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

Sorry, haven't read thread but I will do so later today.

Apologies if this has already been said, but you need to treat with great care anything promoted by John Hemming.

A group of mumsnet users helped me set up www.childprotectionresource.online in 2014 to try and deal with the dangerous and false propaganda of John hemming and Ian Josephs.

There is also www.transparencyproject.org.uk, of which I am a trustee.

If you care about these issues - and you should - you should also take time to make sure your are well informed.

When people say that "the UK is the only country in X that practices forced adoption" do they literally mean "without parental consent"?
Yes.

No idea about which countries allow it or not.

Thanks olenna. It's certainly a strange, emotive usage that just muddies who is suggesting what.

i remember the documentary that followed social workers around, it was quite traumatising to watch.
I have a question for the people who believe in the adoption for profit conspiracy:
My friends adopted their son a few years ago and the whole process actually put them off doing it again. Why, if children are being gleefully snatched from blameless families is the actual process so hard for the adopting family? Many times I had my friend sat in my sofa looking and feeling drained, shattered and a little bit broken by the hoops they had to jump through and the intimate questions they had to answer. Why were they not just given a cute little baby straight away? Why after the adoption were they given so much support for so long if it's just a matter of handing over a trouble free child to total strangers?
Is it possibly because it's utter bollocks?

No, the UK is not the only country in Europe who do adoption without parental consent.

I remember the head of Barnado's (don't know if he's still in charge now) talking about when he'd worked in prisons and observed the massively disproportionate number of prisoners who had grown up in care and understandably coming to the conclusion that removing children from their parents was often disastrous.
However, when he looked a bit more closely, he changed his view and concluded that it was more often the case that the damage had been done by giving the parents chance after chance until the children were eventually removed. He said that he believes that more children should be removed from BPs and earlier.
I think people really don't realise how bad your parenting has to be to have a child removed. My colleagues and I frequently moan about SS - nearly always because they won't take any action because a referral doesn't meet their threshold even though the child is clearly suffering. I don't blame individual social workers for this. Their budgets have been slashed and I understand that means that they can only take the most urgent cases but it's very frustrating.

User and Manumission, in Ireland, for a child to be 'adoptable', there usually has to be permission from the child's birth parents. ie a relinquishment.

This is from the Irish Citizen's Advice website:

The consent of the parents/guardians of the child to the adoption is a legal requirement. If the child is born outside marriage and the father has no guardianship rights, only the mother's consent is needed, but the father is entitled to be consulted (if possible). However, the consent of the father is required if he marries the mother after the birth of the child or he is appointed guardian or is granted custody of the child by court order.

The mother, father (where he is guardian) or other legal guardian must give an initial consent or agreement to the placing of a child for adoption by the Child and Family Agency or an approved adoption service. They must then give their consent to the making of an adoption order. This consent may be withdrawn any time before the making of the adoption order.

If the mother either refuses consent or withdraws consent already given, the adopting parents may apply to the High Court for an order. If the court is satisfied that it is in the best interests of the child, it will make an order giving custody of the child to the adopting parents for a specified period and authorising the Adoption Authority to dispense with the mother's consent to the making of the adoption order.

If a mother changes her mind about adoption before the making of the adoption order, but the adopting parents refuse to give up the child, she may then institute legal proceedings to have custody of her child returned to her.

The upshot is that very few Irish children are available for adoption. I have lots of Irish friends who have adopted, and not one single one has adopted from within Ireland - they've all adopted internationally. Irish children removed from their parents are likely to be in longterm fostercare. I assume that similar situations may exist in other countries.

I steered clear of mentioning Ireland (I was going to wonder aloud if much of Europe has a similar system to Ireland's), as I seemed to remember that marital status of the BPs makes a big difference there.

I don't understand why our system is suddenly big news in France and Portugal.

But I'll have to catch up tonight.

But marital status doesn't make a difference in Ireland then, other than how many parents must consent?

Sorry, just waiting for the printer and musing. It seems to me that there is layers to this and that cross-culture misunderstanding won't help.

The UK is NOT the only country to permit non consensual adoption. Every other European Country has legal mechanism for this, as confirmed by report to European Parliament in 2015.

I agree we are the only country to use it so much - which is concerning and requires debate - but please, let's get the fundamental facts right.

That's why I was asking Spero

As I understand it, in Ireland a father who isn't married to the mother of the baby is consulted where he's known and findable, but his permission to have the child relinquished for adoption isn't required by law unless he is the child's legal guardian, or has legal custody of the baby, or marries the mother at some point after the birth of the baby when its 'adoptability' is still at issue.

opinionated - a very interesting read. (But possibly in breach of the court order if the two links are connected and therefore reveal the identity of the parents?)

I'm a social worker for adults with disabilities and I do not live a a "bubble" . I know there is bad (and sometimes, downright dangerous) practice, either due to poorly skilled social workers or due to over stressed, over worked social workers, poor managers or a combination of both. There are bad apples in every bunch. Social workers are no exception. When I lead on adults safeguarding cases, I can't tell you how many times the 'person alleged to have caused harm' (this is what we say instead of 'alledged abuser') has excuses, especially when it's a family member or relative or "carer". They will go around the houses telling us why it's everyone else's fault but their own that they fleeced grandma for £250k or she needed a slap because she soaked through her incontinence pad again. It's horrifying to see people go around the houses.

