Laura Corkill - Her Son's Eulogy

[Dreamwhisper]

I'm just reading the article on the BBC about the experience of Leiland-James' birth mother.

I understand that there are two sides to every story, and that being honest and 100% factual about the complexities around a child being removed can be hard to unpick.

But the whole situation really shines a light on women who are losing everything, losing their children, due to the actions of abusive men.

I was so horrified and brought to tears (well I was crying the whole time) when I read the following:

"They even tried to write the eulogy," she says. The BBC has seen a draft copy of it sent by a social worker, which includes the words: "Leiland I am sorry I was not able to be the parent you needed."

How can this be? The article also suggests that several women have come forward to the charity involved to say that children had been removed from the care of the mother and place with the father accused of abuse?

What's going on here. The prejudice mothers who are also DV victims is appalling.

@Davyjones

could you provide the evidence for adoption quotas and payments

I don't understand why,if there were any doubts, the biological mother wasn't offered the opportunity to live in some sort of supported housing environment to monitor her. At the L/A where I worked, there were 2 separate facilities, one for young parents, the other for those not considered young parents. The other incentive to engage , apart from keeping the baby of course, was that social housing was guaranteed at the end of the placement. Both facilities had full time staff and visitors were monitored. I suspect that this was either not available or not offered in this case.

It's a terrible effort by whomever attempted to 'help' but this is the bit in the article about the eulogy following the bit quoted by OP.

Either way, I agree the treatment is awful and something needs to be done to better support women on these situations. It should NOT come to staying with an abuser as seemingly an only option. That's even more wrong.

Do you know what's really funny? I was doing some reading online after this as anecdotal research type stuff - and on a netmums post from literal years ago there is, amongst a harrowing thread of a woman going through having her children taken away, 1 single male sounding name on the thread, saying basically this. That SS take kids away to meet quotas and get bonuses for it.

Do you buy any chance spend your life on the internet going round telling mothers that SS are after their children @Davyjones

I don’t think there is evidence of systemic removal of children from mothers who suffer domestic violence. In fact the opposite has been cited - eg in the below case social workers were criticized for focusing only on the welfare of the mother who was a victim of abuse from her partner to the exclusion of the welfare of the children (one of whom was a young child she starved to death and left in the house for years).

www.express.co.uk/news/uk/430421/Left-dead-for-TWO-years-body-of-starved-child-found-in-house-full-of-flies-jury-told

i don’t think there is good evidence that there is a systematic trend either way. Mistakes are made but we need to look at all the facts in each case. I am concerned that in the Leiland James case that we have only heard the mothers side which definitely seems questionable in places.

That article was heartbreaking. Especially the photo of the mother and son gazing adoringly at each other. It’s clear that, from day one, the social worker involved had decided to take away the baby, no matter how much the mother’s situation had changed.

And l trying to cremate the body and even write the euology was beyond cruel, so sadistic.

(I wonder how much the social worker’s own class prejudice played a role, I’ve been shocked at how differently mothers with a ‘rough’ accent and background are treated by a headteacher I know.)

The UK removes far, far more babies, and carries out far more adoptions without the birth mother’s consent, than any other country. It should be a national scandal but the mothers are too heartbroken to fight anymore and no one else cares.

It’s going to lead to an increase in unassisted births and babies not being registered when they’re born. If someone stole then facilitated the murder of one of my children there’s no way I’d tell my GP about being pregnant with the next one.

I don’t think there is evidence of systemic removal of children from mothers who suffer domestic violence

I do need to do more research, but isn't DV one of the absolute top reasons children are actually removed from parents?

In my experience it’s a significant factor, without looking at figures I’d say addiction/alcohol and substance misuse would be the primary cause of care proceedings and also chronic and serious neglect. However I have not known cases involving primarily DV come to court quickly unless there’s a lot of evidence or other risk factors, in my experience the first response is to try to support women to leave (issues with lack of services to support this but it’s what I would expect the response to be). That said I haven’t myself been involved in significant numbers of care proceedings (probably only about 10 over my career) but I can’t think of any of these or from my colleagues’ caseloads that came to court where DV was the only issue, although several where it was a part of their lives.

I don’ did you know they have quotas ands bonuses for adoption?

do you think demand incentive here is impossible?

It’s such a sad case.

It might be the birth mother wasn’t given a fair hearing in this case, but on the whole I do think that when babies are removed at birth as he was, it is because previous children have been removed and SS cannot see sufficient evidence that the mother’s situation or capacity has changed.

