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.

JH

On Sat 7th December at 10.29 you said this:

spero asked this question on the previous thread:
"Every time JH pops up on a thread like this I am going to ask him the same question - where is the proof that LA now or ever were paid a bounty for every baby they took into care?"

I have never said this. I did say that Local Authorities were rewarded financially for increasing the numbers of adoptions.

Does she deny this?

I have a spreadsheet of all of the payments made as well as the additional funding for adoption that was given (which could only be used for adoption).

And on Saturday 7th Dec at 15.56 I replied

And here is the proof that he has repeatedly said babies are taken into care to meet Gov targets.

If he no longer believes this, that would be great and I would be very grateful if he could take the time to say so explicitly in order to reassure people, who must find it very frightening to think such a thing is true.

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.’

The reason I am concerned about this is that you appear to contradict yourself and deny that you said what you clearly set out earlier.

the reason this concerns me is that
a) in general, this is not the kind of behaviour we should see from our elected politicians
b) in particular, what you say about taking babies into care to meet adoption targets, is untrue, sensationalist, and highly like to confuse and frighten vulnerable parents who may be facing care proceedings
c) and as Carpe pointed out it may have an impact on vulnerable children who want to seek help

the evidence for my concerns is clearly set out.

Therefore I hope this meets your criteria for a 'reasoned and evidenced' post and I hope therefore you will respond, most particularly with the 'stats' that you claimed to possess in 2011

JH on 8th December at 9.32 you said this

A system where social workers are fired for recommending that a family are reunited is a corrupt system. The pressure on a practitioner to lie in court is in fact a criminal offence.

Do you accept that you have never provided ANY evidence in support of your assertion that a social worker was fired for recommending reunification?
Do you accept that what you emailed to me was in fact one page of the Defendant/Respondent's statement which set out clearly that the social worker was discliplined for going against clear instructions not to recommend reunification in absence of further assessments?
Please can you clarify whether you continue to assert that the current system of child protection is a 'corrupt system'.
If so, please would you indicate from whence the corruption stems and what you are doing about it OTHER THAN exciting the Daily Mail to exercise its normal high standards of journalist integrity.

My reason for this concern is again, that you are disseminating fear and distrust amongst vulnerable people with exaggerated, sensationalist and dishonest assertions.

My evidence from this comes from your own posts.

I hope that this too meets your criteria for a 'reasoned and evidenced' post and I would be grateful for a response.

Carpe- Don't know if you saw, but waaaaaay back when this shock! horror! case first hit the news, there was a dude on telly representing some human rights thingy, perhaps he was the UFTDU person in charge of this particular case.......

Funny though, that ever since that very first day, when the only other mention of it on the news was kind of a great big embarrassed step backwards ("whilst at first it seemed that....it now transpires.....") Mr UFTDU (or whoever he was) hasn't been seen.

(I just did a straw poll of Italians on the school run 11 people (3 of whom are lawyers, I live in a posh area) No-one had heard of UFTDU and 2 had vague recollections of the mother in the OP.)

A case from JH's back yard - www.theguardian.com/society/2013/oct/03/professionals-failed-keanu-williams-rebecca-shuttleworth

This quote is interesting: "Shuttleworth herself spoke to the review team. She spent her childhood in care and expressed "some surprise" that Keanu was not taken from her when he was born."

Surely if Social Services were so keen to find adoption fodder, this child would have been a prime candidate? It looks as if the mother wouldn't have resisted the application, so if JH were right about the fat rewards allegedly available for adoptions, the council could have made a nice profit out of it.

DrankSangriaInThePark

It might have been, but... there are so many associations connected to HR that.. who knows. I'd have been surpised if it was on of the bigger, more influential ones. They tend not to rush in and start hand waving until facts are established. Cos otherwise they'd look silly and their credibility would crumble.

I too have failed to turn up anybody who has heard of them. And I teach a veritable bevy of lawyers, of the sort who regularly have cases that make the news.

Out of interest, the female lawyer who campaigns for human rights in Britian, who tweeted "at first blush..." when commenting when the story first broke, has she carried on with , or has she gone quiet ?

Cos I would have thought she was a good barometer of how seriously human rights groups were taking this case. I have never seen a human rights story on British news where she wasn't commenting. She appears to be the go to human rights person. What says she now fuller details have sort of revealed the rather iffy status of the orginal story's accuracy?

