Laura Corkill - Her Son's Eulogy

I don't have a link right now but there are women collecting evidence about this; women who report abuse or DV are losing custody of their children, sometimes with claims of parental alienation, which seems to take precedence over reports of abuse. There seems to be an agenda at play, its pretty sinister.

There was a Twitter discussion about it that was jumped on by (MRA's?) trying to deflect with claims of parental alienation. They couldn't see how they were just reinforcing the truth of the claims, and I didn't want them to delete their comments so didn't point it out to them.
I'll try to get the link to the Twitter thread later but if you're logged in my username is the same on Twitter.

There's also a petition, I can't post the link here but if you google;
'Require family court cases with domestic abuse issues to be heard by a judge'
it should be the first result.

The blame isn’t on the victim, it’s on the victims who repeatedly go back to their abusers and continue to place their children at risk of further physical, sexual and emotional abuse.

I will wait until more facts are available to comment on the case itself, but this is often the problem - women won't leave their abusers and keep the children in an abusive home, or keep allowing the abuser to return. I think we have to be careful not to conflate any errors of process or judgement in the adoption with being the same thing as making errors about removing the child from the birth mother.

And whilst not saying that social workers always get it right, or don't make mistakes, would anyone actually want to be one these days? You are made responsible for whatever you do. Take the child away from the parent and you are wrong, leave it with them and you are wrong. We seem to believe that social workers have the sight, and can reliably predict future actions, so when it goes wrong and they can't do that it becomes their fault. Yet they have totally unmanageable caseloads, insufficient resources to provide a comprehensive children's service, and can't satisfy public demand to be gods.

My friend is a Director of Children's Services. Not so long ago her department took into care a baby at birth, from a mentally unstable woman who had neglected her three previous children (all in care, except for one of them who died as a result of the neglect). Nobody noticed or reported the woman when her three children were being neglected, despite, after the event, all the neighbours "knowing about it". When the fourth child was removed the woman then resorted to threats of violence, stalking and harassment against my friend. The police told her that given her position as a Director of Children's Services she should expect such behaviour and there was nothing they could /would do about it. She's really good at her job, and really cares. And is looking for another job, because she isn't willing to risk herself and her family for the job.

My daughter had a conversation with social services when she left her abusive ex. They wrote a letter saying they would only get back in touch if she went back to him or had any contact. She didn't and that's the last she heard from them.

Social services have a duty to keep an eye on the situation. Their number one priority is to protect the children.

I certainly don't think the system is fit for purpose though. Too many abusive men end up seeing their children unsupervised and mess up their lives. In my opinion too many men are given the benefit of the doubt. I could rant forever about the faults in the system and how they let women and children down, but what's the point. In our case SS were not the problem.

The issue of mothers who have experienced DV losing custody of their children to the fathers or to the wider paternal family has been known about for a long time. Sometimes the fathers get the children, because if they have "only" abused the mother, then it is assumed (wrongly in my view), they are safe around the children. When it comes to extended family care, children are often placed with the father's wider family, not the mother's. Why? Because an integral part of DV is for the perpetrator to isolate the woman from her family and friends, so she has no one around to support her. Then if it comes to needing alternative care, sometimes the paternal relatives are the only ones available. The whole situation is dreadful.

What @knittingaddict said more or less.
The system is under immense strain. (Ex CP social worker)

Families are often given many many chances, women who are in abusive/coercive relationships are often given many chances also. I've only ever known children removed in instances where the parents keep gravitating back to each other despite a number of support systems and plans, and putting children at significant risk. If anything, I've seen the opposite where you wonder why a child hasn't been removed at times. I've never known an abusive father to be given full custody if there is actual proof of abuse either!

However, I don't dispute there will be very poorly managed cases also. A symptom of the system, poor management, lack of social workers and time etc.

I finally left my ex as was told my children would be put on an at risk register although because he never hurt my child he now gets to share him and there's nothing I can do about it
He has him EOW (disney dad) my son is autistic and he is a narcissistic bully.
He doesn't accept his diagnosis and constantly tries to force him into changing who he is.
He rarely says what happens there as he would only answer what asked and I can't ask without leading.
In hindsight I may have stayed and stayed quiet so at least I could be with him all the time 😞

I read the article and it was heartbreaking enough, but even more so with the final outcome.

The piece about the eulogy did stick out but IIRC that was refuted in the article.

As you say, it's only one side of the story and clearly something went very wrong. I hope the investigation will lead to change.

I agree with pp that SW have to protect the child and if the mother doesn't keep them away from an abuser they have no choice.

do you know councils have forced adoption quotas and payment rewards?

