AIBU to want to carry on this interesting discussion about the Child Protection System?

[Spero]

Following on from this www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/2792849-AIBU-to-be-horrified-by-the-Stolen-Children-of-England?

I thought it was interesting. Some people didn't agree with me and said they would tell me why. I would like to hear their views.

for interesting thread Spero

I don't disagree crashdoll.

But also there will ways be people who can't or won't work with support or who are too badly damaged themselves to change anything. And in those situations we need to be able to remove children permanently and they deserve a family life.

However if we don't support people properly how can we know which cases those are?

Wasn't the whole 'targets' thing dealt with on the other thread? Isn't it targets for getting the children an LA has whose plan is adoption, adopted? Rather than scouring the streets for likely toddlers? So if an LA has 20 children awaiting adoption their target might be to get 15 placed this year? IIRC...

Which thread got deleted?

Deepan - I started a thread as a continuation of the documentary one but it was perceived as goady and targeting a particular poster because I was seeking an explanation for where I had gone wrong in my arguments.

I still haven't had that - and I am not expecting it.

You see, the problem with all the conspiracy theories is that it is the same people over and over and over again who are involved. I commend again the website hoaxteadresearch.wordpress.com which has done such a good job of debunking the Hampstead Satanic Ritual Abuse Hoax.

But Hemming, until early 2015 was patron of the Association of McKenzie Friends headed by Sabine McNeil and Belinda Mckenzie. They were the prime architects of promoting this hoax which caused (and is still causing) so much misery to parents and children in Hampstead.

So when Carol Woods is trotted out on videos by some of this gang - then no, I don't believe it. Same with Liane Smith.

I did hope that there would be some engagement with what I wrote about forced adoption, a product now of three years research and thought.

childprotectionresource.online/forced-adoption/

I hope that last post wasn't perceived as either 'goading' or 'targeting' (looks around nervously for the thread police)

I had a particular run in with one poster a few years back who kept reporting me. I then found out who she was - a Hemming acolyte. Ironically she now hates him and thinks we are good mates.

We are not.

These people are quite dangerous. They have got a lot invested in their fantasies and they will often lash out at people who challenge them.

I am not sure why they get so invested. The Hampstead Hoax people it seems did hope to make money out of it but I think for most people it is more about feeling part of a 'gang' and knowing secrets that the rest of the sheeple don't know.

Wasn't the whole 'targets' thing dealt with on the other thread? Isn't it targets for getting the children an LA has whose plan is adoption, adopted? Rather than scouring the streets for likely toddlers? So if an LA has 20 children awaiting adoption their target might be to get 15 placed this year? IIRC...

But the problem is - as I hope the Transparency Project set out clearly - is that there is a real fear from the way in which the councils answered our FOI that reliance on targets risks corrupting decision making for particular children at an early stage, even before care proceedings start.

For example, a few councils stated quite explicitly 'our target for adoptions is X this year'. They didn't say 'our goal is to get X children out of foster care and into permanent homes'.

Even if it is only a perception of risk, you can see how dangerous that can be given all the groups out there encouraging parents to not even take their children to hospital when they need to!

Yes, it sounds like the usual poorly thought out and ill defined management metrics, but in this case it adds fuel to the conspiracy fires.

The Transparency Project post really opened my eyes.

(Do I sound like I'm arse kissing Spero?)

I have just written a lengthy response to Louise Tickle's piece in the Guardian on adoption targets which I found frustrating and annoying.
I know Spero that you sent FOI requests to every LA in the UK and received a fair number of replies confirming that they did have targets in place for adoption. I was very surprised at your response to be honest because I know how strongly you (and others) have fought the conspiracy theorists narrative of "stolen babies to be put up for adoption to meet targets.........." You appeared to be very concerned about these targets and I fail to understand why - am I missing something.

