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

And op, if you are really interested in having a debate about this, read
www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/20/09/2007/105839/Fran-Lyon-Case-The-hidden-agendas.htm

What I find most interesting is what Fran Lyon says herself
'This is, of course, a sad and difficult case and no one could blame Lyon for taking the action she has. All she wants is to be able to keep her baby when it is born. Similarly, however, the professionals involved ? social workers, doctors and the police ? should not be castigated for carrying out their statutory duties.

To her credit, and despite the heavy-handed rhetoric of the Sunday Telegraph and Hemming, Lyon appears to share that view. ?I don?t believe anybody is in this to cause harm,? she told me. Indeed, she says she has sympathy with the social workers in her case, who ?are in an awful situation with an incredibly difficult call to make. All I?m asking is that I?m given a chance to assuage their concerns and fears. Hopefully that isn?t too unreasonable.?

Of course it isn?t. What is unreasonable, however, is that yet again a delicate human story has been hijacked and misrepresented in the name of a vociferous campaign to undermine public confidence in the child protection system.'

andreaDono, the link is not working for me.
Can you resend please.

Yes, that is a good article. I believe that most people working in the system are good people. I think the flaws are more to do with teh system rather with the workers. People working in the system are influenced by the way the system works - in general they go along with the system.

'Judge David Pearl, a former president of the care standards tribunal and a deputy high court judge, has spent 15 years dealing with care cases. Before he retired as a judge in February, Pearl said he saw a number of cases at the principal registry of the family division and at the high court in which local authorities paid insufficient attention to the needs of individual children whom they wished to get adopted.

"What I think has happened is that local authorities have taken government policy as saying adoption is the only solution," said Pearl, who is now chair of the new Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service. "That can't be right because it ignores the welfare of the individual children involved.

"There are some cases where [adoption] is not in the best interests of the children: where it would be far better for the children to remain in long-term fostering care, with continuing contact with members of their birth family. One of the concerns is that the local authorities are anxious to move towards adoption because it is the cheapest option," he said.'

and

'Martha Cover, co-chair of the Association of Lawyers for Children, said she was especially concerned about adoptions taking place at the expense of keeping siblings together, because recent research showed that being placed away from siblings was one of the most common reasons for an adoption to break down, with a risk factor of 29%.

"Adoption is the first thing local authorities reach for, even when it means children will have to be separated from their siblings and even when social workers have said that would be enormously damaging to the children," she said.

"This is happening partly because local authorities are under pressure from central government [to increase their number of adoptions] but also because it's the end of the story for them: once adopted, they can close the book on that child."

Is it possible that one reason might be to provide 'the cheapest option' and to 'close the book'?

To me, only having briefly looked on this thread, and read some of the links, there seems to be rights and wrongs on both side.

This may be naive to say, but if both sides could work together, perhaps systems would then get changed.

I have no doubt that LA often are pushed towards 'the cheapest option' because they have no other option. Money is being withdrawn from the system. We have just undergone a massive 'modernisation of the family justice system' and been told in no uncertain terms that we must all achieve improvements in effiency with no additional resources at all.

From my perspective, the change that would help most is more available judges and court time. There is the potential for real injustice ito be done to my clients when we have an issue we need the Judge to rule on but the next available court date is not for a number of weeks.

We need more readily available therapy and counselling as large majority of parents in care proceedings need this kind of intervention. But either they have to go on a long NHS waiting list or we have to persuade the LA to pay for expensive treatments - which they are rarely willing to do, because they don't have any spare money.

My worry is however that it just isn't 'sexy' enough to worry about this, far more exciting is to whip up a big Daily Mail conspiracy storm and talk about the hidden agenda behind 'forced adoptions'.

I think we urgently do need a real debate about what we do as a society to protect children. In a nutshell, you get what you pay for. If you campaign against and devalue the child protection system, don't be surprised if the social workers leave in droves and can't be replaced. Don't be surprised if the lawyers like me get fed up being described as lackeys of the state and go off and do something else.

What system will you then end up with?

'The number of children adopted in Britain has increased by 6% since last March, according to the Office for National Statistics . Nearly two-thirds of those adopted were aged between one and four, up from 58% the year before.

The proportions of adoptions of children aged between five and nine, however, has decreased from more than a third since 1998. The percentage of children aged between 10 and 14 adopted has more than halved over the same period.'

Young children are more likely to be adopted. I think any target system is wrong because it may skew the system and possibly lead to injustices in order to meet quotas. Has the target system now been scrapped?

Well of course amillionyears, do you understand now why I get so frustrated and ranty on threads like these?

Been making the same points for years now and we continue to waste our time arguing about things which exist only in Daily Mail articles. Of course there are real and serious problems in the system and we need to deal with them. But these problems do not stem from institutionalised corruption and everyone dancing to the LA's tune.

But instead JH would rather spend his time and energy, for example, helping Vicky Haigh appeal against the ruling that she has seriously harmed her child by brainwashing her into believing her father sexually abused her.

