Agree that this has been known about a while, but there's something odd afoot because it's been kept under wraps and most likely will continue to be. For instance, nothing about these revelations in today's press as far as I know. Channel 4 ran a piece on parents having to go on the run with kids back in 2014 or thereabouts with almost Secret Army-style Lifeline characters getting them into exile but it never became a running story, never a narrative so on it goes. Local authorities are quite dark, quite nasty with long-running corruption going on and money to sue - Westminster politicians are far easier prey really, plus they're known about whereas council officials keep their IDs out of the papers.
Heather Brooke who exposed the expenses scandal only for it to be nicked by the Telegraph as a scoop did a book about the UK Freedom of Information maybe a decade ago and was scathing about the secretive family courts.
My angle is adult safeguarding, Surrey County Council went after me and my elderly mother possibly because I'd whistleblown a failing care home in Banstead to the local press in 2014, partly because I'd twigged that they were killing off the elderly in care homes via dehydration to save a bob or two - though at the time I didn't realise it was deliberate. They try to use the same strategy - make out you're likely to 'abscond' with your elderly parent from the care home, as if you're gonna go hiding out in Surrey pub gardens or coffee shops, keeping out of sight! But by creating this narrative, they can have you barred from the care home under a kind of 'suss' law - this allows them to carry out the dehydration programme without interference from meddling kids.
Samantha Baldwin is one mother who hit the news for going on the run with her kid, she got caught and the judge was scathing. She did look a bit wide-eyed in the photos, think she bangs on about satanic cults and all that - then again when you find out what actually does go on, you can't quite dismiss it out of hand.
Sarah Langford not long ago wrote a book called In Your Defence and one chapter 'Maggie' deals with how councils nick kids off a parent and put them in foster care, the system is rigged against them. It's a little unclear to me how it's a money-making racket - certainly Surrey has been in on the act a while now - though a glance at historical scandals in foster care in Gallsway, Ireland, the subject of a recent ITV documentary and perhaps that BBC drama currently showing - give an insight into the scope of it generating cash. In that instance, even the US Embassy was complicit.