It's the ridiculous idea of "risk of future harm" as if this is predictable. We treat criminals as "rehabilitated" but not mothers. The boys who killed Jamie Bulger are out there able to father children and keep them, and women who never committed any crime lose their babies forever. Ponder that when justifying this system.

This woman wasn't in a DV relationship, she had already had her children removed when she asked for help leaving the DV years ago. This was her fresh start. She had support from a charity. She'd decorated the fucking nursery. They lied and told her she would keep her baby this time.

The law on forced adoption and "risk of future harm" needs to change. No one can predict future harm and everyone should be entitled to a fresh start (and a right to family life).

Some people (usually women) are being subjected to massively excessive assessments of whether they're fit to parent or not. Others are allowed to parent when really they shouldn't.

The system isn't fit for purpose and I say that as a victim of it when I was a child.
I don't hold any hope for seeing the forced adoption law changing despite the fact most countries worldwide manage to protect children fine without it.
We can't predict or control the things we would like to, and women and children are being ripped apart because of an attempt to do the impossible.
I wish this case would drive the change but it won't because too many people have a black-and-white all-good/all-bad view of these situations and social services won't take responsibility. Everyone claims it's for the greater good of child protection.

With their last breath they will swear blind "we don't take babies, that's for the courts to decide" when the courts are their puppets. It's hard to take a child when the family fights back, but when SS gain your confidence and act like they're going to support you, they can get you most of the way through the process before you even notice what's happening.

I am aware I'm probably going to have to NC from backlash for saying all this but it needs to be said.

When I left abusive ex, social services did turn up at my door to double check if left him and the dc were well and properly cared for.

i didn’t hear from them thereafter, they took my divorce solicitors details to double check I was leaving ex.

however I spent the next six years trying to stop contact as ex was severely mentally torturing my dc. In cotnact centres! He’d bully my younger dc and behaved incredibly inappropriately with my older dc. He’d select a place to sit which would be obscured from the contact supervisors. And they had a room full of fathers to watch.
he had contact progressed from solely supervised to assisted as he bribed the contact supervisor who made up really wild accusations and filled her reports about me not making eye contact with her etc.

during my use of contact centres I saw many many many abusive men get unsupervised contact with their dc. One man who would come late to contact every time (if he bothered at all) visibly shaking and sweating from drug withdrawal, one man who squared up to his ex wife, one bloke who’d refuse to change his baby during the two hour contact session and send the baby up to mum with the change bag she’d send down to him with. One man who would just spend the two hours standing staring at his ex wife.

they all got unsupervised contact. Everyone one.

After all the cases of children being killed by the mothers' abusive partner, I believe children should be removed from both parents much more quickly than they currently are.

If a mother fails to protect her child from a person she is in a relationship with, she is failing in her duty of care.

That eulogy is disgusting and inhumane.

of course children need to be protected from abuse, and mothers who are victims of domestic abuse need to be supported to end the abusive relationships. Sometimes though, and I know it’s for complex reasons, they can’t do it. It’s in those circumstances that social workers have to intervene to protect the child. But that doesn’t mean losing empathy for the mother.

There are also clear cut cases of parental alienation, which can be carried out by men and women, although these are far less common than domestic abuse. Also very harmful to children.

I have never seen a child “removed from capable mother and given to abusive father” although accept there may be some cases where the mother has significant issues impacting on her care of the child and the father steps in to care for the child where some allegations are made but not evidenced about his behaviour. This all needs careful assessment including consideration of the child.

I have seen a child removed from an alienating mother and given to their father where there was clear and overwhelming evidence of alienation, but the mother will maintain she is a victim despite the overwhelming evidence, and many would believe her without seeing this evidence.

I completely agree that there is a massive disconnect between public law (care) proceedings and private law proceedings between separated parents, and that abuse which is treated seriously in public law may be taken less seriously in private law, I think the courts are slowly moving in the right direction in this respect, but much more work is needed.

in the case of Leiland’s mother, nobody will have seen the evidence before the courts so it’s impossible to comment on whether she could have cared for him safely or not. But aside from this, the eulogy as reported was indefensible and I’d suspect any social worker capable of writing this was either unsuited to the work or suffering from serious burnout.

They don’t.

@Davyjones

do you know councils have forced adoption quotas and payment rewards?

Source for these claims, please?

As in a source that shows they have quotas / targets for how many children they should remove from both homes and place with adoptive families?

And a source that shows they get 'payment' rewards for doing so?

I think the only context the "adoption quota" they have is when children are already in long term foster care. I believe that statistically outcomes for children already in the care system are better if they are formally adopted.

This is correct.

That poster has either unknowingly or disingenuously misrepresented the fact that there are targets for outcomes for children once they are in the care system and have two pathways - adoption or remaining in the care system.

There are not targets for how many children should be taken away from their birth families in the first place.