to think Rotherham council have lost the plot over UKIP foster-carers?

[londonone]

bbc

I really really hope there is more to this than is being reported, otherwise I am utterly speechless.

Having read as much, and listened to as many people involved, as I can about this during the day (stuck at home getting over an illness) I believe Rotherham social services made a wrong call on this, especially as they have separated the children.

If these children are in foster care, they may well need carers who can promote contact with their family - I don't know the parents' background, because they have been reported to be immigrants but to have EU citizenship - don't know whether or not that means they're white.

Lots of foster placements are quite short term and not continuedf for all kinds of reasons. If it was an emergency placement there may well be better and more appropriate foster placements with other families.

I may be wrong but wasn't it Rotherham who, a few weeks ago, demoted a Housing Manager to Rent Collector when he tweeted that he was against gay marriage because he was a Christian? What would they have done if he'd been anti because he was a Muslim, I wonder..

Burnt him at the stake no doubt

Badger - I think actually it was a different area, though not a million miles away. Some part of Manchester. Another stupid decision though. He hadn't tweeted in a professional capacity and they decided to demote him without any kind of disciplinary procedure. I don't personally agree with his views but he was treated outrageously.

I saw the Head of Social Services on the news yesterday, there were no concerns about the couples care of the children, they were encouraging the children to use their native language and promoting their culture.

They were removed solely because of the foster carers political leaning.

Its absolutely appalling and even more so if the children have been separated.

Excellent post tiggytape

"If you only want politically neutral, opinion neutral, religious neutral, sexuality neutral people to care for children then the short supply of good carers will become a lot shorter. It doesn't matter what they think about border controls or EU membership - it matters how they treat the little ones entrusted to them and the council themselves say they had no concerns on that score yet this has still happened."

Three children were fostered together and now they aren't - how sad is that?

What has happened in Rotherham is disgraceful and actually imo also discriminatory. What would happen in reverse if a member of the public said they wouldn't be treated by a black nurse or deal with a very left wing social worker? These sorts of things can't happen one way and not the other and the fact they do is what I believe is making certain sectors of society increasingly fundamentalist and firing others to become increasingly Xenophobic.

FWIW DH and I are white, professional, middle class, wealthy, conservative with a small and large c (DH has been a PPC), practicing Christians. We both appreciate the rich tapestry that forms the UK but also both believe that when people settle in any country they should integrate, respect the cultural norms of the society they settle in and work and contribute economically to that society. I have no doubt whatsover that social services would turn us down if we applied to be foster carers. We would undoubtedly care lovingly and well for any children but we would expect observation of and respect for ours and their cultures to be mutual; ultimately children in the UK need to be brought up to be flexible enough and open enough to deal with many many situations.

Children who are fostered are in desperate situations; in such situations surely the most important thing is love, care, cleanliness and safety - from much of what one reads and sees of social workers, I am not sure they are the best people to determine what is and isn't appropriate - bearing in mind the appalling conditions they have believed it has been appropriate to leave children in over the years.

Finally in responses to the immigration/UKIP comments my father, grandfather (and family) and one set of great great grandparents entered the UK as refugees - the difference between then and now of course was that there was no benefit system so they came for freedom from persecution for the first two and famine for the latter). They also came to work and to put something back into the country that allowed them life (my father and a family of 7 would have been executed otherwise) and were glad to do so and glad and proud of the new lives they could build.

marriedinwhite - many refugees and non refugee immigrants still do as your family did, come here and work very hard in the new country. And refugees and immigrants also faced plenty of hostility and racism during the war, eg Jewish men who'd fled fascism were interned as enemy aliens during WWII. And those were the ones who got in, many of those who died during the Holocaust had tried to go to other countries but fell foul of quotas (or had fled Germany only to end up in another country which fell under Nazi rule, Anne Frank's family for just one example).

As for the rest of the conversation, I'm amazed by how little information people feel equipped to judge the social workers' decisions on - a few rightwing newspapers publish an article based on a very small amount of fact and a lot of very politically biassed spin and everyone is ready to accept the Daily Mail type version of the story whole.

Agree elk.

The ss apparently spoke to the foster careers over several days before making this decision. I think we have very little information about the facts of this case.

elkie, many of us have seen the head of children's services on the news and are judging her by her own words. Don't try to brush off anyone who disagrees with you by claiming they are ill-informed. It seems you haven't seen what the head of children's services said, so you are the one commenting without sufficient information - unless you did see her and have completely mis-judged the situation.

Elkiedee one takes an egg, inserts a needle at the thin end, and sucks. I really don't need you to tell me what happened to Jewish people in WW2.

Many is not good enough - all people who come to this country should be expected to work very hard until they have made enough of a contribution to be eligible for benefits. Nobody coming into this country should automatically have the right to claim.

look here before you jump to the conclusion that everyone who condemns this decision is ignorant.

