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

spero

Still waiting to hear why I am not 'likely' to be independent.

It may surprise you, but you happen to be a barrister. Now there is a problem with anyone who is substantially instructed by one party to a dispute when they are asked to act for another party a dispute.

However, this conflict of interest is much stronger for solicitors than for barristers. If someone is subject to a conflict of interest then they not independent.

Simples.

Secondly:
You state that I am rowing back from things I have said before. Try citing one of those.

Spero, I must say you sound nasty and shrill.

I prefer John's reasoned responses to your rants.

Flatbread, if you had endured several threads of this type, especially the ones in the adoption corner, I think you would feel differently.

Spero is sound as a pound. She is forthright in her attacks on JH, and has always provided plenty of evidence for why she is so.

JH, on the other hand - I just can't past him saying simples.

"Shrill" - a word uniquely reserved for the confident, assertive woman, isn't it?

No, a confident person is not shrill, and nor do they need to resort to personal attacks. I have no interest in what went on in previous/other threads, just this one.

I also don't get this thing about 'most social workers being good', with just a few bad apples. How do we know? How do we know the problem is not systemic? How do I, as a member of the public, measure the performance of social workers? Are there any transparent statistics out there?

For hospitals and doctors, in the US at least, there are detailed stats available on their performance, success rates and how these are measured, patient reviews etc. I, as a member of the public, can access these, especially regarding government funded care.

Is there a similar rigorous evaluation of social care and workers which is open to the public? Till then, we simply cannot say how good or not the system is or whether individual workers are good, or powerhungry or jobsworths. We just don't know.

Spero is sound as a pound. She is forthright in her attacks on JH, and has
always provided plenty of evidence for why she is so.

OK lets have one citation for her claim that I am rowing back from my previous claims. That is in this thread.

claig and johnhemmings, definitely agree that whistleblowers quite frankly, should be encouraged.

spero
www.fassit.co.uk/social_services_golden_rules.htm
is that the link you are after? Havent read it all yet.

Agree that there can be conflicts of interest. Perhaps johnhemmings is right on that?
I used to do volunteer work for a childrens charity to do with fostering.
In theory that childrens charity should have been acting solely in the interest of the children, That is what you would expect.
In practice, the higher ups of that childrens charity were afraid to rock the boat too much, because they wanted to keep working there and to rise up throught the ranks. So they kept their mouth sometimes shut, and did not speak out, against for instance social service systems. Nothing too major, but it opened my eyes to the fact that sometimes the childrens' welfare came second place to their salaries and careers.

Should have said, that I can see the same sort of thing happening within solicitors and barristers.
To be fair though, I know little about either.

'Last Wednesday morning, a letter arrived at Mark and Nicky Webster?s house. It was a report of sorts about their five-year-old son, telling them that he was doing well at school, had just learned to ride a bicycle without stabilisers and that he wasn?t fond of sprouts.

The timing could hardly have been more poignant. Such newsletters arrive on their doormat sporadically, as do separate ones relating to his older brother and sister. For Mark and Nicky, they are what passes for ?contact? with their three eldest children. They always make agonising reading.'

Can you imagine the heartache? And they have few options to reverse these decisions.

'It is the 1989 Children Act ? which introduced a blanket secrecy in the family courts ? that is the real culprit. It encouraged a lack of public scrutiny in the child protection system and what MP John Hemming calls the ?twaddle and psychobabble? peddled there, which has caused dreadful miscarriages of justice.'

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2121886/The-experts-break-families-The-terrifying-story-prospective-MP-branded-unfit-mother-experts-whod-met--nightmare-shared-families.html

Children claimed they were abused by Savile and in care homes and the system ignored it. Parents say injustices have been done and there are closed courts and no public scrutiny.

One day both of these systems will be changed and open justice will be done, but in the meantime many people will suffer.

Flatbread,if there are no statistics as you say, then only word of mouth from people you trust could put your mind at ease.
fwiw, and I can only speak about my area, I met or knew of some,for a number of years, up to 5 years ago,and from my limited view, I only really came across one that I had a few concerns about. Though one too many obviously.The rest did come across as caring, and mainly very overworked.

It seems to me that both sides on here actually agree about a number of things.
That there are injustices, that the system is creaking, that there are miscarriages of justice,that all sws are not perfect, that mistakes are made etc.
That there are also good judges, good lawyers, good experts and good social workers.

Yes, and it is not really social workers who are overloaded, it is really the system.

Just as in the BBC, it was not the fault of individial people that Savile was allowed to get away with it - it was the system. People complained to their bosses and told them what they had heard or seen, but things never went further. No one wanted to rock the boat, upset the apple-cart and challenge the system.

Systems, specified and managed from the top, to a great extent determine what goes on and individuals working in a system are often cogs in the wheel and are unable and unwilling to put a spanner in the wheel.

We do agree about a lot of things. I think we all agree that the best place for children is with their parents, if their parents can keep them safe. If parents can't keep their children safe, I hope we would all agree that as a society we have a collective duty to keep the vulnerable safe from harm.

