To report parents for not registering the birth of a child

[Anon6356237]

Should I stay out of it or report? I'm concerned the child could fly under the radar if there are any concerns if they are not 'in the system'. Who would I report to?

Where do these people live. If they have a 'conventional' house they must pay council tax, be registered for elections.

Or are they travellers? It sounds more as though the OP's friend lives more conventionally, at least in one place. A traveller might get away with not registering, especially if they move around.

How wouid you propose the births be registered, 16 or so years after the events?

Genuine question - you wouid need to prove date and place of birth, and who your parents are. The boy the mother, who actually gave birth, a married partner of the mother who gave birth, or in rare exceptional circumstances the birth attendant or owner of the premises where the birth took place can also do so.

When it's a baby, it's easy, as births are reported by attendants as a matter of routine and the RO tallies them up,with parents presenting for registration. That is unlikely to be possible years after the event.

There are repercussions of the changes that have taken place in an effort to protect children from extreme abuse and death the system has unintentionally scared and alienated many normal parents from seeking medical attention and other state support for fear of intrusion and over zealous social workers removing children. I have been approached by mothers in baby changing rooms asking for medical advice who were too traumatised by the SS previous investigations for a simple fall to seek a medical examination. Parents with sick children who are harassed by the schools and council for low attendance. It has really become ridiculous and the law as well as protecting many vulnerable children is divesting many others.

That’s why laws are regularly changed or provisions for new circumstances are made. Why do you think there are so many civil servants doing their jobs on policy and lawmaking on these kinds of matters every day. Provisions can be made for whatever the government sees for to do within reason.

**fit

I have been approached by mothers in baby changing rooms asking for medical advice who were too traumatised by the SS previous investigations for a simple fall to seek a medical examination.

This has happened to you, Multiple times? Really?

And you know enough about these women, to know there are not perfectly valid reasons SS would be interested in them.

Do you give them medical advice? Are you a medical professional giving advice out in baby changing facilities? Without knowing the full back ground of the child?

You can guarantee that SS previous involvement was over zealous and that there were mo concerns at all?

You would rather more children were out at risk than a few parents struggling with communication between school and medical practitioners?

Really?

I never said don’t register your child but why penalise young adults for life choices their parents made. Don’t you think?

If they are admitted to hospital for more than a few hours. The lack of registration will come out and trigger SS.

Would it though? When my son was admitted for 4 days the only thing they ever asked for was the name of our family GP. No one checks to see if the child is actually registered with said GP to they? Address...who checks? My word is taken for everything.

Catherine. The computer systems are linked. I bet they asked for your child's name and his date of birth as well as GPs name. They would have found his record on their system.

Health care professionals, educators and other professionals have been given blanket guidelines for when to report a case to SS. That does not mean by any measure that the parents are unfit. It is a system that takes in many cases to scrutinise to save and relocate a few. Of course there are some who have not been honest about why the SS’s final decision was to remove their children. Others who have been investigated and found totally fit, but many families find the scrutiny and power of the state to remove their children a very traumatic experience. Some think twice and would rather not go through that again when life is enough to deal with.

Report it.

Unlike many people on this thread, I actually grew up in an emotionally abuisive home-educating family. No medical care, no dental care, etc. I worked hard to get to get out of that situation and if my birth had also gone unregistered, it would never have happened.

Due to my lack of childhood records to prove I ever lived in this country prior to 18, I've had quite a time applying for my first passport. But at least I had a birth certificate. Later on, I got an NI number from that, which meant I could claim job-seeker's and get my first job.

The thought of what my life might have been and the fewer choices I would have had if I didn't have a birth certificate make me honestly nauseated.

Others who have been investigated and found totally fit, but many families find the scrutiny and power of the state to remove their children a very traumatic experience. Some think twice and would rather not go through that again when life is enough to deal with.

Mate, if your response to such a situation is to fuck-up your subsequent children's later opportunities in regards to further education (college, university), employment, and world travel, maybe you're not totally fit, and the previous children should have been taken into care.

