Italian adoption case III

[Juliet123456]

The last thread says all I need to know about those in the system. It also the most legally dangerous thread I have ever seen on mumsnet. I hope someone has been through the posts for libel risk. It also entirely one sided and biased and makes me laugh.

The defensiveness of those involved in this area will hopefully disappear once we have the openness that JH and indeed many others are seeking and obtaining as the judges increasingly accept that it helps everyone to understand what are very difficult decisions - parents, children and lawyers and social workers and expert witnesses in this field.

It will continue to be important always to get to the facts and where possible publish the facts. I continue to believe that almost any of us could have our children removed if the state set its mind to that. If publishing more decisions and giving rights to parents and those involved and the children to write what they like on twitter, facebook and the like and to let parents and children even when separated communicate and talk about any issues they choose will help then let us hope the law continues down that course.

Spero as far as i am aware, it never happens, you are either assessed by one team or the other. Listening to the views of others on here in SN section, it seems which team you are referred to pretty much shapes your 'good' or 'bad' experience of SS. Disability team are spoken about very highly.

Obviously the teams must overlap at some points, when a child is referred to disability team for example and they then establish safeguarding issues etc too and vice versa. However, i fear once assessed solely by CP team and deemed 'at risk' (often wrongly) it is often the case that no referral is made to the disability team and parents are blamed for being the cause of their child difficulties, rather than difficulties resulting from their disability.

A collaborated approach to start with could avoid the confusion.

The tragedy is we have supposed to be 'working together ' since 1989 but I still find communication between departments and agencies is fraught.

Tell me about it Spero, 'multi disciplinary teams' often don't know what their arse is doing different to their elbow. 'multi disciplinary teams' often involves parents and class teacher sitting in a room, with a tray full of apologises from professionals involved for not attending the meeting. Which often leads to 'inaccurate' info being passed between parties or second hand info outside of meetings.

I would like to see communication on Wanna's list too and also written records kept more accurately and info shared between everyone involved including parents. Supposedly the purpose of CAF, which is a pile of poo too, in reality it rarely happens.

I think reducing case loads is the key here - but that will involve money, so will never happen.

People have mentioned how parents might be scared off from asking for help in a climate where even people in authority, (percived as being in the "know" becuase they hold a postion in the seat of power that controls and runs public services) .claim SS are gestapo baby sntchers with the morals of an alleycat.

But it's not just parents. I went to my year head and asked him to call social services and confided in him as to the why. It took a lot for me to do that. I agonsied over it pleanty before I made it as far as his door.

If confiding in a non family adult, or calling a child specific resource like say Childline comes with the risk of culminating in a Stasi like presence in your home, keen to destroy the parents you love (despite their flaws) via lies and backscratching with other public sectors just becuase they can or it might earn them a bonus if they spot your younger siblings... taking that step as a child to ask for help becomes so very much harder than it already is.

I don't think there is one solution, there are already guidelines and the Law to cover certain aspects, these are often ignored, i do wonder if that would change with reducing case loads or more money injected.

As with most things, it will probably take a combination of changes. However i do believe everyone should be held accountable, as with any mistakes, within any field of employment.

God i am boring myself now, i am off to do some housework

Good point. I am ashamed to say I never even thought of the impact on the child.

NanaNina: what you have to say about social services cuts is absolutely scandalous, and I certainly would like an answer from JH about what he is doing about the situation in Birmingham. I have a nasty feeling however that that may not be sufficiently headline grabbing for him, and certainly it isn't something that plays well to Daily Mail readers.

claw thank you for the clarification over ss departments I'm a bit ignorant to the proper running of the system.

Absolutely agree better communication is needed and it is beyond me that man has been to the moon and invented the internet yet there seems to be no cross agency data base for dc who are actually at risk.

I'd just like to say you sound like a fantastic mum and your dc are so lucky to have a mum who fights so hard for them . I really hope you were reimbursed for your legal fees

Very good point Carpe, we are all taking a very adult stance on this and from the view point of parents being reported to ss, as oppose to a child disclosing.

My own ds disclosed to SW that he was having suicidal thoughts because of his worries relating to school and school environment, being bullied, not supported for his disability etc. (long well documented history of this from experts prior to this) Her response was to phone me to collect him from school and take him to A&E for emergency mental health assessment.

I thought good, finally someone is taking this seriously.

In A&E he was made subject to a safety plan which included not returning to school.

This is where is all went wrong, the LA had involved SS as i was disputing his needs being met in school for years, as i had been witnessing what was disclosed by ds to SW for a long time and so had other professionals.

Despite my ds being subject to the above safety plan, she made it her business to try and force me to return ds to school, by threatening me with child protection proceedings and turning up at my house and trying to force ds out of the door to take him to school herself. Despite ds being medically signed off from school by two different medical professionals, as school was the cause of his anxiety.

She wasn't acting in the best interests of the child, she was acting in the best interests of the LA.

Now had my ds made a disclose to her involving me or home, im betting she would have acting quite differently.