Once again, another potentially interesting thread is diverted into responding to JH. I must take my share of responsibilty for this. The problem is, if you don't try to deal with him then he or one of his acolytes will accuse you of not engaging because he is so right.

So I will try not to go down this route too tediously .... BUT - JH do you now claim the child protection system is 'evil'. If you don't will you explicitly dissoaciate yourself from Ian Josephs.

And you haven't remotely begun to explain why you think it is less likely that lawyers are able to act well for clients if they also act for LA. the LA do not pay me to act for parents. The state pays me. You seem to be saying that I won't do a good job for a parent because this might upset the LA and they won't instruct me again?

That is a slur. It is unfounded. It is malicious. I would be grateful if you would retract that.

I don't know how you could sensibly keep statistics about the performance of those in the child protection system. I suppose one way would be to see how many cases were successfully appealed or how many times the UK was rebuked by the European Court. I don't have such statistics at my fingertips but I don't recall a huge amount of European Court rulings that criticise the UK in this field. One of the most famous cases invovled children who successfully sued for damages because they were left too long with abusive parents.

Another extremely sad case, which JH often cites, involves children who were left floating around the system for years. The Independent Reviewing officer in that case admitted he had 'failed' the children, but also pointed out that for years his case load was double what he could sensibly manage.

Amillionyears - no, that isn't the link I was looking for - Ian Joseph until fairly recently had his own seperate website which included some 'golden rules' which were very disturbing. JH links to him as a resource on his own website. I really think he must cut these ties if he wants to be taken seriously in this debate.

claig, absolutely right.

On the emotive subject of child protection, it is very important to evaluate performance based on outcomes data. Rather than hyperbole about 'protecting the children' without any clear measurement of what that actually means.

For example, take a look at this study:

www.mit.edu/~jjdoyle/fostercare_aer.pdf

Why can there not be a systemic evaluation of each council, each case worker on the decisions they made, and outcomes for the children, based on factors in the study above? And include satisfaction scores by family members and the children themselves?

It is imperfect, but better than the opaque system today, where 'mistakes are made' but no one seems responsible for their decisions.

Yes, there is definitely a need for some children to be put into care but there are thousands that find themselves in care for no sound reason & apparently it's to do with Barnardos charity. More in this video:
And did you know that your children have their finger prints taken at school without us parents knowing anything about it?

JaquelineHyde ~ The reason I ask about breastfeeding was the case of Fran Lyon. On the morning TV link I included earlier in this thread, she was desperate to feed her baby, she was clearly putting her baby's welfare above her own wellbeing. Yet the Social Services were going to deny her this on spurious grounds of 'potential emotional abuse'. They later did a u-turn.

Do you agree that the Social Services would have caused Fran's baby irreparable harm?

andreaDono
"And did you know that your children have their finger prints taken at school without us parents knowing anything about it?"

If you are talking about the cashless catering, it is not a fingerprint and the school has to get the parents permission.

'The revelation comes as teachers today warned schools are routinely taking children's fingerprints without permission from their parents.'

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1262087/Schools-taking-fingerprints-pupils-parents-knowing.html

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1285305/One-schools-fingerprinting-pupils-Big-Brother-regime-sweeps-education-system.html

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-129470/Pupils-fingerprinted-school-libraries.html

Again, it is not individual teachers or librarians who are forcing this - ot is the system.

Why is it doing it? They say it is for efficiency, others say it is for different reasons.

New Labour wanted a biometric DNA database system. They said it was for efficiency and public safety, others say it was for different reasons. Boris Johnson said something like he would shred the ID cards. The Coalition was elected and New Labour never got its way.

'Privacy International's director, Simon Davies, said the technology should be banned.
'The use of such systems will have the effect of de-sensitising people to more comprehensive privacy invasion later in life,' he said. 'Such a process has the effect of softening children up for such initiatives as ID cards and DNA testing.'

It sounds like the old policy of train them while they are young. Future plans are probably already in existence. Acclimatising young people to their future makes the future transition easier.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-129470/Pupils-fingerprinted-school-libraries.html

Hummingbirds without knowing the case and all the details I cannot possibly comment on whether a child could have suffered longterm damage. Anyone who tried to do this without knowing all the facts would be a naive fool, so if you don't mind I won't comment on that.

I would be interested to know why you refuse to comment on anything else I have said and continue to pedal dangerous assumptions based on the tiniest pieces of information (ie one case).

You are clearly the one with an agenda here who refuses to acknowledge anything outside of this.

Now this is worrying, because Judges are reporting concerns about LA rushing through adoption plans to fit with Gov policy.
www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/nov/18/adoption-councils-judges

So rather than alleging that lawyers are corrupt and SW lie, don't we need to be looking quite long and hard at Gov policy and asking what they are trying to achieve, and why they are doing this at the same time as cutting support services for families in need?