouldn’t we record them?”
John Hemming, the Liberal Democrat MP and chairman of campaign group Justice for Families, said: “I find it very odd that a newborn baby would be removed when there is not any allegation by the authorities that the child is at risk. Yet this case is not unique. There are many cases in which newborns are removed because of allegations that their mothers may at some later stage ’emotionally abuse’ the child.”
The case returns the spotlight to claims that social services are being heavy-handed in removing children from their parents, in order to meet Government adoption targets.
The Sunday Telegraph has previously revealed cases of mothers who were not told why their children were taken away, and cases of families whose children were not returned even after the parents had been cleared of wrongdoing. More than 2,000 babies aged under a year were taken for adoption last year, almost triple the level of a decade ago.
Social services took an interest in the Brookes family after Mrs Brookes, who is partially-sighted, was diagnosed with depression and a personality disorder, leading to concerns that her baby might be subjected to “emotional abuse”. Neighbours have complained that the couple’s household was disorderly, but neither has been accused of abusing or harming a child.
In the recorded meeting, the social worker tells the couple: “It’s our intention as a local authority that when your baby is born, we go into court on that same day and ask for an interim court order because we would wish to place your baby with foster carers.”
He tells Mrs Brookes: “I would like you and your baby to stay in hospital until the courts have made a decision.”
The social worker says the two or three days the mother has with her baby in hospital will allow her to begin breast-feeding and that once the infant is taken away, social services will pick up expressed breast milk from her home and deliver it to the foster carers for bottle-feeding.
The social worker admits to the couple that a back-up plan is being drawn up in case the judge refuses the application for a care order. He says: “What we also have to think about is a child protection plan that looks at you, at home, with your baby. There is no immediate risk to your child from yourselves, that’s my understanding from reading documents.”
A spokesman for Calderdale council said officials would seek a meeting with Mr and Mrs Brookes “to understand how this information came into the public domain. We are taking action to have this item removed from YouTube. This recording was made without the knowledge or consent of our member of staff.
“The council does not take lightly any recommendation to the court for a child or a baby to be brought into care. The decision whether or not to institute care proceedings is made by social workers who have to consider the best interests of the child.”
Mother wins fight to get her baby back
Scotsman.com by SHAN ROSS, 15 Jun 2006
Corellie Bonhomme now happily reunited with her daughter Fifi after the sheriff’s ruling.
Picture: Colin Templeton
Social workers condemned after newly born child was taken from mother
Woman was in last stages of giving birth
Sheriff rules social workers action as ‘wrong’
A SHERIFF has condemned social workers who removed a newborn baby from her mother only minutes after the child’s umbilical cord was cut.
Two social workers and two sheriff officers entered the birthing suite as Corellie Bonhomme went into the final stages of labour. Immediately after her daughter, Fifi, was born, they took her away after obtaining a sheriff’s order giving them permission to take custody.
Key quotes
He said Ms Bonhomme’s long-running dispute with social workers in Camden had led to the authorities in Scotland taking the baby into care unnecessarily. He also criticised the way Fifi was taken.
Commenting on the incident in the birthing suite, Sheriff Ross said: “Fifi was removed very soon after birth. It was not clear to me why that was necessary. She was in hospital in the secure care of the staff there. There was no evidence that Ms Bonhomme was intending to leave precipitately.”
He also questioned Dumfries and Galloway Council for basing the Child Protection Order on “extremely contentious” English proceedings. Sheriff Kenneth Ross
Mother
“I was in the throes of labour, quite dilated and about to deliver. My back was bent backwards, the head was sticking out and I was just about to push the rest of the body out. I raised my head and saw two men and two women walk into the birthing room.” – Corellie
What kind of childhood did you have, Ian?
Your hysterical ramblings suggest the true power of childhood ’emotional harm’.
I work for local council and on friday I e mailed all staff, including elected members to support justice for baby p campaign. Guess what I got disciplined as a Councillor complained about e mail content. I ask you what has society come to!! Elected members disappoint me with their attitude.
For some of the background to the Fran Lyon case which Ian’s clippings from the right wing press don’t give see:
http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2007/09/20/105839/fran-lyon-case-the-hidden-agendas.html
Robin wrote:
“A child being placed on the child protection register is an internal social service department measure not a legal measure and it has no legal status.”
100% balderdash. ALL actions taken by Social Services Authorities have legal status. That is because Social Services Authorities derive every single power they have from statute (from the power to purchase paperclips to the power to take children into care). For the general principle, see the judgment of Laws J in R v Somerset CC ex parte Fewings [1995] 1 All ER 513.
