AIBU to be horrified by the Stolen Children of England

[LivingOnTheDancefloor]

I just watched a French documentary called "England's stolen children" and can't believe this is happening in England. Horrifying, scary, unbelievable, it is like a horror movie...

Basically, social services are taking babies from their parents based on suspicion that abuse might happen in the future, except that the decision is made based on ridiculous things.
A lady had her three children taken from her, including a breastfed baby because she went to the ER for a child's broken ankle and they judged that he must have been beaten by his parents (only based on the ankle). X years later the parents manage to prove the fracture was due to scorbut. And they found out the initial report from the ER says "no sign of fracture".
The judge admitted they shouldn't have taken the children and the parents were innocents. But the children were given to adoption so the parents will never see them again.
That is just one of the stories.
Some women are told while pregnant that their newborn will be taken as soon as he arrives (and thzney do it).
The documentary says it is due to the facts that counties have to reach a number of children given to adoption so they target poor/uneducated parents and find any reason to take their children.
And as fostering costs money to the state they prefer adoption.

AIBU to ask if you heard about it here in the UK? And if yes, what do you think? Could it be true or are they exagerating?

I am really shaken.

www.google.fr/amp/s/researchingreform.net/2016/11/14/englands-stolen-children-controversial-new-documentary-on-forced-adoption/amp/?client=safari

Sorry, no idea how to post links, and I am on my phone

unlimited I'm glad to hear that.
I know I can't speak for all areas but in my area all referrals go into the MASH (multi agency safeguarding hub). They are all followed up with basic checks, the social workers, police and health are allowed to talk to each other without parental consent because they are a 'firewalled' system and the information isn't shared outside the MASH. This allows the majority of referrals to be closed with either NFA or a completely voluntary referral to early help.
The cases that come through to social work teams for assessment are the ones where the threshold for assessment has been met. This threshold isn't necessarily very high, and often the case will be closed after assessment (should be done within 2 months) with NFA or again referral to other support services.
If cases stay open longer then that they are usually child in need not child protection.
If cases do reach child protection threshold they usually don't go to court.
If cases do go to court they don't always end with children going into care. Of my last 4 sets of proceedings only 2 have resulted in foster care.
The chances of your child going into care following a children's services referral are very small.

I think those are very good points diluting and actually they have given me a slightly different perspective on why people believe this stuff so thank you for that.

I do a lot of attachment type parenting (e.g co sleeping) which has sometimes been difficult for hvs and other hcps to accept (although the paed I spoke to was entirely in favour!) But thinking about it now I realise that I do this with the confidence that I am a well educated person with a successful career living in a naice house in a naice area. That gives me a whole lot of privilege in my parenting choices that I hadn't really appreciated till now. Thanks for your post.

And thanks for everything you do spero. I'm a long term poster (and name changer) on the adoption board and we are all better off because you do what you do

Spero, I obviously misunderstood. I thought that leading questions were discouraged when interviewing children.

bedford

13.6 Good interviewing practice should discourage leading questions with all but the youngest or most reticent witnesses.

But maybe I'm too simplistic in applying this.

Solicitors imply that leading questions often don't stand up in court.

Unlimited - I am so glad you have found the discussion and links worthwhile. It is great to look back to 2014 and see how far we have come. And yes, I think that is a very good point about people seeing the system as a monolith - like a big wave that just crashes over them. I see it much more as divided into before court and during court and it is very different.

Oblomov - sorry we are at cross purposes. Yes, in interviewing children leading questions are NOT a good idea. Its about achieving free narrative recall and not corrupting the children's evidence.
I agree that the quality of many ABE interviews I see are not good (Achieving Best Evidence) and there have been some shocking cases showing horribly clearly what happens when it goes wrong - I discuss some of them here childprotectionresource.online/achieving-best-evidence-and-use-in-children-act-cases/

I was talking about leading questions in cross examination of adult witnesses in court - which is to be expected.

Conserveisposhforjam and others who have made kind remarks - thank you very much.

But the work I have been able to do since 2014 is pretty much all down to the help and encouragement I was given here by other posters. So I owe this forum and those who contributed a big debt of gratitude. There would be no Child Protection Resource without mumsnet and I probably wouldn't have got involved in the Transparency Project without that.

So I hope we can continue to share views and experiences and learn from each other.

oblo

I may be mixing you up with a PP but I'm thinking you are asking about a SW leading the responses to the woman with PND and giving her answers like 'is this the worst you have ever felt in your life' or so,etching along those lines?