I think the targets JH complains about were dropped in 2008, but as you have read the Gov now wants to bring in more or push for similar.

The reason more young children are adopted is that more people want to adopt younger children. Once a child is over 3, the chances of a adoptioin decrease. By the time a child is 7 I am told that a successful adoption is very unlikely. This is because the older a child, the more traumatised they are likely to be and the less likely they are to 'slot' into another family easily.

People want babies or very young children. I can understand why. It takes enormous energy and resources to parent a traumatised older child and there is very little consistently available post adoption to help these children; families seem to be left to sink or swim on their own.

That is the explanation, I do not think it is anything to do with a sinsister 'baby snatching' plot as espoused by JH - unless he is rowing back from this as well? Would be great if he did, that is probably one of the most damaging bits of misinformation he spreads, judging from what my clients say.

'People want babies or very young children'

'I think the targets JH complains about were dropped in 2008, but as you have read the Gov now wants to bring in more or push for similar.'

I think the targets have been scrapped, but some of Gove's rhetoric doesn't sound very conservative, as Xenia rightly said, but sounds more like New Labour. Googling Daily Mail articles on adoption, there is stuff by Cameron saying that councils should be "named and shamed" if they are holding up the adoption process.

How does it work? Are there sanctions on councils who are not doing enough adoptions or is it just pressure from speeches and newspaper articles?

We live in the great United Kingdom with our history of civil liberties and a free press. But imagine if we were in the Soviet Union or a socialist Stasi state and if that state wanted more adoptions and people preferred to adopt young children, then it is not impossible that injustices might occur by taking more young children from their parents.

www.communitycare.co.uk/social-workers-reject-governments-adoption-reforms/

I agree with social workers that it is not about speed, it is about doing the job right, however long it takes. This is about people's lives.

I don't agree with targets or cost-cutting or pressure to speed things up. I prefer a slow, proper process with lots of checks and an open system that helps parents with appeals in case injustices have occurred.

Am I right that there are about 67,000 children in care? We should be able to find enough money to do a good job for them rather than rushing things through to possibly 'close books' and save money.

I can just about understand that people might fear a link between 'children in care need to have a permanent home' and 'people prefer to adopt younger children' therefore 'we must take more babies into care' but I think it is very tenuous.

The 'quotas' have all been about finding homes for children already in care, whose parents had already been found unable to look after them. Children spend years in care, and this is quite obviously not in their best interests.

JH has said in terms - there is a quota to 'find' babies in the community and to 'snatch' them. Vulnerable parents are targetted, such as those with learning difficulties. And that I don't believe for a moment. But some desparate and unhappy people might prefer to believe that than accept they do have a problem with drink/drugs/violence etc.

We don't live under the Stasi or similar, - the judgements of the UK courts are subject to scrutiny from the European Court of Human Rights. JH has been quite busy taking various cases 'to Europe' and he gets knocked back each time.

So what would he conclude from that? that the tentacles of the conspiracy stretch across the entire European Union?

Claig, but what you must realise is the tension inherent in the system between a 'slow and proper' procedure and doing things to a child's timescale.

The push now is for care cases to conclude in 26 weeks, i.e. six months. The usual time they take is just over a year. For a child of two you are talking about a huge chunk of his life being spent in limbo, waiting for a decision.

The fact that it takes so long is in part due to the inefficiency built into the system because of lack of judges, court time, social workers etc. But also part of the very long time to conclusion is because there is a drive to do it 'properly' - parents will be assessed, by independent social workers, psychologists etc. Parents have the right to challenge all the LA evidence so final hearings are usually 3- 5 days of court time.

Each approach brings with it dangers. Too fast and you are injust to parents. Too slow and you are injust to children. The key is finding the balance. I agree more needs to be done to find the best balance, we are not there yet.

But I am not sure an automatic cut off of 26 weeks is in anyone's interests. Some cases do need longer.

We must always be vigilant about our civil liberties and we must always investigate possible cover-ups in care homes and Savile etc.

New Labour introduced the 1989 Children Act, which seems to be what has led to a lack of public scrutiny in family courts. New Labour introduced the cash for councils target system for adoption, New Labour wanted to introduce a biometric DNA and ID card system for all our citizens, New Labour began the introduction of the 'fingerprinting' system in schools. The Coalition stopped this trend in its tracks. But who knows if some people might still want to implement some of it?

John Hemming takes up the cases of people who believe that they have suffered injustice under the system. There are not many people like John Hemming or Tom Watson or social workers Liz Davies and Eileen Fairweather who question the system and take up the cases of people to whom injustice has occurred. They receive lots of opprobrium from the system.

The system doesn't like to be criticised, it doesn't want a free press that might expose things that it prefers to remain hidden.

Remember New Labour's ex-Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, and his speech about a 'poisonous' liberal media.