Just as we always told the conspiracy theorists that targets for adoption were in relation to children already in the care system and absolutely nothing to do with stealing babies for adoption, these targets surely are no * different - they are government driven targets (I think) for children exiting the care system, and are I believe directly related to finance (or lack of it) and Tickle makes the point in her piece that adoption is a much cheaper option than fostering and that is absolutely true. Even when you factor in adoption allowances (which are discretionary) and post adoption support (which is patchy as the service is severely under resourced) it is a fraction of the cost of foster care.

Anyone social worker will know that the majority of adoptors want a child as young as possible (under 5) and I think this is borne out by statistics that the majority of children adopted are aged 1 - 4 years. Tickle is concerned that 100% of children or 0% of children could be adopted because of targets. This is ridiculous - regardless of targets, demand far outstrips supply and in the main older children, large sibling groups and children with disabilities are sadly never going to have the opportunity of being successfully matched with an adoptive family. And permanent foster carers for this cohort of children are rare as hen's teeth.

The government have taken an axe to the budgets of all public services and now the chickens are coming home to roost, Social Services unable to recruit and retain social workers, a catastrophic lack of experienced social workers, a breakdown in social care for elderly people, the NHS "on it's knees" etc etc whilst the government turn a blind eye to all this while they pursue their privatisation agenda. At the same time as slashing budgets they demand improved services, and more and more savings. They are very pro adoption because it is cost effective BUT it doesn't matter about that, nor the ridiculous 26 week rule, unless they pass a law that a certain % of people in every town must become approved adoptors it won't happen - so targets are useless. OK I know that sounds daft but I'm just frustrated.

And we live in "target society" - there are targets for all employees, my GP was telling me recently about their targets - getting people in high risk groups on particular medication as it's cost effective - just a small thing but the NHS has targets, teachers have them for teaching and learning. One of my sons is a primary school teacher and he has to have a target for the 30 kids in his class for a wide range of their learning needs. Sales people have them, call centres, the police............you name it and there are targets so why is it so surprising that LAs have targets for adoption.

Some comments on Louise Tickle's piece are so arrogant it's not true, from people who know nothing about adoption. One poster thinks all children could be adopted if only social workers "put more effort into finding adoptors" - I'm a retired social worker but I managed a team of 10 social workers specialising in fostering and adoption and they were committed experienced professionals who put enormous effort into finding permanent homes for children, but you can't find what isn't there to find.

Tickle quotes some lawyer who talks of the scandal of babies of young single mothers being adopted in the 50s/60s and that was most definitely forced adoption and it was a scandal (as it happened I was one of those unmarried mothers but I was fortunate enough to have loving parents who would not hear of their grandchild being adopted. The lawyer thinks in 50 years time there might be the need for apologising to another generation of mothers and Tickle agrees.

I would be interested to know what the lawyer and Tickle envisage should happen to babies, children and young people who are so abused/neglected by their parents/step parents that the court has to make Orders to keep them safe. Would they like to return to orphanages (no need for adoption) or children's homes "caring" for children from 0 - 18 by housemothers and nursemaids. (no need for adoption) I worked in some of those residential establishments and they were horrendous and I didn't see the worst of them the "Nazareth Homes" run by nuns were very scary places I believe. OR maybe even another go at sending children to Australia (you know Sunshine and Oranges and all that) - no need for adoption.
I wonder too what informs Louise Tickle's agreement with this unnamed lawyer/ I know nothing about journalism and I don't think she knows anything about adoption.
Sorry if this sounds like a rant but I'm tired and frustrated. I don't know anything about journalism and I don't think Louise Tickle knows anything about adoption but that doesn't prevent her distorting the facts and giving people the idea that children are earmarked for adoption before they are made subject of an Order to remove them from an abusive home.

I think that there aren't enough children taken into care. Often it's too late when a child is taken into care. The psychological damage is already done.