In a SW contact that would usually be considered bad practise and often far before anything went as far as threshold.

It is the sort of thing that tends to be picked up on by colleagues or managers but obviously may well rely on the person being articulate enough to be able to express that actually that was not what they were attempting to express and that they are not clear as to how that impression was formed.

It is also useful to be aware that it may also be possible that when someone is reporting something to someone who they percieve as a person who can help them sort something out or obtain something for them they may well present in that way so if that person feels it requires a referal to CS then that is what goes in the report and the parent may not realise that so may not express that they were hamming it up for that reason.

spero
Another one along to say I love love love the child protection resource I often send frightened parents there for reassurance and have even been known to talk about it with other professionals as it's incredibly sensible.
I also greatly admire the transparency project.
And I always find your posts to be very balenced

unlimiteddilutingjuice thank you for your post, lots of food for thought.

Spero I have been reading through this quickly and i think that what you are saying is that you are surprised about the fear about SWs/making appeals etc because of the legal protections available to parents. I have seen many posts on mumsnet where people are saying a SW has become involved and they don't know what to do, and when someone posts about seeing a solicitor or contacting a family rights group for help, it seems that they had just not been aware. Are families give details of what help is available to them, information about threshold etc, when SWs get involved, as standard? What Needsa says is great, but surely it should be provided as standard to all parents?

I am not sure that the fact that people are not using legal advisers is just to do with Hemming. I have a retired social worker in my family, and we have talked about many things over the years, and I can well imagine a situation where a SW could decide a parent does not deserve their child and then go on to employ the technique "allow to fail", being nice to the parent's face but filing reports damning everything, possibly lying, and then how things could spiral out of control. I can imagine that if you are on the receiving end you may lose faith in the professionals around you and stop engaging and ultimately even start to believe you really are a dreadful parent and just lose hope, or have stress levels so high it is not possible to engage. It is possible that this sort of situation is the reason legal advisers are not used, not just because of any smear campaigns about legal aid losers.

Unlimited, your post was quite fantastic. I wonder how that information (the threshold info) and your analysis could be disseminated to the other people who need to hear it?

The thing about a SW saying one thing to the parents' face but then writing damning reports behind their back - is it the same in the UK where you can request your child's entire child protection file whenever you want? We can here in Finland and I've done it a couple of times for evidence for court - it contained all the child protection reports, the write-up of every meeting and every phone call and every SW report there was that concerned DD.

What I wrote comes across as a wholesale criticism of social workers, and that was NOT intended at all. I have the utmost respect for the profession generally and realise the SWs work under extremely difficult conditions. Unfortunately the less good ones exist too.

You can request access to records if you wish. All parents are given access to reports and assessments though so it's pretty much impossible to say one thing to parents but write something completely different in reports.

Quaidorsay - re info for parents, some parents have designed a leaflet which we want to trial to see if it's helpful - if anyone wants a copy let me know, or if anyone has any bright ideas about how best to distribute it. I agree that many parents say they were just completely flummoxed by what was going on at the beginning so we have tried to do simple 'this is why the SW wants to talk to you' kind of thing.

natsku, yes you can have access to all your records, you need to make a Data Subject Access request, there may be a charge of £10. There is a post about it on CPR site.

Sock - thank you. You are certainly one of posters to expand my understanding around issues of violence in family courts.

I cannot imagine what it must be like to do all your parenting feeling you have to display 'the appearance of respectability' - that must be so hard and soul-destroying

I am not a SW, but have (and will again, no doubt) referred families/children to SS.
I have a much bigger concern about SS being underfunded/understaffed/underresourced to the point where the most well-meaning SW in the world cannot very effectively stay on top of their case load.
I cannot conceive a motive for building incorrect cases or any kind of systemic approach for 'stealing children'.

Truly, it is threads like these when I read some of the heartbreaking accounts given, that make me appreciate my privilege.

Similar to here then spero except no charge here, just signed a form and went back a couple days later to pick it up. All the child protection reports were automatically sent to me and all assessments too but phone calls and meeting write-ups had to be requested.

Of course my ex claimed that all the things written down were lies and distortions - funnily enough everything I had said had been written down correctly. Parents can be in such great denial that they aren't doing their best for their children that they come to believe it themselves.

Thank you spero for your reply earlier on today, that's understandable given child safety and identification issues.

Another question to anyone who knows - have you ever heard of children being taken away from autistic parents?