'Charles Clarke, will tonight claim there is a "pernicious and even dangerous poison" infecting press coverage on the government's civil liberties record.'

'"I believe that a pernicious and even dangerous poison is now slipping into at least some parts of this media view of the world," Mr Clarke will say in the inaugural Polis lecture at the LSE.'

www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/apr/24/media.media1

That was on April 24. On April 25, our free press, told us about the scandal of foreign prisoners being released without being considered for deportation and on May 4, Chales Clarke was out of that job.

There are calls to regulate our free press.

Sigh. And thus the debate closes up again.

Are you not worried, even just a little bit, by some of the things JH does and says? Do you not think, even just a little bit, that the focus is not where it should be?

O well. Wait for next thread.

'Sigh. And thus the debate closes up again.'

Why? This is an open debate and if you have a point, you can make it. No one is insulting you and trying to stop you having your say. That is a courtesy that should be accorded to everyone, even if you disagree with them, and that includes John Hemming.

'Do you not think, even just a little bit, that the focus is not where it should be?'

I think the focus shouyld be justice, and I think that that is what John Hemming fights to achieve for people who seek his help.

Of course, there are other things to put right, but no one person is capable of putting all these things right. But people who stand up to make a change and fight for justice and the rights of people are doing the right thing, in my opinion. If there were more of them, then we would have a better system.

I believe that courageous people like John Hemming, Tom Watson, Eileen Fairweather and Liz Davies set an example to other people and show that change can happen and that justice is worth fighting for.

They may knight the likes of Savile and Cyril, but they are not people that the public looks up to.

'More than half of parents with learning disabilities will have their children taken away at some stage, says Mencap head Mark Goldring, "often because of preconceived ideas that parents with a learning disability are unable to cope". This was highlighted last May when the Daily Telegraph reported a case where a three-year-old girl was to be adopted because, it claimed, social services had deemed her mother "too stupid" to look after her.

But staff at Family Action's Valuing Families service in Leicestershire know that, when properly supported, people with learning disabilities can be excellent parents. The service was commissioned by Leicestershire Council in 2003 to provide tailored support for parents with learning disabilities, after local practitioners identified a need for additional support. Financed by the Children's Fund, it has so far worked with 70 families, and 100 children. "Our aim is to enable and empower learning disabled parents," says project manager Clare Walker.'

www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/08/01/2010/113506/parenting-skills-for-parents-with-learning-disabilities.htm

Money should be given to help parents with learning disabilities. More newspapers should publish cases like this. This seems to be injustice hidden in plain sight, and not many people talk about it.

We have seen the speeches which talk about 'dysfunctional' families and some of the criteria that are used to label them as dysfunctional. Who knows where this type of talk will lead and what may be done to make them 'function'.

'The numbers of children in care has fallen in the past few decades; In 1981, 92,000 children were in care, the figure this year is 67,000.'

So it sounds like things are getting better. But there are calls to increase the number who go into care.

'In a speech in London yesterday, Mr Gove said the state had exposed children to 'a life of soiled nappies, scummy baths, chaos and hunger'.
This was because the state was 'preoccupied with the rights of biological parents.'
He wants social workers to be 'more assertive with dysfunctional parents, courts to be less indulgent of poor parents, and the care system to expand to deal with the consequences'.

Why not give more resources to struggling families. I thought the Conservatives were supposed to be the party of "family values". Gove sounds just like any number of New Labour types.

'He wants social workers to be 'more assertive with dysfunctional parents, courts to be less indulgent of poor parents'

si pooe people will suffer. Is being poor now dysfunctional? Why not help poor people with childcare and employment and training and support? Why choose instead to cause the 'care system to expand to deal with the consequences'?

so poor people will suffer

The above quotes come from the following article

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2234360/Michael-Gove-More-children-taken-care-stop-suffering.html

'courts to be less indulgent of poor parents'

This is people's children and families they are talking about.

'the state was 'preoccupied with the rights of biological parents.'

So the state cared about human rights. But there are now calls for being ''more assertive with dysfunctional parents, courts to be less indulgent of poor parents'.

How assertive was the state with dysfunctional people like Savile? They knighted him and indulged him by inviting him to Chequers at Christmas time to put his feet up by the fireside.

"Poor parents" - meaning inadequate, not good enough. Not poor in a financial sense.

SamSmalaidh , thanks, I didn't realise that.

Although, has anybody got that list of 6 or so things that they describe as making dysfunctional families - I think it included long-term unemployment and things like that, but am not sure.

Things like long term unemployment/poverty are stressors though, stressors can trigger child abuse.

I think one of the major problems with our child protection system is that it is very reactive to high-profile cases and media/public reactions. At the moment it is weighted quite heavily in favour of birth parents' rights (as a reaction to high profile cases of children being wrongfully removed), and children are left in dangerous situations or repeatedly returned to dangerous situations too often because of it. Soon the pendulum will swing in favour of removing children and will probably go too far again.