Good point, CarpeVinum, from what I have googled in the press, it would appear to be quite different. It appears that social workers are not doing those things, but that pressure comes from much higher up the chain.
From googling some press articles, the push for adoption in general seems more to do with government than any social workers or family court lawyers.
"Martin Narey said that social workers try “too hard” to keep children with their biological parents rather than taking them into care where their needs might be better addressed.
His remarks, which have sparked a debate about how far the state should be allowed to intervene"
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/6146430/Barnardos-chief-Martin-Narey-calls-for-children-to-be-taken-away-from-failed-parents-at-birth.html
Martin Narey is the government's adoption tsar. He was the Director General of the Prison Service of England and Wales between 1998 and 2003 and later on became the Chief Executive Officer of Barnardo's before stepping down in January 2011. He is not a social worker and had not worked in adoption and some care workers were quite critical
"Since Community Care first broke the news that Martin Narey was tipped to become the government’s first adoption tsar, our messages boards and emails have barely stopped buzzing. The outspoken former Barnardo’s chief has a reputation for causing controversy – his 2009 comments that social workers should take more children into care were widely criticised – and it is fair to say that he was not a universally popular choice for the role. Community Care readers have complained that Narey, a former prison service chief, is not a social worker and has never worked in adoption.
But it was Narey’s recent report on adoption, commissioned by and published by The Times, that really divided opinion. Among his wide-ranging recommendations, Narey urged local authorities to increase their adoption numbers, warning that those who failed to do so would be named and shamed, and said social workers should spend less time assessing “unsuitable” family and friends carers.
Social workers despaired at what they believed was an “aggressively pro-adoption stance”, which stereotyped them as anti-adoption, while family lawyers warned that reducing the time spent assessing family and friends carers would breach a child’s right to family life."
www.communitycare.co.uk/2011/07/14/adoption-tsar-martin-narey-answers-his-critics/#.UqL3EqLuP3c
"More children should be taken aware from their parents at birth to prevent them being brought up in “completely broken ” families, the chief executive of the charity Barnardo’s has said."
...
"He said his views represented “illiberal heresy” in social services circles where there remains a determination to give “failed” parents a second chance.
“We just need to take more children into care if we really want to put the interests of the child first,” he said.
“We can't keep trying to fix families that are completely broken .
“It sounds terrible, but I think we try too hard with birth parents... If we really cared about the interests of the child, we would take children away as babies and put them into permanent adoptive families, where we know they will have the best possible outcome.”
...
I never thought I would agree with Ed Balls, but I think he is right that more time and money and effort should be spent on trying to fix broken families rather than making what may be rushed decisions
"But Ed Balls, the Children’s Secretary, said: “I don't think the right thing to do in these cases is immediately to put children into care.
“The right thing to do is to say can we sort out the problems in that family?”
Tim Loughton, the Conservative shadow children’s minister said: “Martin seems to have this predetermination that kids are destined to be problem kids and I don’t agree with that.
“The bottom line is that the people who know best how to look after their children are the parents of those children.
“There will be a small number of cases where clearly they are not up to it but Martin … sees a far greater role the state as being corporate parents , I just look at the record of the state and it is appalling.”
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/6146430/Barnardos-chief-Martin-Narey-calls-for-children-to-be-taken-away-from-failed-parents-at-birth.html
However, it is expensive to try and fix broken families.
'The right thing to do is to say, "Can we sort out the problems in that family?" '
Mr Balls called for more intensive intervention projects. Such projects are based on trials carried out in Dundee in Scotland which proved that some families could be helped at very high cost - £50,000 for each successful family - but that no impression was made on children in half of the families targeted.
The average age at which a child was adopted last year was four. Only one in 20 children taken into state care each year is under 12 months .
Patricia Morgan, a researcher and author on families and adoption, said: 'It has been clear for many years that adoption is highly successful and relatively cheap."
'But each time the Government has tried to act to get more adoptions, the effort has been buried, with the social work establishment and its supporters talking about poor mothers being stigmatised and the need for more resources to help the deprived.'
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1211611/Stop-trying-fix-families-fix-Barnardos-heads-heretic-bad-parents-lose-children.html
...
It seems that the Times had a campaign to fix a broken adoption system and asked Martin Narey to contribute, and it seems that the government approached him to "take on the role of official adviser on adoption"
"Picture this. Social workers going into homes, removing children at birth from mothers they deem unsuitable and then fast-tracking them for adoption with families who themselves have undergone a "drive-through" style home study. Of course, this is not what the Times is suggesting in its campaign to "fix a broken British adoption system". But at times, it doesn't feel far off.
The newspaper's campaign is right to call for the speed of the adoption process to be increased and to boost the number of successful adoptions from around 3,000 a year. Latest statistics show that on average, it takes two years seven months for a child to be adopted, while the statistics show we have hit a record low in numbers. This is unacceptable and should put fire in all our bellies. But the newspaper reaches hasty conclusions and suggests oversimplified solutions. This matters because the campaign has David Cameron's firm backing. It was while Martin Narey, former head of Barnardo's, was researching his report for the Times about his new-found interest that the government approached him to take on the role of official adviser on adoption.
Only this week, Cameron made the naive decision to promise tough action on councils who fail to speedily place children in their care with adoptive parents. Those that are named and shamed in the government's new performance tables may be stripped of their responsibilities for adoptions altogether, he said. But by lowering morale, he is likely to create a sense of hopelessness that leads to poor retention and recruitment of good social workers and quickly becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. In any case, Hackney – the east London borough that comes bottom of the new tables, placing only 43% of children with adoptive parents within 12 months of a decision to do so – has one of the best records of stability within adoptions. Meanwhile, other low-performing councils such as Croydon handle large numbers of asylum-seeking children."
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/nov/01/the-times-adoption-campaign
...
This is from an article by Martin Narey in the Guardian
"The adoption rate of babies must increase fourfold , and the numbers of toddlers and older children placed with new families must also increase dramatically, he said in an interview to mark his resignation from the charity he has run for more than five years.
He said adoption was at a historic low and had all but disappeared for babies, despite being a "vital tool in the child protection armoury", particularly for under-ones. " Only 70 babies were adopted last year compared with 4,000 in 1976. We need that figure to get back into the thousands so we need to quadruple it over the next few years – and quadruple it again ," he said..
www.theguardian.com/society/2011/jan/21/adoption-barnardos-chief-martin-narey
.........
Based on all of that, I don't think anyone can accuse social workers of being part of any conspiracy of any type. On the contrary, according to Martin Narey
"Martin Narey said that social workers try “too hard” to keep children with their biological parents"