I am amazed that Robin should feel himself qualified to lecture us all about the child protection system when his understanding of the basics of administrative law is so poor!
I do not know the ins and outs of the Fran Lyon case, obviously, but what is clear is that Northumberland County Council acted ultra vires by failing to take into account relevant considerations (letters from psychiatrists), and individual officers may well be guilty of attempting to pervert the course of justice by inerfering with the witness. If they think this lady is a Beverley Allitt in the making, then they need to prove it, and I rather suspect they can’t.
There have been numerous cases in recent times where Social Services Departments have simply gone berserk. Anyone remember Cleveland, Rochdale, Nottinghamshire, Orkney?
In the late 1970’s, many entrants to social work had been incalcated by the writings of “radical” feminists such as Andrea Dworkin and Catherine McKinnon and genuinely believed that all men are rapists. Child abuse was endemic and could only be stopped, so they thought, by getting rid of men. Then along came Evangelical Christian nuts who persuaded these same and other social workers that secret Satanic cults were abusing children. And last, but not least, there arrived on the scene the so-called “recovered memory movement”. No, adults don’t consciously remember being abused as children, because it’s so traumatic (though they have no trouble recalling life in concentration camps). The memory has to be recovered by a hypnotist! Beatrix Campbell and David Icke still insist this pseudo-scientific hocus pocus is real.
So forgive me if I treat claims by people like Robin with healthy scepticism.
Now I will speak of what I know directly.
(1)
A few years ago, a Labour council leader tried to have a private landlord sent to a lunatic asylum to stop him exposing corruption in the Housing Benefits Department. Social Sevrices was willing to co-operate, but the man’s GP refused to play ball.
(2)
Recently, a Social Services Department tried to put a 13 year-old boy in a lunatic asylum for the sole and simple reason that he refused to attend school. The Council officer whose job it was to convene a meeting at a local hospital told me he was very concerned about what was happening. Managers were scouring the country to find two doctors who would section the boy. I do not know the outcome.
So I think Iain Josephs might have a point.
Ian
The news report on the child taken from their mother shortly after birth, if accurate, is appalling practice on behalf of the social work department involved and deserves to be roundly criticised. I would note however from the information posted that the parent did have a right to challenge the process, did so, and then had a Sheriff rule in her favour who was highly critical of the social work department. Not only this the judgment was then publicised in the press. Again that suggests to me that the checks and balances in the system are working in a way that doesn’t tie with your conspiracy-theory like claims. When a court finds against a social work department’s practice you use it as evidence of social workers’ scandalous practice. However in the vast majority of cases where it does not, this is of course not, in your view, because the social workers acted reasonably on the basis of legitimate concerns about child welfare. No. It’s ‘establishment’ judges, other corrupt professionals, social workers lying etc. There’s no evidence which could be produced which would alter your views.
Again on emotional abuse. You don’t seem to understand what the Child Protection Register is. It is a register that social services department keep onto which they put children found to be at high risk who are still in their parents’ care. Yes Sensco the duty to maintain a CPR is enshrined in law the point I was making is that being placed on the Child Protection Register is not a court decision but a decision by a local authority social service department, it is not about placing a child in care but recognising that a child in their parents’ care is at risk. Therefore the fact that emotional abuse has no definition in UK law is neither here nor there. If a social service department wants to take a child out of a parent’s care they need to prove on the balance of probabilities that the child is suffering or is likely to suffer significant harm. Therefore in the case of emotional abuse they need to evidence in a court of law how that emotional abuse will harm that child. Of course you don’t appear to believe emotional abuse exists or that it can have an impact on children, contrary to almost all research evidence and theories of children’s needs and child development since (at the very latest) the 1950s.
You state that:
“The 4 obvious reforms would be:
1: Remove the gag from parents involved in family court proceedings.
2: Forbid judges in the family courts to imprison any parent without a public hearing.
3: Abolish “risk” as a reason to remove children from a sane parent unless in addition to risk it can be clearly shown and proved that such children have already suffered significant physical harm.
4: Any parents facing the possibility that their children could be removed for long term fostering or adoption without parental consent should have the right to demand that the final decision be made by a jury not a judge.Better still abolish forced adoption altogether!”
In reply
1. Fine so long as the children involved are not identified or identifiable in what parents reveal. Those children have a right to anonymity which should not be breached, period.
2. I’m not clear what circumstances this refers to and why the parents have been imprisoned – I’d asssume parents found in contempt of court during the family court hearing? Taking the point at face value though I don’t have a problem with this recommendation either.
3. Great. A child abuser’s charter. So we have to wait for children to be seriously abused before acting. Not only that but we have to wait until they’ve a limb missing because emotional abuse and severe neglect don’t matter to children’s care in Ian’s world.
