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.

If a parent pulls out of an adoption because of the eye colour of the child that is their perogative, but they probably would be taken to panel for such an action.

Ok - so why is hemming dangerous? Try this for size

He encourages parents to make duff appeals, raising then dashing their hopes and clogging up the Court of Appeal so it takes months to deal with real urgent cases
He encourages parents to leave the jurisdiction and go and stay in a caravan in France he bought, parked next to property of Gena and her violent partner who is sexual risk to children, according to findings in the UK court
He was patron of the Association of Mckenzie Friends until early 2015 - probably THE most malignant and dangerous of all the conspiracy groups
He has stirred up public unrest in Slovakia and Latvia to the extend that the government had to send Sir Matthew Thorpe as a special envoy to calm the situation by giving Interviews to TV and press.
He tells parents not to engage with their lawyers as we are corrupt and in pay of LAs.
He works closely with Booker and Josephs to spread misinformation and fear.

I could go on. But hopefully you get my drift.

magic, if the 'targets' which LAs have admitted to having, are so absolutely pointless, why do they have them and in what way are they 'targets'?

I'm afraid I still refuse to believe that prospective adopters went all the way through the rigmarole and commitment of becoming approved, then tentatively matched with a child, but then told a SW "s/he is a perfect fit in every way but we don't like the eye colour so we're not going to proceed."

To be fair to Gove's adoption drive, as well as holding it up as the "gold standard", he also recognised that adopted children aren't magically "cured", and have ongoing issues - I will be forever grateful for the changes to the admissions code for example

I didn't realise Gove did that re admissions. That is sensible. Maybe I have not been fair to him.

But yes, rejecting children on eye colour? I find that very hard to believe. hopefully anyone like that would be weeded out at a very early stage of the selection process.

Gove was adopted.

Spero You are making this issue personal and it isn't. I am disagreeing with you yes and I admit to being frustrated but I am not insulting you and I have always had a very high regard for your work and your relentless battle with the likes of Hemming et al. SO I must be missing something - this is what I believe from your posts, please correct me if I am wring.

The TP sent out FOI requests to every LA in the UK asking about adoption targets. (I would like to know what was asked) and because many LAs replied that they had targets for adoption, you and others after giving serious consideration to the replies made the decision that this must mean that the existence of targets might mean that this would impact upon decision making in respect of specific children early on in the proceedings. This became a matter of concern. The whole thing involved 2 years work.

Have I* got that right ? If not please correct me

You say I should be more open minded and consider what you and your colleagues are saying at the TP before rejecting it, but if it is as above then I'm sorry but I will disagree. If I have misunderstood or have only heard a very small part of the conclusions you have drawn and there is more information (which I assume there must be as a number of you have spent 2 years on this issue) then of course I will re-consider and I never have a problem apologising if I am in the wrong.

If I've got it right, then I truly can't understand why you should arrive at this conclusion. It isn't fair and I've posted at great length to try to argue my point about exactly why it would not be possible for these targets to impact upon the care plan for a specific child, but you've chosen to ignore most of the contents of my posts.

Do you not accept that we live in a target driven society and so why wouldn't Children's Services have targets. Do you accept that targets mean "something to aim for............." Maybe you didn't ask the right questions on your FOIs? I have no knowledge of FOIs at all but would you be able to tell me what questions were asked.

I'm not sure why you mention the poster who was going to take your post apart line by line but disappeared, is mentioned in your reply to me.

OK after thinking about it I was I admit forgetting Hemming's activities with "assisting" families to flee to France. I have been having a long argument with Tim Haines on the FB site, pressing him about Gena Jones, and I know you've been instrumental in bringing this to the attention of people. He ducked and dived like a demented duck protesting that JH (or JFF) do not send women and children to Gena Jones but I pressed on and in the end he said that he had been to France to Gena's home to rescue a woman. Clearly he had shot himself in the foot as it was easy then "If you don't send women to Gena's why did you need to rescue a woman from her home?" He came back with some crap about "helping a friend" but I wouldn't let it go and then he just began to personally insult me, a sure sign the argument is lost.

Anyway you perceive that I am angry and am unfairly rejecting your work and that isn't my intention and if I am coming across like that then I apologise but I do feel very strongly about this and I know I can be a little too direct at such times. I do however think you are reading far more into my comments - you claim I am "taking you for a fool" - come on - how could I - I've known you a long time and have a high regard for you, so why would I think you're a fool. I hope that we can discuss this issue in a way where neither of us feels discounted or insulted.

tldr if you're going to quote me, please be accurate. I haven't said that the targets for adoption were pointless. You ask why they have them and in what way are they targets.