I agree it’s appalling that woman suffering DV can also loose their children, but I think the solution to that (when there is one) to intervene earlier in DV. Ultimately SS have to prioritise protecting children, and making sure they don’t end up in the same cycle of abuse.

What does beggar belief in this case is the lack of joined up background checking on the adoptive mother. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but from what I have read it does not appear this woman was at all suitable for adoption.

Councils setting numerical targets for adoption
Transparency Project findings are thought to be the first time councils have acknowledged using numerical adoption targets since national benchmarks were scrapped in 2008

www.communitycare.co.uk/2016/11/18/councils-setting-numerical-targets-adoption/

put this into Google and there’s a lot on payments you should read then all

uk council payments for forced adoption

www.google.com/amp/s/www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/councils-making-millions-in-incentives-after-snatching-record-numbers-of-babies-for-adoption-6594474.html%3Famp

The money-earning targets were introduced by Tony Blair in 2000 and were intended to lift more older children out of the care system.

But critics say it is the most 'adoptable' babies and children under four who are being removed in the biggest numbers.

@Davyjones

You're either unwittingly or disingenuously misrepresenting or misunderstanding the core findings in the article you shared.

Did you read it? It goes against your theory...

Lucy Reed, the lawyer who led the Transparency Project's FOI request findings literally says there is not evidence that the kind of targets set (the pathway of children leaving foster care and being adopted) influence practice!

“Whilst we have acknowledged the possibility that the targets we’ve found are influencing practice in the ways campaigners have suggested, our study does not provide evidence that it is in fact doing so.
“Despite our questions and concerns our study should not be taken as suggesting that the “adoption as baby snatching” narrative is made out, and we found no evidence of cash payments to individual workers in return for adoption as suggested recently on French media.”
She also says:

“Campaigners have highlighted the risk that targets of this sort could potentially have an indirect effect on decisions about whether or not an individual child should be placed for adoption, but our study did not produce evidence that helps to answer this question.”
And the Evening Standard piece you shared about grants is fifteen years old. National benchmarks were stopped a year after the piece was written.

Not commenting too much on this case, as don’t have enough facts. From what I can understand, it’s not so much about why this child was removed from his birth mother (this isn’t clear at all), but more about the failings of social care that allowed an obviously unstable person to foster and adopt.

On the matter of children being removed from women who have been abused, I don’t think the risk of future harm can be underestimated. Social workers and courts have to be very careful.

Of course, for many women who are able to leave abusive relationships or are ordered to by a child protection plan, they are able to go on to improve their situation and safeguard their children. But there is a minority who cannot prioritise their children’s safety, who go back to dangerous men or who move on to new relationships with different dangerous men.

I’ve seen it time and time again in my job. Months and sometimes years of work by children’s social care and womens organisations to support and empower women to keep their children…and they still choose a dangerous man or toxic lifestyle over their children’s safety and well-being.

Of course those women have their own issues and stories, but ultimately child protection services are their to protect children, not provide therapy for women.

Poor practice in social work can swing both ways. I’m currently involved with a family (not a social worker) where the children have bounced on and off a child protection plan for years, just come off PLO (care proceedings), and within weeks stepped down to child in need, not even child protection. The mother has had multiple adult and children’s social care services involved over years, all to try to keep her children with her and with each other, but it’s complete madness. She is incapable of putting her children above her own needs which revolve largely around having a man, any man. I’m about to join with some other professionals involved to try to escalate social care intervention again. I feel like tearing my hair out trying to phrase my concerns (yet again) in a sensitive, professional manner when all I really want to do is shout ‘This woman will NEVER put these children first! Why are we all breaking our backs to support her when the truth is glaring?!’

It doesn’t take much imagination to work out that children under 4 would be the ones removed most often for reasons that have nothing to do with how adoptable they are.

Infants and toddlers are more vulnerable.

The sort of problems that are severe enough to warrant taking children into care are likely to be present from a very early age.

Families where problems only emerge once children are older are more likely to be able to demonstrate that they were capable of good parenting at some point and can get back to good parenting with support.

In cases where a parent has had children removed in the past, removing a subsequent child at birth can save the child from a lifetime of issues. ACEs in a child’s first few years can be hugely damaging to them in the longer term and the negative impact of being removed is much less significant for the child at that age than if they leave it until later.