And have a think about what it means to be a little child separated from your siblings, especially when you have already been separated from your parents, and what it means to be separated from your carers having already been separated from those parents. Have some compassion.

Btw, when I searched for the head of children's services' comments, one of the results that popped up was an appeal from Rotherham for foster parents saying 'Fostering in Rotherham; we need foster parents urgently'. So they are desperately short of foster parents, but prepared to reject good foster parents already on their books for political reasons.

Logically if foster families belonging to UKIP cannot host children we should confiscate the children of ALL children of UKIP members and voters (more than a million??).Take them too from anyone voting BNP.....
Why stop there? Ask these politically correct Labour fanatics if they believe the Tories are a racist party and most would reply "YES" So take away all the Tory children and indoctrinate them with good (national?) Socialist doctrine...
Hitler and Stalin would both have been proud of Rotheram Council !

I am not sure what I thin about this at all. However the head of Children's Services made it very clear on BBC Breakfast News that they decision was based on UKIP's policies on multiculturalism.
She said that the couple could not meet the needs of the children while being members of UKIP. She also went on to say that there were no concerns about any other aspects of care.
So it doesn't seem to be media spin.

Oh sorry, x post with many.

I think we've all actually heard plenty from the horse's mouth, so to speak aka the head of children's services
We've heard there were no problems with the care that the foster carers were providing. So this is not one of those cases where extra information is being witheld. There were no problems with the care they were providing
We've heard that the problem was the membership of ukip and some of the policies on the ukip manifesto
We've heard that the children are with new families, plural

Personally I don't see what there is to defend. A sibling group, split up to suit political expediency. It is a disgrace.

No one is saying that UKIP supporters cannot be good foster carers.

In this particular situation the carers strong beliefs about immigration and multiculturalism meant they were not a good match for these (immigrant) children.

I haven't been able to read the whole thread, but thought I'd throw this out there incase no one else has.

The reason the council sought legal advice to remove the children from temporary emergency foster care is because they were previously warned by a court for not meeting the children's cultural needs.

It is perfectly possible that they removed the children from this temporary placement a little early, not because the social workers felt that the children were in being badly cared for or that the foster carers wouldn't try to support their cultural and ethnic needs, but because they had to make sure they were acting and seen to be acting in the best interests of the children, perhaps in respect of any legal challenge to their custody of the children.

I have no idea why these children are in care. But it is possible that their biological family is unhappy about their children being in care, and might seize upon any possibility of their children's needs not being supported to argue that the children ought to be returned to their care. Whether that is in their best interest or not. (I don't know)

Obviously this is a tricky situation legally but it is possible and might explain why the council acted the way it has. The children were not removed for political reasons, they were removed so that the council could show that they took the children's needs seriously. It may well be that those foster parents would have met the children's cultural needs, but if it was legally under any doubt the council had to move them. They sought legal advice and did it.

I don't really think this is about whether UKIP members can be good foster carers, even for immigrant children. I think its about whether the stated aims of UKIP and the foster parents membership could cast doubt over whether the council were taking care of all the children's needs (even if they were) and risk the council losing legal custody over a technicality.

My gut reaction to the headline was that it was wrong to remove the children for those reasons. But when I heard the woman who spoke on BBC breakfast, I began to suspect that it was a much more complicated situation, and her confidence that they had done the right thing (despite the outcry) and them taking legal advice that said the same made me think of this scenario. Particuarly because the woman showed no sign of predjuidice against these foster carers or their political beliefs.

If UKIP doesn't like the idea that their stance on multiculturalism and immigration might mean that someone could challenge the placement of children of immigrants with their members then maybe they need to look again at their policies.

Social services need to get their priorities in place.

They turn a blind eye to countless vulnerable children being systematically abused by paedophiles in Rotherham.

Yet they swoop in to act when they deem foster parents' political views to be not quite PC.

Unreal.

I agree with ItsAllGoingToBeFine - everyone in my estate including all my immigrant neighbours had UKIP leaflets put through their door twice recently. (local election - hope i'm not outing myself here).

The UKIP leaflet states: ''What UKIP will do for you by voting for me... Control immigration that threatens our public services''

I was disgusted so i kept the leaflet to warn others who don't see the UKIP's agenda.

I gather from that leaflet that UKIP supporters including the foster parents (a public service) see the immigrant foster children as ''threatening our public services''.

That is why the UKIP supporters are unsuitable foster parents to immigrant children.

My heart goes out to these children who have been split up. So it's better to wrench them away from the family they have got to know and split them up, just so long as they're with a family who support a different political party? That's what matters?

Soviet-style social engineering. Pretty scary.

spirited wolf I see what you are saying in a very logical way but that doesn't make what has been done right and turned on its head if my children were removed and placed with a couple who were atheists and members of the SWP, I'm quite sure that if I argued on a technicality about the fact that in the circumstances I didn't believe my family's cultural beliefs were being upheld then I would be branded as discriminatory.

As I said above discrimination works both ways and the sooner we as a society acknowledge this the better.