Having children is not a right. If a parent has badly let down an older child then removing a child at birth is a fair punishment. People are sometimes banned from keeping pets for life so I suppose it's logical to ban some people from ever looking after a child for life. Child abuse should have consequences for the abuser.

I am also in favour of children being removed if they live with a known paedophile or a domestic violence situation as a last resort. Adoption should be considered if the situation shows no sign of improving.

It's not about punishment though really it about doing what's best for the child.

Magic - Louise Tickle has been a committee member of the TP for about a year now, so I think she does know quite a bit about adoption from the other members.

Why we are worried about this 'targets' issue is not because we think there is a definite plan or scheme to go looking for babies to get them adopted, but because THERE IS A RISK that 'targets' and 'key performance indicators' can corrupt decision making about individual children.

this has always been Hemming's point but he has never bothered to try and support it with any identifiable facts and figures (he left it to the TP to spend a year unpaid). If a council has a target (as Merton did) to get their adoption numbers up from 9 to 12 in one year, Hemming argued that there was therefore a temptation to target more easily adoptable younger children in order to secure that increase in numbers adopted.

We all know that children over 4 years are much less likely to be adopted; babies are snapped up.

Even if there is not a shred of truth in this, the way the councils answered the question was NOT conducive to reassuring parents who think there is a risk their children are targetted. It was very difficult to get a simple answer to a simple question. Some councils denied any targets at all - but sent documents which clearly referred to a target.

Adoption is a decision that should only ever be made if it is right for the particular child whose future is being determined. It should NEVER be a decision made to meet a 'target'.

I do think this is morally wrong, and I do think (with gritted teeth) that Hemming had a point about this.

tldr - kiss away! It is gratifying to know that people are actually reading this stuff and finding it helpful. This is exactly what the TP is trying to do. Its not about pushing an agenda but trying to present and promote facts.

It would be interesting to compare the number of child murders in France and The UK. My impression is that the French are more relaxed about child protection than we are. Is there any evidence that the French are better at protecting children?

It would be interesting to compare figures.

My guess would be that the numbers are about the same. But we do seem to have a different attitude and reaction to child protection issues. The research of Lauren Devine and Andy Bilson recently has shown very clearly that child protection investigations have rocketed - but children are not any more safe because of this.

So we seem to be getting more and more worried and intervening more and more (causing great stress to families) but rates of documented abuse are not going up. And of course, there are still the great scandals every couple of years (even every year) of wholly preventable child deaths.

Yanbu and I'm glad you didn't flounce

Sadly, a very quick google suggests that France also has parents who kill children and who are failed by state agencies.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11860204/French-father-jailed-for-killing-three-year-old-son-in-washing-machine.html

There will always be parents who kill their children. It's a sad hard fact about the world we live in.

Oblomov - if you google "just culture" there is a growing school of thought about how to allow organisations to learn from mistakes without punishing people who do things wrong. There is a TEDtalk about it, along with a couple of interesting Radio 4 podcasts. The aviation industry is widely regarded as one of the leaders in this approach, but as one of the podcasts I listened to made clear, the public sector still has a very punitive approach to mistakes - particularly when the media get their teeth into an incident

Really. Why should persons found guilty of child abuse or neglect be allowed to have more children? Permanent sterilization could be a condition of parole.

I used to work quite closely with a LAs performance team. They were monitoring over 300 targets at the time. Performance indicators can cause perverse incentives, but having a range of different targets is one way to mitigate against any single target distorting behaviour too much. Although then there are other issues associated with the amount of resources monitoring the indicators takes. It's a tricky balance because without any performance measurement how can you have accountability?

I am not a targets fan either.
On the question from Magic above, I would favour long term fostering in the cases you mention above - I know that costs us the tax payers a lot more than adoption but I would still prefer it when there is not a single wider family member who is prepared to take on the children and they have all been asked and if there are they are clearly unsuitable.

