UK forced adoptions of foreign nationals

[Hummingbirds]

This is sick! How come in Slovakia the media has reported on this extensively and they've had demonstrations outside the British embassy yet here in the UK there's been almost total silence? With a few honourable exceptions including journalist Christopher Booker and MP John Hemming.

"... The case that goes to the Appeal Court this week concerns two young boys, Slovakian subjects, whose parents have lived and worked in Britain since their country joined the EU in 2004. Two years ago, when the parents took one of their sons to hospital to enquire about a minor infection, social workers were alerted that it might be the result of a 'non-accidental injury'. The boys were put into the temporary care of the family's American pastor, who describes how social workers then arrived with three police cars to remove the children, screaming as they were torn from their horrified mother and grandmother, to an official foster home.

"Thus began a protracted legal battle, involving many court hearings, four different social workers, seven 'expert' doctors and psychologists, 16 interpreters, 13 different 'contact supervisors' and dozens of lawyers. Initially the local authority seemed happy to contemplate that the children might be returned to live with their grandmother in Slovakia, but the social workers of a council that advertises its enthusiasm for adoption on its website then suggested to the foster carers that they might like to adopt the boys.

"By now the Slovak authorities were involved and could see no reason why the children should not come back to live with their grandmother. But earlier this year a judge found in favour of the council, ruling, to the astonishment of the Slovak authorities, that the boys should be adopted."

"The case has attracted widespread media interest in Slovakia, and the Slovak justice ministry has posted on its website a 'Declaration on adoption of Slovak children in the UK', stating that it has such 'serious concern' over the workings of Britain's 'family protection' system, and the readiness of the British authorities to remove children from their 'biological parents' for 'no sound reason', that its representative on the ECHR plans to challenge the legality of Britain's policy in Strasbourg."

"... the Slovak media claim to know of some 30 other Slovak children taken from their parents."

Read the full Telegraph article

I agree with Flatbread that we need more data and more research - again that boils down to money.

I don't agree I am misrepresenting JH position. He repeatedly asserts that the entire system is corrupt and 'evil'. If he has now changed that position that would be wonderful and I hope he can confirm this, at the same time that he removes all links to Ian Joseph from his website.

Amillionyears, I think the thread where Xenia opines about what areas of law are 'best' should still be around, I don't think it was on chat. She was very clear that she looked down upon women who went into 'low paid' areas of law.

I was warned off family law by several people as it does have a high proportion of female and non white practitioners and those doing publicly funded work don't earn mega bucks. Which tells us all we need to know about the values of a capitalist society - chase the money, nothing else is of value.

So there you go Xenia! Brave new world eh.

I think it is also very important to realise that data from the US concerning adoption cannot be used to support policy here in the UK as the rules governing the selection of families etc are very different.

Cory, perhaps (though I am sceptical that UK is a unique case).

But where is the data and rigorous analysis in the UK? I saw a study where funding was provided for a data-based outcomes evaluation for child protection in UK, but the powers to be changed that to an evaluation of processes and made it into a softy management jargon exercise

I don't think it is funding, I think it is perhaps a lack of will and a lack of expertise. Secrecy is of comfort to some who don't want an open, fact-based evaluation of their performance

Sigh. Well, why don't you and JH do a sponsored run, raise the money and when all the many hundreds of well qualified academics in this field won't touch it, you will have more proof of the massive conspiracy theory of lizards etc.

when all the many hundreds of well qualified academics in this field won't touch it

Why won't they touch it? Are academics in UK also so different from those in the US?

I don't think anyone is saying there is a massive conspiracy. I am just saying the more separate scrutiny and different bodies involved the better. and I am glad there are people like JH and others and independent charities and people who have no financial or professional or other connection to those involved. That sort of check and balance is needed in just about all areas and most of us welcome it.

More scrutiny sounds good. But who is going to pay for scrutinising the SWs at a time when councils can't even afford to pay to keep the SWs in the first place? (major redundancies down here)

Xenia, johnhemming and his supporters do say that there is a massive conspiracy; that babies are snatched to hit targets and get more money for LAs; that social workers / judges / expert witnesses are all in on this conspiracy...

I agree that the process should be more open to scrutiny. I don't agree that there should be completely open reporting of court hearings (children are entitled to their privacy; as are other family members - would you want to be a child whose younger sibling is being considered for adoption and whose details are freely available to all and sundry?). I wish all the effort johnhemming and others put into challenging the current system was done so in a constructive way, that might lead to genuinely helpful reform that would protect children at risk of harm and parents at risk of unfounded accusations. Not twaddle conspiracy talk.

No Flatbread. Of course they would be delighted to undertake work for which they get paid. Who is going to pay them? When contact centres are being shut and there are no contact support workers left, how are we going to justify diverting thousands on research?