My limited experience of child protection is that I don't think we do enough, not that we do too much. It's always better for children to stay in their homes but sometimes, we allow children to get too harmed by this drive to keep them at home.

By the way, I'm still waiting for that evidence about bonuses for having children adopted Grindlewaldswand. I'm thinking of finding a job nearer to London where I get better pay. The 6 monthly bonuses would be epic.

I don't believe that there are targets for sw's to snatch away perfectly well looked after dc.

I do think that some sw's/boroughs might be a little to over-zealous, out of nerves of missing something. And that the occasional error may be made. But in most cases, there will be other warning signs other than the ones the 'innocent' parents put out to the media.

I think it more likely that you read a story that 4 dc were removed because one of them had a head injury. But there are other things missed out, such as the kids being underweight and without warm clothing and the house being an environmental hazard (for instance).

I've just checked out the documentary as I'm in France.

It's on public tv on channel 5 which is a serious channel and has part funding from "France televisions" which is as close as the french get to the BBC.

It's presented as documentary.

I can see how anyones who's seen it has trusted what is portrayed.

Quite shocked it managed to get through all the fact checking and make it to public TV.

If you want to write to them, here is the form ( I'm sure you can send them a message in English)

www.france5.fr/sites/all/libraries/srt/form1_opinionsemiss.php?chaine=france5

Titre de l'emission -> Les enfants volés d'Angleterre
Date d'emission -> 15-11-16 à 20h50

And If any of you have a proxy and what to watch it ->

pluzz.francetv.fr/videos/les_enfants_voles_d_angleterre_,148653060.html

I am really worried about this. It seems that Hemming, having been largely discredited in the UK, is now peddling his wares in France.

I am going to write this up for the Transparency Project.

In the meantime, these are two useful blog posts to give another view of the situation

www.transparencyproject.org.uk/a-lie-can-get-round-the-world-before-the-truth-has-put-its-boots-on/

childprotectionresource.online/helping-parents-leave-the-jurisdiction/

Or the postal address

Relations téléspectateurs France Télévisions
TSA 67300, 86963 Futuroscope Cedex FRANCE

Thanks, Spero, I stand corrected. Is this the report you meant?

Grindelswald, did you actually watch the first Youtube 'babysnatching' video you posted up the thread?

Including the bit where the father says that everyone 'told a pack of lies' in court, and then says in the next breath that the solicitor who had been appointed to advise and represent him in court had refused to come to his house because of his own (the father's) violence? Which is backed up by the fact that three policemen had to come with the social worker to remove the son, but the father viewed it as a social services conspiracy,

Yes, it is absolutely appalling to see a young boy being restrained, and I think cuffed, by police - no one would disagree with that, it's horrible - but the fact is that most children do love and feel loyal, even to abusive parents, and if given the choice will opt to stay with them, but it's not enough to keep them safe.

And this video makes no sense as a 'babysnatching' SS conspiracy - the boy is probably 10/11/12 and thus deemed 'unadoptable', precisely because he is older and, as the video shows heartbreakingly, has considerable attachment to his father. He can't be placed with a family for adoption because his ties to his birth family are too strong, so where on earth is the 'profit' in 'snatching' him? It will cost the state far more to keep him in foster care than to leave him with his father. Why take him if profit is the motive?

And of course, we don't get to hear why the boy is deemed to be at risk - the social worker in the video keeps trying to remind the father that neither he nor the police made the decision to remove his son - a judge surveyed the evidence earlier that day and made the judgement. The father had been given a court-appointed solicitor to represent him, but appears to have been violent or threatening towards him.

It's fairly clear that the father hasn't engaged with the reasons he has been given for the decision to remove the child at all -- he keeps repeating 'He's not going' like an aggressive mantra.

He has known the court decision since earlier that day, but rather than engaging with his solicitor and addressing whatever the serious concerns are, his response is to play computer games and film the police when they arrive, as apparently he has filmed all previous interactions between himself and SS to put on Youtube.

OlennasWimple - yes that's the one. I think there is an updated one but nothing of substance changed.

Let me give you a little background to why Dr Fenton Glynn came to write that report.

In November 2014 Sabine McNeill addressed the Eurpoean Parliament about the shocking state of abuses in the UK CP system. This led to a 'fact finding' mission of European MPs to London in 2015 and the report of Dr FG.

Sabine McNeill was the organiser of a particularly malign organisation called the Association of McKenzie Friends. John Hemming was their patron until January 2015. He jumped ship after their involvement in the Hampstead Satanic Abuse Hoax which has - I hope - now led to Sabine McNeill being imprisoned for her attempts to harass local residents in Hampstead.

If you would like to know more about the links between Hemming and the likes of McNeill, I can recommend this website for a fascinating and often funny read - in so far as one can ever laugh about the damage done by these dangerous lunatics.

hoaxteadresearch.wordpress.com

Social workers can't win, can they? When there are cases like Baby P, everyone is full of criticism that they don't act fast enough and there's too much red tape. But then everyone has an anecdote about kids being taken too soon or too easily.

You can't have a perfect balance. Either we're cautious, and kids get hurt before we act, or we're over-zealous and some kids are taken who actually wouldn't have been harmed. It's got to be one or the other.