It is my belief that we live in a target driven society and I have explained this at great length in previous posts, so don't want to repeat the whole issue. BUT a target means "something to aim for......." not "something that must be done" - there are targets in all public services and performance indicators, Social Services, Education, NHS, Police etc all have targets as do most employees in private employment do too. My son is a primary school teacher and they have targets galore in teaching and learning and not only that, he must set targets for each of the 30 kids in his class. The government is obsessed with targets in public services and my view is that this is because they are not trusted to carry out their jobs, and why the govt is forging ahead with its privatisation agenda.

I'm not sure what you mean by "what way are they targets" - as I said it means "something to aim for..........."

I know Gove was adopted. That seems to inform his entire policy.

I am taking it personally. I have been told that I 'jump to conclusions'.
that I 'lack judgment'.
Yes, I take this pretty bloody personally.
And I am frankly pissed off. I expect this kind of emotional overreaction and personal attack from Hemming's acolytes - but not from you.

If you want to know more about the FOI requests, read the TP post. They are set out at length, in detail there. I don't feel like arguing about this any more.
'Targets' with regard to decisions about children's welfare are morally repugnant. I am sorry you can't see that.

www.transparencyproject.org.uk/english-councils-confirm-they-set-targets-for-the-number-of-children-to-be-adopted/

Leanback I agree about JH and his assisting parents to flee the country and spero and I and others go back a long way on MN by been doing our best to expose the danger Hemming poses in relation to this activity. I don't know why I forgot this.

I'm really sorry you are taking this personally and are feeling pissed off. I don't recall saying you "lacked judgement"

I am offering an unreserved apology which I hope you will accept.

There is clearly more to this than I realised and I haven't seen any of the information that you provided in your link - I've just opened it but not yet read it, which I will of course.
I am guilty of going headlong into something that "bites" me and without the full details of the topic under discussion - got into hot water a few times at work on this basis!

Mea culpa.

Having been on the receiving end of a hate filled vile social worker intent on taking my child away, I would fully believe that such targets exist. I'm finally free of them, but the effect on my mental health has been horrific . Social workers I've come across , 8 to date (for one case-they kept leaving ) have been selfish horrible down right mean people who have no interest in the "wishes and feelings "of a child but their own spiteful needs.
Had I not been so stubborn and involved my solicitor my child would have been removed for no warranted reason.
I'm sure there are nice ones out there but my experience has been traumatic and it's still pretty raw.

Thank you.
I also apologise for being rude and cranky.
It's been a long week.

Targets are set in the expectation that they be met. If they are not met then whoever is holding people to account will be having a conversation with their staff about why they are not met. Ask your son what happens if he has a target of getting 90% of his students through the phonics screening and only 50% of them pass - in most schools the answer is that he gets bollocked by his line manager (who gets bollocked by the head).

I know social services aren't hot on accountability (!) and I'm clearly much more in favour of adoption than many on this thread because I believe that foster care really doesn't cut it for children who can't return to their birth families. But targets are very dangerous. I'd like to believe that these are targets for achieving adoption for those who have already been released for adoption. But as spero said earlier, why not say that then?

Targets change people's behaviour. Especially work related targets. It's naive to think they don't. And this doesn't sit easily with a system where the child is supposed to be at the heart of decision making.

Social services are obliged to try and keep children/babies with their families.

The services are over stretched but i do believe people are doing their best.

You assume incorrectly magic I no longer work for any LA because my interests took me elsewhere and I didn't much fancy continuing with social work once IMO less emphasis was placed on supporting.

Fwiw I agree with the transparency project.

I'm not sure what you mean by "what way are they targets" - as I said it means "something to aim for..........."

With the expectation that you meet that aim.

I was horrified reading the TP post. I was so sure 'targets' were a fiction, I was incredulous. FWIW, I don't believe (m)any SWs will look at any child and think 'well, I've a target to meet' but it may influence their behaviour more subtely. And, it means you can't flat deny the 'targets' rhetoric from the mouths of conspiracy people.

On the points raised earlier by the OP:

"Either we aren't giving children in care what they need or the rest of Europe is getting it very, very wrong. "

I don't think that it's necessarily cut and dried, given that we have no comparative data as far as I'm aware. They are two different ways of dealing with an enormously difficult situation, but we don't know whether outcomes are different or not.

In what way is it 'not so simple'?