I am not saying it isn't needed. It is. But please don't insult your own intelligence by suggesting the data is deliberately not gathered to support the State conspiracy to steal children.

I was making an admittedly clumsy gibe at your apparent membership of the conspiracy club. No doubt JH would refuse to use any of his millions to pay for such research on basis that no one would do it, or all are in pay of the State.

Xenia, clearly you are not ever going to tethered by the shackles of logic or reason, so kudos for your consistency if nothing else. But just spend 10 minutes googling and reading up on the fine work done by JH. He is one of the main protagonists of the Ruled by Lizards theory. Hence my concern that another 1,000 of him is not really what is needed.

Academics usually get grants from independent sources, such as the Ford foundation. They also are paid by their universities for research duties, so if the data was available, I am pretty sure there would be a large of academics, think-tanks like Rand who would love to analyse the data and report the findings.

But the data has to be put out there in the public domain for that to happen.

Ok, so what data do you mean?

There is a lot out there. I am sure you could look at offenders and check their backgrounds. How about those in care, those removed then returned, those never removed but referrals were made, those who were adopted?

JH has lots of cash I am told. Money where mouth time perhaps?

'He is one of the main protagonists of the Ruled by Lizards theory'

Spero, when you make false accusations like that, you are weakening your already weak case.

'JH has lots of cash I am told.'

I doubt he has as much cash as Social Services, paid for by the public.

Emotional abuse has become a dog whistle term that makes every parent who is sometimes shouty (i.e. all of us) think that they are at risk from nasty social workers (interesting that Xenia thinks it's 'thick working class' social workers persecuting middle class parents; the usual stereotype is the opposite).

Some examples of emotional abuse I have come across: making a sexually abused child wear a placard saying 'slut'; making/letting a young child watch sexually violent films; isolating a child from their siblings and forcing all the family to belittle and bully the scapegoated child.

This is NOT trivial stuff. And, as Lilka says, it is rare for it to be used in isolation from neglect or physical abuse (perhaps because it's harder to prove).

Claig. It is not a false accusation. Would you like me to get off my iPad, fire up my laptop and provide you with the links to the threads on here, interviews with other sources, his own website?

I spent ten miserable hours gathering it altogether in August for my official letter of complaint, which Nick Clegg 'assures' me is receiving attention.

Hollow laugh. It's almost enough to make one believe there is a conspiracy...

child Protection services have a finite and increasingly slashed budget to deal with actual cases of child protection.

JH is a millionaire businessman who also receives a hefty salary plus expenses as an MP.

Who do you think is better placed to pay for research?

I am talking about 'lizards', have you got any links about that?

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/liberaldemocrats/9472691/John-Hemming-has-second-child-with-mistress-Emily-Cox.html

I was going to ask about what is the lizards thing too

'Who do you think is better placed to pay for research?'

The government and its agencies, of course, because they are funded by the taxpayer, and pay the wages of tens of thousands of employees, and create policies that affect the public.

Spero,

The point is to study the impact of social service decisions - how many referred, how many investigated and by whom, decisions made and the outcomes for children impacted by the decisions.

This data needs to be provided by social services, although supplementary data can be augmented by other agencies.

It is not necessary for child protection agencies to analyse the data (although they should, if they really care about child welfare). The point is for them to collect the data and make the data public to academics and others who are independent in judging the effectiveness of child protection policies.

Flatbread, I have had a quick look at the paper you link to. It is certainly interesting, but I don't see how it supports your assertion that children are better off with even abusive families than in foster care.

The study says itself, right at the top, that 'large marginal treatment effect estimates suggest caution in the interpretation'. It is very reckless to think that one study of this type can count as evidence, though it is definitely interesting.

Moreover, the study is clear that it simply 'suggests that children on the margin of placement tend to have better outcomes when they remain at home, especially older children'. We can't extrapolate any wider lessons from this unless we know:

• where the threshold is for taking children into care in Illinois (it is obvious that there is a balance to be struck between damaging children by taking them away from their families and damaging children by leaving them with their families - for all we know, the children in this study were taken into care when in the UK they would have been left at home)

• what foster care is like in Illinois (maybe their foster care system is hideously poor quality, much worse than in the UK?)

Also worth pointing out that they say their conclusion is particularly pertinent to older children, and of course it does not study the results of adoption or of good quality residential care which is often a better option than foster care for older children.

In other words, though an interesting study, it ultimately only suggests that the threshold for taking children into care may be too low in Illinois. We cannot extrapolate from this that it is too low in the UK.

I use 'lizards' as convenient shorthand for all those who would prefer to believe in consipracies than the less exciting reality. It comes from David Icke who apparently believes we are all ruled by Jewish lizards, or something. I haven't played much attention to what he says for hopefully obvious reasons.