We're both on the spectrum and it's something we've talked about: we know we'd be loving and caring (partly because we are with each other, and we're both "high functioning"), but we're also a bit "weird" IYSWIM...

Needsasock, no I was actually asking about leading questions Re children at ABE, but Spero has answered that. (Thank you Spero).

But I think I do remember that thread and admit that I too thought that : (although I admit to knowing nothing about Social Care policy myself, my father was a very senior social worker, but just on a human level, thinking that can't be right!! ) that this was very poor practice.

Adala - re your question, could your children be taken away because you are autistic?

The short answer is 'no'. The only justification legally for removing children permanently is if the children have suffered or are likely to suffer significant harm if left in your care.

I explain 'significant harm' here childprotectionresource.online/general-legal-principles/

The courts are very clear that as a free society we MUST tolerate very different standards of parenting as the family is the bedrock of diversity.

BUT I do accept that if your behaviour is perceived as 'odd' or outside the norm, you may find that you do attract more attention from state agencies who might worry about your children and be prejudiced against you because they don't understand your condition.

As unlimited so helpfully pointed out - the threshold for investigation is quite low but the threshold for removal is very high. And I can understand how people panic and think a referral or investigation will inevitably lead to their child being removed.

Lots of people parent who are mentally ill or who have difficult personalities. Lots do it well. Some do it just about adequately and some do it badly. But even bad parenting doesn't necessarily lead to significant harm. You should not fear losing your children just because you are on the autistic spectrum, but only if your parenting decisions (or failure to make decisions) puts your child at risk of significant harm.

Thank you spero, that's really helpful.

It's actually not a bad thought that social services etc would keep an eye out.

I appreciate it's simplistically easy to say this as I don't yet have a child, but I think I'd rather they were investigated (and even removed) than be permanently damaged, the way I was by my parents.

It's good to understand the process a bit more.

You can request access to records if you wish. All parents are given access to reports and assessments though so it's pretty much impossible to say one thing to parents but write something completely different in reports

poldark

Thank you for addressing this, would you mind explaining for the benefit of those who are interested what actually happens when a parent says 'that's not what happened/said' after they see it in their notes/minutes

And has the situation changed since I left the LA regarding notes and minutes of contacts, we used to have to provide them within a reasonable time frame after every contact, so we would do a home visit and then provide a copy of what we used to call a contact sheet to the family.

In my current field I make notes during the meeting and they are agreed as accurate by the service user and signed by them and me or they are recorded and a copy of the recording is provided. (Not that the last bit is relevant really)

Do you mean supervised contacts or just visits in general?
We don't make notes while we are on a visit unless we are hearing a disclosure and need to make verbatim notes for an investigation. Views and presentation of the child as well as observation of the parent child interaction goes into the assessment which is shared with parents, as well as review assessments. Ina sense these are subjective but the social worker will be expected to explain what they think they have observed and what it means for the child.
If a parent states that a report is factually incorrect, it will be looked into. If there is other corroborating evidence then the report will stand. If it's a case of the social worker making a mistake with their notes then it will be corrected or noted.

Sorry I should have been clearer I meant for a normal home visit.

Say that the social worker says lets chose something like home conditions were discussed and clearing laundry was talked about but the service user Says it was not and adds on something like 'I told SW that I had several bags of laundry in the hallway as today is the day I take it to the laundrette it will be put away as soon as you have left and was not there this morning' and they do not percieve what the SW said as raising an issue clearly

Obviously that's a mild example one I randomly picked because recently ive done a home visit and had to avoid 5 full bags of laundry in a hallway and that was an explanation that was given to me (and one I know to be true because ive seen the person in the laundrette and they only have the laundry mess on that weekday) but also obviously it's one that has the ability to be misrepresented if someone was so inclined

I've just reported a TAAT on this.

Not before a poster has decided Mumsnet judges anyone with social involvement as a bad parent.

Threads like that are just putting people off asking for help who need it.

Needs I've had SWs sometimes ask me to go through their reports and correct any mistakes they made about me, especially when they did the living situation report (similar to a CAFCASS report) for court - I read it through and mentioned a few factual errors which they immediately corrected. I would hope it would be the same in the UK.

Threads like that are just putting people off asking for help who need it

I would say threads like this do totally otherwise, challenging a often deeply held belief that your entire life is going to go to hell in a handcart if you get a referal to CS can be done very effectively by people who work in those services and do work honestly and decently.

Providing they are open about the possibility that human beings sometimes fuck up often don't like to admit it to themselves and are willing to talk about the steps people can take if they feel wronged