4. Do away with forced adoption? Are there really no circumstances in which a child should be removed from their parents against their will? So what do you do when a parent is unable to care but will not agree to their child being adopted even though that is clearly in the child’s best interests? What would you do in the case of Baby P’s mother who’s had another child since being imprisoned?
I also wonder what assessment process you have before you help all the parents who come to you for help? Or do you just rely on your quixotic view (with no supporting evidence) that no abusive parent would oppose their child being taken away from them? Do you ever wonder if you might be helping parents who will go on to win care of their children and then abuse them or don’t you care because from the safety of your Monaco language school you can write another blog about “corrupt”, “wicked”, social workers not doing their job properly?
Robin wrote:
“Therefore the fact that emotional abuse has no definition in UK law is neither here nor there.”
AND
“Therefore in the case of emotional abuse they need to evidence in a court of law how that emotional abuse will harm that child.”
Er… If “emotional abuse” has no definition in UK (actually English) law, then how can evidence be adduced that it will harm the child?
Or are you an advocate of palm tree justice?
Believe it or not, I think most social workers do a pretty good job. My concern focuses on the fact that Parliament has given Social Services Authorities draconian powers that affect people’s fundamental human rights, and that because of the regime of secrecy, some of these powers are not properly accountable and the supervisory jurisdiction of the courts has in part been ousted.
I have given you two recent examples of Social Services Authorities acting in bad faith, and that should alarm us all.
Sensco
Okay. Take a hypothetical example. A child of five whose development and behaviour is age appropriate but who then starts to witness extreme domestic violence within the family home. Their behaviour is affected. They present as withdrawn at school, are sometimes tearful, at other times they start to physically attack peers and staff at school. They also start to soil themselves at school. A referral is made to the educational pyschologist and the social services department and the child reveals what they have seen within the family home. After interviewing parents and a detailed assessment the SSD may place that at child on the CPR, category of emotional abuse at a child protection case conference at which the parents will be present along side other agencies (school, health visitor if inovlved, police as appropriate). If the SSD however wish to obtain a supervision order or a care order they need to evidence in court how the particular behaviours of the parents in the family home which the child has witnessed(based on the child’s statements along side formal reports, including police referrals, reports from school and ed psych on the child’s behaviours at school, and the SSD’s own formal assessment) constitute significant harm to that child. The fact that emotional abuse has no definition in UK law is really irrelevant to that task. I don’t see what’s so hard to get?
Robin wrote:
“The fact that emotional abuse has no definition in UK law is really irrelevant to that task. I don’t see what’s so hard to get?”
On the contrary, it is of fundamental relevance. The judge has to decide (1) whether, as a matter of law, the conduct complained of amounts to “emotional abuse”, and (2) whether, as a matter of fact, the conduct complained of actually happened.
That is how the forensic process works in common law jurisdictions.
The way YOU seem to think it works amounts to arbitrary justice of the kind tyrants dispense.
Let’s look at it another way. Suppose the social worker is an Evangelical Christian and the parents are New Age devotees who hold channelling sessions in front of the child. The social worker is likely to call that “emotional abuse”. Unless we have a legal definition of “emotional abuse”, the decision as to which kinds of conduct amount to “emotional abuse” is going to depend on the prejudices and personal opinions of the social worker and the judge. How can that we right?
BTW, my name is SESENCO, which is Iberian for “little bull”.
Sesenco first of all apologies for getting your name wrong.
In terms of your point, the judge doesn’t need to deliberate over the definition of ’emotional abuse’. What they need to determine is whether a child has suffered, or is likely to suffer, significant harm.
Therefore in the hypothetical case I cited they would need to consider what evidence there was of:
1) The SSD’s assertions about the parents’ behaviour
2) The child’s welfare being affected by that behaviour
3) Whether it was reasonable on the balance of probablilities to assume that the child’s welfare was significantly harmed on the basis of the parents’ behaviour.
Robin,
So you have conceded that “emotional abuse” is nothing more than a term of art. I think you have made Ian Josephs’ point for him.
BTW, one decides matters of fact on a balance of probabilities, not what is reasonable.
Robin !
At last a contribution from you with arguments instead of abuse !
I repeat that emotioal abuse though serious if it occurs has LESS PRIORITY than physical abuse which can result in death ! Simple RISK of emotional abuse however should never justify removal of a child since such an allegation is a vague prediction that cannot be defended or verified.