I don't know if JH and David Icke are friends, and I could care less. What I do know, evidence from JH's own words, are that he is at the forefront of the movement that asserts care proceedings exist to feed the middle classes desire for cute babies to adopt. He is a massive part of this particular conspiracy theory.

I have just cut and pasted from my letter, so apologies if links don't work, try pasting them into your browser

In no particular order of importance, in my opinion the most dangerous false assertions repeatedly made by Mr Hemming are:

1. That care proceedings are initiated to fulfil government targets to bring babies into the ?system? to be adopted. Although he claims that this target no longer has Government sanction he maintains that Local Authorities continue to operate towards a non-existent ?target?. It seems he is confusing this with official policies to try and speed up adoption for children who are already in care and who need a permanent family. This has been pointed out to him repeatedly on the mumsnet forum and elsewhere, but he is either unable or unwilling to understand this point. a. See an interview by David Chaplin in Family Law Week www.familylawweek.co.uk/site.aspx?i=ed2360 ?He already claims that he has exposed the oft-denied adoption targets with the admission by Hammersmith and Fulham, through a press release in March this year, that they had achieved a target that awarded them with an additional £500,000 of funding for achieving a target of 100 adoptions or secure placements over three years.? b. See: Mr Hemming?s Parliamentary website [http://john.hemming.name/news/index.php?yr=11&mth=0] ?At least 10,000 young children have been dragged from their families and needlessly adopted due to a flawed target at the heart of Government, it was claimed last night Last night backing came from MP John Hemming, who said the policy led to the unnecessary adoption of 1,000 children every year? c. See the Families and Social Services Information Team Website [http://www.fassit.co.uk/judge_orders_social_workers.htm] Mr Hemming added: "There are financial rewards - a fund of about £35million - for getting children adopted. Admittedly, it has been proposed that adoption targets are scrapped on April 1, but clearly there are still problems." d. See John Hemming?s contribution to the thread on mumsnet on 26.05.11 at 12:36:30 [http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/1222266-to-think-that-John-Hemming-is-a-dangerous-man/AllOnOnePage] ?In order to increase adoption numbers here more young babies were taken into care. I can email the stats to anyone who is interested.?

However, it is JH's continued affiliation with such as Ian Joseph that cause me the most concern.

Mr Hemming as advisor to parents in care proceedings
I am worried that the real danger in Mr Hemming?s activities is not simply that he campaigns on a false basis but that he advises people, both in person and via his and other websites.
There are many other websites he links to from his own site. The linked sites include Ian Joseph?s site Forced Adoption [http://www.forced-adoption.com/introduction.asp]. In my view, this site contains extreme and dangerous advice. Mr Joseph sets out his ?Golden Rules? for parents involved in care proceedings [http://www.forced-adoption.com/introduction.asp#goldenrulessummary] which include:
?Never ask them [Social Workers] for help, think very carefully before you report a violent partner (especially if the abuse is only verbal) or even a sexual molester (especially if the children beg you to say nothing) as once social workers or police are involved you risk losing your children for "failing to protect them
IF the "SS" threaten to take your children for adoption, make sure they never forget you .Hug them tight at "last contact" so they cannot easily be removed while you repeat to them that wicked people are stealing them for money ,and to say no to adoption when they try to give them a horrible new mummy and daddy !

THIS AT LEAST SHOULD HELP TO SABOTAGE ANY UNWANTED ADOPTIONS AND MAKE SURE YOUR KIDS WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER YOU AND GET IN TOUCH LATER .Not many "adopters" will want to take in a child who has been told to say "NO" to adoption in any case !

In my view such advice, if followed, clearly puts children at risk of continuing violent and sexual abuse or serious emotional abuse.
Mr Joseph?s site is an affiliated site upon the Families for Justice Website i.e. an organisation that has ?agreed to work with Justice for Families to improve the situation in respect of Public Family Law?. I have repeatedly asked Mr Hemming on the mumsnet forum to explicitly disassociate himself from Mr Joseph, given the extreme and dangerous nature of his views. Mr Hemming refuses. '

Devora, there is greater scrutiny of child protection, more widely available data, and more propensity to litigate by parents in the US. This suggests that thresholds for putting children into care is probably higher, not lower, than in the UK. Just because there will be more people protesting, scrutinising and possibly contesting the social services decisions, unlike the UK where there is secrecy around this issue. So presumably the children at the margins, who stayed at home, were facing some level of emotional and physical abuse and neglect, but not high enough to clearly cross the threshold.

I linked to one study, but there are more for different states. Every study that is responsibly done will suggest caution in interpreting findings, but statistical analyses like these are powerful because they control for many variables in their analyses. And it does suggest that unless there is extreme abuse, children are better off with their parents.

Now, is the UK system that different from the US? Are decision-makers better and foster care of higher quality? We simply don't know. UK child protection agencies need to make their decisions and data available, so similar studies can be done in UK.