You're not a fit parent, you're a parent who views your kids as an extension of you and who only thinks about your own feelings.

I never said don’t register your child but why penalise young adults for life choices their parents made. Don’t you think?

Young people will always be impacted by choices their parents make. U less tou want to go full nanny state.

How about parents actually think about how their choices impact children.

Would it though? When my son was admitted for 4 days the only thing they ever asked for was the name of our family GP. No one checks to see if the child is actually registered with said GP to they Address...who checks? My word is taken for everything.

As someone has said on a previous comment. They gave details that were bullshit at a walk in centre and they knew straight away.

You dont get challenged because the ingpr you are giving proves legitimate. Why would they look further if you give them no reason to think you are lying?

I think @LolaSmiles made a very good point when she replied to a PP

True story.
We also survived enough before the polio vaccine.
We survived believing that material rape wasn't a crime.
We survived thinking people with mental health issues and learning disabilities should be locked up.
We survived it being socially acceptable to hit your children.

Society changes. Right now it is considered socially and morally wrong to render your child stateless and hide them from relevant professionals because of some paranoid conspiracy theory.

Right now it's generally accepted that there is a collective responsibility to safeguard children.

Right now anyone who compares safeguarding children to being a Nazi thought police busybody and shopping your neighbour is probably going to seem a bit paranoid.

and it also reminded me of what Sir James Munby, the former President of the Family Division said a couple of years ago in a judgment (this was the divorce refusal case that was appealed) where he was speaking about how attitudes have changed over the years and how the courts need to (and do) update their thinking on what is acceptable:-

A child's welfare is to be judged today by the standards of reasonable men and women in 2017 not by the standards of their grandparents in 1925 or their parents in 1969

Owens v Owens (2017) EWCA Civ 182

39. In one respect, however, the law permits, indeed requires us, to look at matters from the perspective of 2017. Section 1 of the 1973 Act is an "always speaking" statute: see R v Ireland, R v Burstow [1998] AC 147, 158. Although one cannot construe a statute as meaning something "conceptually different" from what Parliament must have intended (see Birmingham City Council v Oakley [2001] 1 AC 617, 631, per Lord Hoffmann), where, as here, the statute is "always speaking" it is to be construed taking into account changes in our understanding of the natural world, technological changes, changes in social standards and, of particular importance here, changes in social attitudes. Thus, in R v Ireland, it was held that those who inflict psychiatric injury by use of the telephone can be guilty of offences under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 notwithstanding that the telephone had not then been invented and that such psychiatric injury would not then have been recognised. So, as Lord Hoffmann pointed out in Birmingham City Council v Oakley [2001] 1 AC 617, 631:

"the concept of a vehicle has the same meaning today as it did in 1800, even though it includes methods of conveyance which would not have been imagined by a legislator of those days. The same is true of social standards. The concept of cruelty is the same today as it was when the Bill of Rights 1688 forbade the infliction of "cruel and unusual punishments". But changes in social standards mean that punishments which would not have been regarded as cruel in 1688 will be so regarded today."

40. The most obvious application of the principle in family law relates to the concept of a child's "welfare", as the word was used in section 1 of the Guardianship of Infants Act 1925, now section 1 of the Children Act 1989. The concept of welfare is, no doubt, the same today as it was in 1925, but conceptions of that concept, to adopt the terminology of Professor Ronald Dworkin, or the content of the concept, to adopt the corresponding terminology of Lord Hoffmann in Birmingham City Council v Oakley [2001] 1 AC 617, 631, have changed and continue to change. A child's welfare is to be judged today by the standards of reasonable men and women in 2017 not by the standards of their grandparents in 1925 or their parents in 1969 (when the House of Lords decided J and Another v C and Others [1970] AC 668; see in particular the speech of Lord Upjohn, 722-723) – and having regard to the ever changing nature of our world, in particular, changes in social attitudes: see Re G (Education: Religious Upbringing) [2012] EWCA Civ 1233, [2013] 1 FLR 677, para 33.