Children are abused and neglected the world over. We are the ONLY European country that has numbers of children adopted without parental consent every year in the thousands. Every other European country has numbers in the low hundreds, even less. Our populations are comparable with Germany and France. Our cultural ethos is similar.

If adoption really is the 'gold standard' for the majority of children then it is very strange that we are so alone. And that isn't just me saying that - read the judgment of Mostyn J.
www.familylawweek.co.uk/site.aspx?i=ed136683

See para 34 and 35 (but note he got it wrong about only 3 countries - EVERY European country has a mechanism for non consensual adoption)
In this case Janet Kavanagh in her second statement dated 14 June 2013 has adduced certain research extolling the merits of adoption. At paragraph 22 she said this:

"The benefits of successful adoptions are well-evidenced: the overview of evidence research by Coram and Barnados (Exhibit 2) shows adopted children have good psychological outcomes and more stable placements than children brought up in care. "Adoption by contrast (with long-term fostering) is associated with lower disruption rates and placement stability confers a reduction of problems over time and growth of attachment" (Social Care Institute for Excellence in their scoping review of research of looked after children, Exhibit 3). Moreover the Adoption Research Institute (Exhibit 1) goes so far as to state that said that, 'Adoption should be considered for every child who can not return home'."

35. The proposition of the merits of adoption is advanced almost as a truism but if it is a truism it is interesting to speculate why only three out of 28 European Union countries allow forced or non-consensual adoption. One might ask: why are we so out of step with the rest of Europe? One might have thought if it was obvious that forced adoption was the gold standard the rest of Europe would have hastened to have adopted it. The relevance of this aspect of the case is surely obvious. This case, as I have demonstrated, could very easily have been tried in the Czech Republic. It was a fortuity that it was not. Had it been so tried there the orders sought by the Local Authority could not have been made. I accept, of course, that I must apply the law of England exclusively but in so doing the unique irrevocability of the orders sought has to play a prominent part in my judgment.

Well we also don't know whether the rest of Europe is doing something very bloody similar to us but calling it something different. They could well have systems of long term fostering care that look very much like adoption.

And/or it could be that they use something like SGOs far more?

Clearly the UK is an outlier in its approach to adoption, as you said at the beginning of the thread.

But without any more information on the reasons for the different European policy approach and the comparative outcomes (which would admittedly be an incredibly difficult study to design and carry out), what more can be usefully said on the subject?

What more can usefully be said on the subject?

Er. Quite a lot. We are not restricted to discussing only those topics which have the benefit of vast realms of peer reviewed research.

We can speculate. Ask questions. Consider how we find answers.

Or not. As you will.

Place marking

I've been following this thread, and the earlier one with interest. It's nice that a thread on this topic has managed to get so far with the discussion remaining fairly civilised!

I don't think there should be targets for adoption - I think there should be measures put in place to encourage finding placements for children ready to be adopted, but not earlier. I think it's important that once in a position to be adopted, it is in the child's best interest that this happens as quickly as possible.

Re. adoption being the 'gold standard' - adoption IS the ideal for a lot of these kids and it's not a bad thing to say that. Who wants to grow up in long term foster care? Children deserve families, and instead of assuming we're wrong because no one in Europe has as many adoptions as us, perhaps we're the ones doing it right and they're all wrong?!

I don't think the main issue with the child protection system is the way that 'targets' can be twisted into corrupt and sinister things, it's more that too many children are left with appalling parents, in dangerous, neglectful and a suite homes for far too long before anyone is able/willing to do anything. I don't think it should be the case that removal is the option to be taken when all others have been exhausted - 'family' unity doesn't trump the child's safety etc. But then, I'm just a bad, consumerist adopter - what do I know?!

I agree with all your points, TomblibooJam

conserve - I started looking into French adoption the other day, and keep meaning to go back to it the site I was on with a dictionary to hand. I think what it was saying was that parental consent could be disposed of at the "ward of court"-type stage, and then after that it was the the local authority equivalent who gave permission for an adoption to proceed, not the birth parents. So I wonder if researchers have simplified and noted that adoption doesn't proceed against the wishes of the birth parents but without taking into account the different process and the fact their consent has already been put to one side? There are also two types of adoption (one that seems equivalent to long term foster care, and allows inheritance from parents but not grandparents amongst other things; and one that seems more equivalent to UK adoption). Again, research I suspect has been too simplistic - because it's very complicated! - and hasn't adequately reflected that it is comparing apples to oranges and bananas. As I say, I will go back and read more when I get the chance.