Wanna thank you and no i wasn't reimbursed, but it was worth every penny. I didn't even receive a response or acknowledgement to my complaint about procedures not being followed and SW's conduct. However, it did result in her being removed from our case very quickly. We are still eating beans on toast while i pay back the debt!

"Cest, the poster who started that thread was just quoting a headline, she didn't say that was her view"

oh absolutely - not suggesting it was her view. here was a story with a MP no less quoted - on first glance the story was horrific, had the headlines been actually true... - but many posters then said hang on -there has to be more to it ... and there was more to it.

and those very first stories had quotes from JH.

funny that ... (booker/jh/mail journalist - they got their informaiton from someone - perhaps sources inside the court system probably and pushed it as a baby snatching story.

claw2 - school anxiety is one which some profressionals have no clue about. (my dd was out of school for more than a year for medical reasons - when it all began it wasnt clear if physiological or emotional - we had a teacher "diagnose" her with "peter pan syndrome " -she said "you know children dont want to grow up and move onto the next stage of school" .. bizarre...

... was the particular sw acting on her management instrux or her own whims? anyway, glad you got good outcome in the end

Claw, it may all be too long ago, but if you received no response to your complaint, you could ask them to escalate it to the next level, and if that doesn't work go to the Local Government Ombudsman. I am absolutely stunned that an SW tried to force ds to school against the clear advice of medical professionals, and she should really be out of the profession for the protection of other children!

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10509852/Secret-courts-couple-tell-of-their-struggle-to-adopt-granddaughter.html

Not my story, but they agree with me.

Of course they agree with you, how much did you pay to have that published?

Because you clearly are throwing your political weight around at The Telegraph and The Daily Mail... Ian Joseph confirmed this.

So... Why are you not posting a BBC link? The Guardian could do as well, thanks.

I don't really understand the point of linking to that report. As usual, it is extremely one sided as Essex is not being permitted to give its side of the story. However, if anything it seems to show the system working effectively from the family' s point of view, since ultimately the council supported the grandparents in having custody, and the court upheld them.

Also, what precisely do those grandparents agree with, and where is he evidence of that fact? And what does it prove if they do agree? It won't change the fact that when you say that, for example, a social worker has been sacked for recommending the return of a child to his parents, your own documentary "proof" demonstrates that you are wrong.

Having seen this bit in the article...

The woman, who had suffered a mental breakdown but has since recovered, is still fighting to regain custody of her child through the Court of Protection.

I see they also agree with you that rather than do the decent thing, hold up your hands, make right your factual errors and apologise for stuffing up... the best course of action is to carry on pretending that the "facts" of the orginal story haven't been discredited, ignore all the omitted facts that have since been unearthed, and just carry on repeating a "minimise minimise minimise" version of the truth that fits the conspiracy theory being peddled.

Why would anybody believe a word in that paper after the recent debarcle ? If somebody stands before me with egg on their face I'm not going to overlook that they are all yellow and drippy and say "I'm sure they checked their facts and eliminated three tonnes of bias before going to press this time".

To that end, I'll wait until the story re the grandparents is presented by more reliable sources.

PS By reliable sources I don't mean please post more cherry picked blog links please!

The fact that the story alleges that the Court Protection is dealing with a child custody case tells us all we need to know about the research behind that story. The Court of Protection has no jurisdiction in custody cases.

It also suggests the family court isn't 'in' on the conspiracy as it ordered the child should live with her grandparents.

So I am a bit confused.com. Is it now just Local Authorities who are evil? Or are courts sometimes evil, sometimes good?

JH said to Wall LJ in 2008 that whole system was 'evil' so it's nice to see he may have softened over the years.

So, yet again, JH has done his little trick of dropping something in which he fondly imagines supports his position whilst ignoring every question put to him. I struggle to work out why he bothers, surely he's noticed that it fools no-one, and actually it's extremely rude. Meanwhile, OP thinks it's the rest of us who are being rude to him.

Amy Willis of the Telegraph seems to have had some problems understanding this case.

She repeats the claim that the c-section was forced in order to give the baby to social services.

Poor Amy. Can't she read either?

I don't see the link between the two cases. Other than same county. Grandparents automatic rights is a separate issue... We don't. Know all the background again. we don't. Ow the grandparents involvement up to the time the child was taken into care.
blogs.channel4.com/victoria-macdonald-on-health-and-social-care/lost-family-told-care-granddaughter/1725

They look young to be grandparents others could be in their seventies perhaps not best placed to raise a two year old... perhaps there were complexities and other issues all the grandparents seven children..in the end it is a good news story. The courts considered and gave the child the chance to be raised by the young grandparents. We don't know where the mother is or what her issues were. And for the child.s privacy perhaps that is good,

I honestly don't understand what JH is trying to prove in posting this Telegraph story.

That grandparents don't have legal rights? No, they don't. If you want that to change, lobby your MP (oh, hang on...)

That although social services are supposed to consider kinship adoption first, there are often reasons why that doesn't happen or doesn't happen immediately. We have absolutely no idea why it didn't happen immediately in this case.

But it did happen in the end. And we have no idea whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. Presumably good, but there may have been excellent reasons for it taking awhile.