41. So, in my judgment, when section 1(2)(b) of the 1973 Act, reproducing section 2(1)(b) of the Divorce Reform Act 1969, uses the words "cannot reasonably be expected", that objective test has to be addressed by reference to the standards of the reasonable man or woman on the Clapham omnibus: not the man on the horse-drawn omnibus in Victorian times which Lord Bowen would have had in mind (see Healthcare at Home Ltd v The Common Services Agency [2014] UKSC 49, [2014] PTSR 1081, para 2), not the man or woman on the Routemaster clutching their paper bus ticket on the day in October 1969 when the 1969 Act received the Royal Assent, but the man or woman on the Boris Bus with their Oyster Card in 2017.

@JamieVardysHavingAParty have you ever heard of empathy. It’s putting yourself in someone else’s position and understanding what motivates them and describing their view even if it’s not your own. Stating a situation that needs to be acknowledged and looked into.

YABU. You should keep your nose out. It’s none of your business. If they feel they don’t want the child to be government property then that’s their right as parents. We must be so careful on taking away parental rights of choice whether we agree with the choice or not. It’s a slippery slope

What if something happens to the child? Does it mean nothing will be done because it didn't exist?
How about giving some vital vaccinations to the child.
As parents they're abusing the child.
I wonder if they're in some sort of religious sect.

I would report them.

I'd be very concerned about the welfare of the unregistered children. It's only that the children could be missing out on healthcare and socialising but there could be some dodgy things going on like child sex abuse.

It's not only

So stupid I'd really hope they are posters from outside the UK

There are plenty of really thick people in the UK.

@Proteinshakesandtears there are people with all sorts of views that appear wombatish to us but at the end of the day the laws of the country are causing these young adults to suffer when they are 16 and allowed legally to determine themselves and at 18 can vote. So it seems reasonable then that at that age they should have the legal right to correct or change the decisions of their parents and register for whatever someone of their age has rights to.

www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/if_a_child_has_not_been_register

have you ever heard of empathy. It’s putting yourself in someone else’s position and understanding what motivates them and describing their view even if it’s not your own. Stating a situation that needs to be acknowledged and looked into

The hypocrisy here.

Where is your empathy for children potentially growing up stateless? Have you ever spent a single minute of your life trying to evidence your right to British citizenship to the Home Office?

Tell me, what do you call it when a woman marries a man and he hides her passport and any other ID she may have, making it impossible for her to get a job or claim benefits, leaving her financially dependent on him? Most people call it abuse.

Guess what. It's abusive when you make it as difficult as possible for your child to ever even obtain those documents.

Proteinshakesandtearsthere are people with all sorts of views that appear wombatish to us but at the end of the day the laws of the country are causing these young adults to suffer when they are 16 and allowed legally to determine themselves and at 18 can vote. So it seems reasonable then that at that age they should have the legal right to correct or change the decisions of their parents and register for whatever someone of their age has rights to.

No, what's hurting then is theirvkarents breaking the law, usually while enjoying rights that have from being registered.

Thoughts being 'wombatish' dont come into . A child has a right to be a registered citizen. A parent does not have the right to not register the child.

Not registering a child leaves them vulnerable. And if a parent can not make the right decision to register the child, for the childs own sake then their parenting should be under scrutiny.

And no, more children shouldnt be left vulnerable because some parents believe registering a birth will mean the state owns their child.

You didnt answer an earlier point though. You said multiple women have come up to in bathrooms seeking medical advice because they are scared of SS.

Are you a medical professional, do you give medical advice out in toilets with knowing the childs history. How do you know these random women arent refusing to seek medical help cause the child has been trafficked or that the parent you are speaking to is actually a fit parent?

If women are hiding in bathrooms to seek medical advice from fear of the state, do you think people who dont register their children will seek prompt medical attention.

Why would you assume this person is a great parent, in a good situation for the child to receive good care and it's SS that just be wrong. And this has happened on multiple occasions?