Carpe I was very surprised when Shami Chakribati (hope I have spelled that right ) was reported to have said that. I hope it was more a case of misreporting and not further evidence of how debased our sound bite journalism culture has become.

If it was misreporting then everybody misreported it. Maybe her phone was ringing off the hook for a quote and she used the "at first blush..." as a qualifer so she could give a reaction to the expectant people rushing to her to see what she wpuld say.

I expect it is a fine balance between wanting to fact check first and keeping a "now now now" media happy, and if she doesn't throw a bone then she won't be the first call they make for a quote any more. Human rights is a very crowded platform and I suppose in order to maintain a high profile the temptation is to pander to the media's need for speed.

I'd just be happier if people were a touch more willing to say "I appear to have been a bit quick out of the traps this time" just as publically as they make their original pronouncements. To me that is the litmus test of how much I can trust somebody to have their priorities in the right place. If they have principles I need to see them, I don't tend to just take people's word for it in the face of evidence to the contrary.

@Carpe
I had never heard of that association before Hemming had published their letter (he posted the link on a previous thread) and I guess anybody had either :D
Yes the acronym LIPU is used as a representative of a very known association. Maybe it seems sad that birds and animals seems more important in news than people, yet in UK you don't have a continuous slaughter of them or abandonment issues as we have. Where I live in UK nearly every family has pets, usually more than one.
Concerning people, Unione dei Consumatori is quite strong (my mum actually used it and won a case). I have no idea about others but I hope, as you said, that they didn't start to wave hands before having checked the facts (also to avoid a "colossale figura di m... in tv").

@Drank I did a quick straw poll too, between the Italian expats in UK. Some of them used words that can't be reported here, a few didn't even hear the news, the majority had already forgotten. But you know how Italians are, "panem et circensis" ;) after two days they were already tired of it, and I counted that the overall comments under the news (considering all websites that allowed commenters to post one) didn't get to 200 in total. Only mumsnet has three threads and nearly 2900 posts.

I also suspect (this is my guess as an Italian citizen, not a fact) that for the Italian embassy this is more of a clearcut case than it seems at first sight.

Would anyone like to join my vair powerful lobbying group?

IMPISH (Incompetent MPs In SS Harangue)

I will do a website and send letters, an' everything.

Yes please. Could I have a Very Important-Sounding Title, as an early joiner? To look good on my CV, you understand.

Dammit. You've pipped me at the post. I was going for Conspiracies Unmasked by Noble Truthers

Can I be obergruppenfuhrer of the SS Gestapo division?

But you do realise if you fill up this thread with your glib and entirely unprofessional attempts at humour then you will make it impossible for poor John to answer any of my reasoned and evidenced posts!

Yeah. I thought we could dispense with all the duly elected official nonsense...so it's all up for grabs!

I need someone to be in charge of the spin, you know, reporting facts in a manner which suits are agenda, even if it veers slightly off the path of actual facts.

And I see no reason why IMPISH and CUNTS can't join together on important campaigns.

No no, Spero, John is a man of thrust and ambition, I know he will post when and what he wants to! It's part of his charm.

I am very annoyed with the man I asked to fix my gas fire, as I think he has charged me for replacing a part in an already defective appliance.

So I suggest that top of the agenda ought to be our campaign against the corrupt and evil system of CORGI registration, no doubt there is some top level government secret government campaign going on to ruin all our gas fires so that we have to buy very expensive electricity from the French.

Or something.

I am afraid CUNTs will be far too busy and important to join with IMPISH but we may from time to time email you snippets of vair important documents.

did he have a small baby tucked into his tool bag? If so, I think we are onto a headline stealer with that one...

No no, Spero, John is a man of thrust and ambition

I have read all I ever want to read about John's thrust.

Well, I do hope that CUNTS will come post every now and then on the IMPISH website comments page...we like to be open and democratic.

And we can make lofty statements about how we have written to each other, which is the most convincing proof of our rightness ever!

We may need a kitty for all the stamps.

We already buy very expensive leccy from the French. Did you not know? Gasp! Damn those Whitehall Mandarins and their evil-Frenchy loving ways.