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

No worries adela, sorry I made an assumption.

spero

No, it's not poisonous to suggest you are not in a position to make the kind of sweeping statements you're making. I don't think anyone is and that is part of the problem - something I admire you for trying to address. Don't mistake a desire for really authoritative knowledge with a personal attack. Have you published a lot on this subject, BTW?

All I'm "assuming" is that you've said something appalling which adds in a small way to the widespread stigmatisation and stereotyping of people with Autism.

Which you have. It's there in black and white.

Then when more than one person pointed out how rude it was, you were a dick about it.

If a Sw made that comment about a client with autism then there would an outcry of discrimination and rightly so

as parents to try to keep away from authority, social workers, police as much as possible

Well, that a red flag I'd I ever saw one

Agreed. If I were a teacher, SW, doctor, nurse etc. and I noticed a parent avoiding contact with authority figures that would raise a huge red flag with me and I'd find it very suspicious. Would not advise parents to keep away from authority figures! It teaches a distrust of them to your children which will make them grow up more anxious because they will feel that they can't trust the very people they should be able to trust.

And I'm quite sure if Adala feels that way about me she's quite capable of telling me herself, she wouldn't be on mumsnet otherwise. Adala is not some object to be argued about so butt out, both of you and let her speak for herself. Fgs

It very much depends on what and who you consider to be an authority figure.

Most people would consider police officers, judges, social workers when they are thinking of who is authority.

But with the utmost respect intended they are not people that most parents routinely come into contact with unless there is an actual issue warranting the contact.

They are also all professions that it is not unusual to be intimidated by and they are not the sort of thing that most professionals would even be aware as standard if you were avoiding them or not.

Taking it to the extream of saying 'oh dear that's a red flag (which is a twatish overused subjective thing anyway) is quite concerning. It I plsy you are going down the lines of "you are isolating a child" when often that is not the case.

Sorry I forgot health care profesionals.

Even with adding those to the equation it's still the same you tend not to see them other than for standard health checks or if a medical issue exists.

I would be inclined to look at "has the child been deprived of medical care when it was needed" if so why before I could consider if avoiding authority was an actual issue or not

I agree with you needsa and it's easy to forget that authority figures are not always on the side of the vulnerable in our society. If you have had experience of being taken into care yourself, of having seen your mum struggle to pay bills and threatened with the police over it, or simply been very unsupported at school and got into trouble for not being able to do the work, you could well feel that 'those in charge' are not benign and supportive but instead will try to catch you out and break up your family when all the family is doing is trying to survive.

that doesn't excuse the sw if their work is subjective though. Those notes are the main piece of evidence a judge has to work with. They can't be expected to reliably see through them if they're misleading, nor is it reasonable to expect a lawyer to challenge the narrative set up by a plethora of largely unprovable or provable observations and comments.

It's absolutely reasonable to expect a lawyer to challenge this. Any competent lawyer would expect to be able to challenge something if the only evidence for it came from one social worker with nothing to corroborate it.

I knew of social workers who deliberately made spot visits at tea time /bath time to the home of a family with tiny children who were applying to adopt a baby they were fostering. Ss had a different couple in mind for the adoption. The visits were timed in order to get observations that would suggest the couple weren't coping. Isn't that outrageous?

I don't understand this. If a baby is fostered by a family then they have already been very carefully checked to see if they are suitable foster parents. If there was a suggestion that they shouldn't adopt because they were seen to be making errors on one visit, that alone wouldn't be decisive: SS would have to explain why they left the children there in the first place, the adoptive parents could give their side of the story and could submit evidence from other sources about their parenting ability.

Actually the standards for adopting is higher than fostering. I've worked with foster carers who wanted to adopt one of the children they were fostering but were turned down. (Imo that decision was correct for a variety of reasons)

Remember foster parents have routine supervision that adoptive parents do not. A child can also be removed much more easily from a foster carers home than from adoptive.

It remains the case that no local authority can or should leave a child with foster parents if it does not believe them to be safe or fit parents.

It's absolutely reasonable to expect a lawyer to challenge this. Any competent lawyer would expect to be able to challenge something if the only evidence for it came from one social worker with nothing to corroborate it

Many years ago I did a visit with a family support worker. The visit was times to happen shortly after morning school run due to the families commitments, She had reason to check the sleeping facilities and bathroom facilites that the children had, she came downstairs and passed me a note that read can you please check the bathroom it's horrificly disgusting.

I went in expecting something dreadful and all I found was that the previous user of the bathroom had not flushed the loo, not fab but certainly nothing unusual in a household with kids in at that time of the morning.

As it happens the worker decided the role was not really her thing and quit, but exactly how would a family challenge a statement like that indicated something like that in a report?

I also think you are away with the fairies if you expect a lawyer to be able to credibly refute a string of biased 'observations' - there is nobody else going around checking x, y and z on a specific date, so what else is there to go on but what is meant to be accurate information in a case file? This should not be the job of lawyers and is wasting time and money.

If I was a child health clinic doctor where I live I'd be concerned in parents didn't bring in their children for their yearly check ups for instance (because the vast vast majority of parents here take their children for every scheduled check up), and would be concerned they were avoiding something. Or if I was a teacher and a parent wouldn't keep in contact, like not returning phone calls or coming to parents' evenings etc. With the teacher example I expect that would result in the teacher conferring with the school social worker actually.

As it happens the worker decided the role was not really her thing and quit, but exactly how would a family challenge a statement like that indicated something like that in a report?

By asking, for instance, where were the photographs which any responsible SW would know would be needed? How come no-one else had commented on the disgusting state of the bathroom? Did she get her colleague to check, and where is her colleague's statement?

heythereconniver, of course no-one should have to challenge SS lies or exaggeration, because of course they shouldn't happen in the first place.. But your story demonstrates that the system worked properly - the lawyer did challenge it, the judge didn't believe it. It's pointless to say something shouldn't be the job of lawyers when the right to legal representation is one of the fundamental safeguards built into the system and one of their main functions is to challenge dodgy evidence.

In the situation I posted about I was the other party there and I kindly told her to give her head a wobble.

However it is not unusual for home visits in the area I am to be done by lone workers, it is also INCREDIBLY unusual for photographs to be taken in someone's house unless it's after a crime has occured or a couple of other specific type circumstamces it would be very very odd for it to happen during a routine home visit even with the parents consent

I wouldn't describe a room as horrific or disgusting. I would say for example 'the toilet has no seat, there is dried faeces in the bowl, the sink is encrusted with dirt, the bath has grey marks visible on the sides, the floor was heavily marked with dirt and hair' etc. I'd be specific because that would be what was expected of me.

Yes I'm sorry to disappoint but we don't take photographs on home visits. Like it or not, our sworn evidence as professionals is considered sufficient.

In relation to corruption, in all walks of life and all professions there are people you could call corrupt, who play games and are manipulative. If and when a person who has responsibility for a social care team is of this ilk then it would not be a surprise to also find injustice and victimisation, though how common that is, who knows. In the city, it happens and it is recognised for what it is, and where I have worked it has not been tolerated. I don't think saying that it happens in social work is an indictment of the profession, or that children are more likely to be abused or neglected. Surely the opposite - recognise it, stamp it out and you are more likely to get good people doing the work.

But your story demonstrates that the system worked properly

I disagree. I think my story demonstrates that the wrong thing nearly happened and there was nothing very much but hunches to prevent it happening. It's an unsafe system that feels complacent about corruption because of misplaced confidence in a judge's lie detector! The system didn't work as it should have done at all. Judges are not there to second guess the very people designed to give them information.