In 2018 it was estimated that 100,000 children were living homes where so called “toxic trio” of domestic violence, substance abuse and parental mental ill-health were all present to a severe degree. If anything, there are too few children being removed, not too many.

There was a huge mistake made in placing this child in a home where there was substance abuse, mental ill-health and violence. That doesn’t mean that the initial decision to remove him from his mother was wrong.

Not astonishingly, that article does not say what you claim it does. What a surprise.

No thoughts on this then @Davyjones?

I mean, I literally do this job. If there were bonus payments or targets it’s impossible that I wouldn’t know about it. There is no such thing.

So much misinformation on this thread. The BBC reporting on this has been ridiculously one sided. The woman had already had two children removed, there is not a snowball chance in hell thatch did not know they would be removing the child, prior to it happening. She may not have wanted to believe it but she would have known.

You can be a victim of abuse and a perpetrator at the same time. By staying in a DV relationship you are both a victim of abuse yourself and complicit your children being abused. SS job is to put children first even when their parents can't.

This

I had a thread on this in the news section on here.

I had to hide it in the end, because it was making me both frustrated and miserable.

I was and am disturbed by how many social workers were insistent that despite the charity supporting Laura Corkhill’s version of events and despite the fact that their judgement was at best questionable anyway given where Leiland James was eventually placed, that no mistake had been made when he was removed in the first place.

My concern is that women like Laura Corkhill - and let’s not beat around the bush here, these women are often not particularly high in intelligence or income - have no right of reply when SS step in. If they object: if they try to say ‘hang on, that’s not right’ then they are being uncooperative. If they cooperate, they lose their child. Not great, is it?

Ime, female victims of DA have their children removed because they cant/won't keep them safe from the perp. Of course, a big factor in whether cant/won't, is that they are victims of DA. The removal of children under these circumstances is not just carried out on a whim. The mother will be fully aware ifvthe consequences if going back to the partner. She may not actually believe it will happen/have her head buried in the sand but I have been involved in cases where the mother has been told clearly that the children will be removed if they continue the relationship.

Imo the bigger problrm, is where does the mother go? Often, to the local housing department who offer her a refuge space 300 miles away. She understandably doesn't want to go (in most cases). What's the alternative? Where does She live?

Just a note on consent in case people are not aware

The parents consent (both mum and dad) is considered by the courts at the point at which an adoption order is made.

Parents will often say that although they know that adoption is the best plan for their child, they dont want to give consent because its important to them that their child knows in later years that they 'fought' for their child and that they didnt 'give them up'.

That is really important to some parents and I completely understand that. I dont know how much impact it has one adopted children once they are adults and read the letters left for them by their parents, perhaps its a comfort or perhaps its irrelevant but I know that for parents its a strong message they want to give

Therefore the vast vast majority of adoptions go through with the court having dispensed with the consent of the parents but its important to understand what this means and how it comes about. There are of course parents who dont give consent because they dont agree with the plan of course. Or consent is given by one parent but not the other.

I think Laura has been let down quite a bit on this by the charity supposed to be supporting her actually.

Those of us who know anything about these systems know that an awful lot of what she is saying can't possibly be true.

Some of it has been refuted by the council which in these situations if pretty unusual as usually they don't comment.

a quick look at the charity in question suggests that it is a pretty small organisation operating in a very small area. The best advice they could have given her would be not to 'go public' and the scrutiny of her life this would bring adding to the abuse and trauma she has already experienced.

child protection social workers have to put the safety and best interests of the child first and foremost. The best interests of a child are nearly always to stay with their own families so things have to be going pretty wrong for them to be removed entirely.

If you are a professional working with the adults in that family, particularly with women it is your job to understand and empathise with the needs of the adult. You can always see the adults 'side' of the story and often can seem 'unfair' on the parents.

But the two things can both be true, it can be horribly unfair for (usually) the mother and still be the right thing for the child.

I've read the report and I'm a bit lost at the vitriol towards social services. Aside from them not having a crystal ball the main issues appear to be that other agencies didn't share vital information with the social worker completing the adoption assessments that would most likely have raised serious questions about the suitability of the Castles to adopt.

Completely agree. I am pretty appalled that the BBC have reported it in this way. She is clearly a vulnerable adult and the charity supporting her as you say should certainly not have got involved in this publicity. IME some charities and support workers mean well but actually have very limited training and understanding of the bigger picture. In any case the charity was supporting her but SS were focussed on the child so of course they will have different viewpoints.