I quoted the Times for figures on this subject and I am sure they resarched them before publication;
Baby p died in August and it is ridiculous to wait until a “report” has been concluded before forming an opinion since the report like everything else to do with the “SS” is going to be secret so we will never see it anyway !At least the Doctor was suspended but as usual with the “SS” the only person sacked was the whistleblower who has subsequently been forbidden to speak about the case .More secrecy ! Would the world come to an end if we knew baby p was called Peter ?
Rape victims can shed anonymity and speak to the press,so parents and teenage children should be able to do the same especially if forcibly seperated from each other.THE LAW IS WORTLESS IF ANYONE AGGRIEVED IS FORBIDDEN TO IDENTIFY THEMSELVES AND PROTEST PUBLICLY;Privacy for teenage children who are gagged and parents who are gagged makes no sense except to protect the “SS” and their acolytes !
Fran Lyon followed my advice and fled abroad before the birth and both she and year old Molly are doing very well as are many other mothers who consulted me annd others with similar views and who escaped in time
House of Lords – Down Lisburn Health and Social Services Trust. Baroness Hale of Richmond. Judgement
34. There is, so far as the parties to this case are aware, no European jurisprudence questioning the principle of freeing for adoption, or indeed compulsory adoption generally. The United Kingdom is unusual amongst members of the Council of Europe in permitting the total severance of family ties without parental consent. (Professor Triseliotis thought that only Portugal and perhaps one other European country allowed this.) It is, of course, the most draconian interference with family life possible. .
Other European countries do not sever contact between parents and children for life so why should we? Forced closed adoption sucks !
Harriet Harman,(minister of state, Department of constitutional affairs )said in Parliament “Last year something like 200 people were sent to prison by the family courts, which happens in complete privacy and secrecy.”
Surely those who still deny these facts cannot believe she was lying to Parliament! How can imprisonment with no public process be justice?
There is no conspiracy,and few really corrupt individuals,but an awful lot of people are making a very good living out of the system as it is at present within the”SS” and have evey incentive to preserve the status quo in a bureaucracy that has expanded of its own accord!
A burglar facing a possible 6 month pprison can demand trial by jury .A mother facing the loss of a child for the rest of her life cannot ! This is totally wrong as juries would not split up families unless there was physical abuse (including sexual) unlike judges who may criticise the “SS” but nearly always nd up deciding for them!
The mother who fled to Scotland only succeeded because on appeal the Sheriff disapproved of the English SS ! A lucky break !
Of course the mother of baby p would never have gone to court to recover him or to oppose adoption if he had survived ! Physical abusers run a mile from courts and it is only those accused of emotional abuse and other non physical acts who love their children who go through the ordeal ofthe family court process and against all common sense they nearly always lose !
Battered women get punished twice as they lose their children and quite often subsequent children even long after they have seperatd from the partner who abused them!
Lastly I asked the Law Review if there was any case on record where a parents had succeeded in recovering their children against opposition in court from social services who had then abused those children. There was no such case on record ! I therefore conclude that my sometimes successful efforts to recover chilren kidnapped by the “SS” for parents has done no damage and as far as I know have had happy results.
Robin,
Two points I did not answer,
I should add that most of the parents I help begin their sworn statements as follows “I have no criminal record,no problems with alcohol or drugs,and no significant learning difficulties or mental problems” This does not help them much when accused of posing a risk of future emotional abuse to their children or newborn babies.None have been accused of perjury !
As for the mother of baby p,well the “SS” say it is her human right to keep her newborn baby whilst in this case involving violence to a child I would prefer long term fostering as an option !
The current issue of the Local Government Chronicle (20/11/2008) reports that one third of social services authorities have a lower Ofsted child protection rating than the London Borough of Haringey. A caveat is added to the effect that many of the Ofsted inspectors don’t actually know anything about child protection.
Lynne Featherstone tells us that Haringey Social Services staff are terrified to talk to her, such is the climate of fear and intimidation under the Meehan dispensation.
Interesting that David Icke has been mentioned.
Some of the ridiculous conspiracy theories on this forum sound like they have come straight from him.
Are we to believe that Haringey Social Services comprises of shape shifting lizards?
Matthew John,
To which conpiracy theories do you refer?
Presumably you must have investigated them in order to know that they are ridiculous?
Ian
Last post from me. We actually agree on some things….though not very much.
I’m glad to see that you are now recognising that emotional abuse does exist; it can have serious impact on a child’s welfare; and it may require state intervention…..even though emotional abuse has no definition in English law.
I also think that women subject to domestic violence and experiencing child protection procedures in respect of their children risk being doubly disempowered and careful thought needs to be given as to how to support those women, albeit the welfare of the child must remain the paramount consideration.