I think there are enormous problems with advocating sterilisation, because of the risk it will be misused. It is also very much a hallmark of vile and repressive regimes and inevitably appears to be targeted at 'groups' of people, for their religion or their learning disabilities. Even Canada in the 1970s was doing some horrible things along these lines.

Also, as the cases make clear - it is important for society to tolerate very variable standards of parenting. The family is the bedrock of diversity. Of course, that doesn't encompass abuse that causes a child significant harm, but that is when the law should step in.

Nooka - I quite agree with you that 'performance' must be capable of being monitored or it can't be assessed/regulated. But the problem here is the WAY in which these targets are set.

They are set against a back drop of successive governments quite explicitly saying that adoption is the gold standard for all children, and urging more adoptions more quickly.

instead of having a target for 'adoption', why can't they have a 'target' that they will deal with all child protection cases within a certain time frame and will identify for each child what services they and their family need, if the services provided don't keep the child safe, they will move quickly to find the best alternative for that child - which could be placement with another family member, a residential placement, or long term foster care with continuing contact with birth family.

Its the existence of 'targets' together with a clear 'push' towards adoption from the Gov which is making people uneasy.

We can't ignore the fact that we are very much out of step with the rest of Europe. Roughly I think we have about 5,000 adoptions each year - no where else in Europe even comes close. I think Germany is next highest with about 300. Just WHY are we so radically different? What do other European countries do to protect children, given that they must have similar amounts of abusive parents?

These are all questions we should be engaging with and trying to find answers. Instead, a great deal of energy is devoted to arguing about whether or not Liane Smith was justified in murdering her children (she was not) or if Carol Woods is in tip top mental health (I really doubt she is).

And I note I am still waiting for any attempt to take me through my arguments 'line by line' and show me how I am wrong.

DISCLAIMER THIS IS NOT GOADING. THIS IS GENUINE ATTEMPT TO SEEK DIALOGUE. PLEASE DO NOT DELETE THIS THREAD

I don't think that it is necessarily cause for alarm that we have so many more adoptions than the rest of Europe: I would be more worried that it is not happening in Europe, given that a childhood in fostering and children's homes has to be a worse option. I'm not being complacent about that; I guess what we need are figures on the number of children in the care system in other European countries compared with the number in the UK, and figures on child murder and prosecutions for child abuse and neglect.

instead of having a target for 'adoption', why can't they have a 'target' that they will deal with all child protection cases within a certain time frame and will identify for each child what services they and their family need, if the services provided don't keep the child safe, they will move quickly to find the best alternative for that child - which could be placement with another family member, a residential placement, or long term foster care with continuing contact with birth family.

This! It would provide by far the best way to weed out the time-wasting child protection cases that drag out in relation to children who aren't remotely at risk. It goes on far too much in the SEN field. I've come across cases where a council told a mother her child was on the child protection register the night before the hearing of her tribunal appeal against the refusal of statutory assessment of his needs, citing as grounds the allegation that she was subjecting her child to too many assessments and wasn't accepting the advice of professionals. At that time the mother had arranged ONE assessment, and the tribunal's finding in her favour demonstrated that she was right and the LA professionals were wrong - yet they didn't rescind the CP order for months. The social worker in that case wasted hours trying to find any information whatsoever to justify their action and writing pointless reports, and several man-hours were wasted at meetings where the independent chair asked everyone why on earth they were there. If there had been a time limit on the investigation, and if there had been a focus on what the child actually needed by way of help for his clear learning difficulties, it would have freed the relevant officers much earlier to deal with genuine child abuse cases.

EnormousTiger long term fostering means the child grows up (usually) without stability, and without living in a family that is fully committed to them, and with a number of moves between 'placements'. Children need permanence.

The only legal reason for allowing adoption without the consent of the birth parents (as with something like medical treatment) is that the best interests of the child need whatever the birth parents are refusing to consent to - adoption/medical treatment/whatever.

In other words, the needs of the child are more important than the wishes of the parents.