One of the things I most strongly disagree with you about is your view that no child should be removed from a “sane” parent (and I’m not clear why you want to treat parents with mental health issues differently) unless they’ve already suffered significant physical harm. Any child protection system worthy of that name surely needs to also try to minimise the chances of children suffering significant harm in the first place? If we always wait until there has been already been significant harm before acting there will be a lot more child deaths. I also really do shudder to think what your threshold for intervention in sexual abuse cases would be – the discovery of a Josef Fritzl type cellar?
Adoption vs long-term fostering. There are some good reasons for preferring adoption. It’s legally more secure for the child; related to that placement breakdown rates are smaller; and outcomes for adopted children are generally better. Given that, where a parent is clearly unable to care for their child long-term, I’m not sure why you’d want to deny a child the chance of being adopted if that’s a possibility for them.
Children abused after being returned to parental care. The first ‘child abuse scandal’ in the UK involved Maria Colwell in 1973, who was privately fostered, but then returned to her mother and step-father’s care. Maria was physically abused and killed by her step-father. Biehal considered the research evidence for outcomes for children reunited with their families in 2006. She found that while there was relatively little research done on the topic, three studies in the UK found that very young children accommodated due to abuse were at high risk of re-abuse and continued neglect once returned to parental care. Studies in the USA raised similar concerns.
When a child dies in the circumstances of Baby P and a social work department was involved, the public legitimately want answers about why that abuse was not prevented. I’m equally keen for those answers. It’s also timely however to remember one of the findings of the Maria Colwell inquiry – that wider society as well as the state has a responsibility for ensuring the welfare of its children. I think the blame games you’re keen to engage in are at best a distraction, at worst a hindrance, from the task we have of improving the child protection system in the UK and the specific changes you suggest to the child protection system are simply dangerous.
Robin,
Possibly the worst form of emotional abuse is to remove a child from its parents and following adoption deprive it of contact with them at least until 18 and usually for the rest of its life.
I mention children should only be removed from sane parents after physical harm because obviously an insane parent cannot care for a child !
However we do not arrest and imprison potential criminals because they just might commit a crime next week or next month! No more should families be split up because some overpaid charlatan foretells doom !
Other European countries take children when they have suffered severe physical harm.In the UK parents constantly complain to me that they are branded as criminals whose children must be adopted because the “ss” or its henchmen think they might do somethng wrong later ! How can they defend themselves against the hired soothsayers when judges say ” they know best”? In the UK PHYSICAL HARM is bottom of the priority list even though occasional thorough physical examintion of children lile baby p on the at risk register could save thousands of lives.
Long term fostering is preferable to adoption that is FORCED (opposed in court by parents) because mistakes or changes in circumstances can enable children to be returned.Adoption is for ever with parents deprived of contact permanently and if a child later needs an organ it may callously be left to die if parents can no longer be traced.
Lastly Maria Colwell’s parents did not win her back against opposition in court by the “SS”; she was dumped back by them with a violent criminal stepfather!
I still maintain that there is no recorded case of parents beating the “SS” in the family courts ,getting children back and susequently abusing them !It is not true therefore that by helping parents in their cases and sometimes helping them to WIN to say that I am putting children at risk !
hi am shannon and i couldnt stand for weeks on end after hearing this and befor reading your website i thought of asking well actually righting to my MP and asking to rais child crulty awarness
if you have bebo please add i have mine private but please we MUST talk
[email protected]
Hi shannon crawford again
i would like to know what i could do i wanted to do HUGE walk and raise money…but who should i send it to ?
Should i do this ?
I really cant believe this could happen you see i have a younger brother that is one he will be two on the 28th of december..and if anyone ANYONE so much as slaped him no telling what i could do
i was saying to my mum and dad that if they ever tried to punch carrick ( brother ) i wouldnt take a second thought …i would have a baseball bat in my hands in seconds
NO JOKE !!!
i just cant get my heed around how evil,twisted people can still be alive i just wish child crulty would stop !
i wish to do anything and everything that i acn to stop this happening 🙂
I would also like to bring up that yes the social workers are saked and soooo on …
oh and before i go on i think they also should be beaten senceless !
But surly something should happen to the police because i have been reading up on baby p for a long time and read that the police new but done nothing and the next morning CHILD DIES what in gods name soo this little boy peter could still be alive have a home for christmas but NO because of them HE IS DEAD
I couldnt be the only person that wants them all to live the rest of there lives being beaten senceless am i ? i think not 14 years they get in prison if you are going to make that short then let them out tomorro
oh yeah i will be down there with alot of peole and alot of bats
REPLY PLEASE
Merry Xmas baby p or hi sreal name PETER LOVE YOU I WILL PRAY FOR YOU ALWAYS