No legal aid = baby adopted

[CFSKate]

I saw this on Channel 4 News yesterday, I only saw it part way through, but it went something like this, there was a couple who were accused of abusing their child, they couldn't get legal aid, the court had the child adopted, and then it went to court again and new evidence said there was a medical condition and the parents weren't guilty of abuse, but the adoption is final, they can't get their baby back.

To make it clear, I don't think a return to the birth parents is in the childs interests based on the fact adoptive parents are a lesser type of parent. Because of the type of work I do I'm involved with adults that have often had pretty tough backgrounds themselves. This also includes those who grew up in the care system. Many of them have major issues related to their birth parents. And this isn't limited to those who didn't have stable care homes and birth parents who weren't fit to raise them. There's adults who by their own admission had long term foster/ adoptive parents they still relate to as parents and felt loved and cherished by, but still harbour massive resentment about the fact their birth parents could have raised them with support early on, or at least could have had regular contact and been involved in their lives.

I do also fully understand all the reasons decisions need to be made quickly about a childs future. What many people don't know is it isn't always the case that it's needed to prevent the child spending time in limbo and to prevent disruption. They can be rushed through while the child is still living with the birth parents too.

I do think sometimes adoption is a cost thing too. Not in a direct individual decision way by individual professionals. But in support that isn't available early on. Take eg a teen mum that's been spat out by the care system. Or pnd etc in parents without family/ friend support. Because the support isn't there in the first place, by the time it gets bad enough they get even the token level of help, quite often they are beyond the point of quick return. Or likely to be quickly signed off by services in a year etc. When the decision then has to be made whether waiting is in the childs interest. So yes, I do think in many cases lack of money to offer help as a preventative measure before there are bigger problems is partly why some adoptions are a cheaper option.

Plus let's be honest, having services scrutinising every aspect of your parenting isn't exactly empowering for any of us. If you're already starting off with mild issues that involvement and scrutiny can soon exacerbate them. Trust me I know full well why that involvement and scrutiny is vital, but as the extra support isn't offered alongside it's a vicious circle. More you struggle, more scrutiny. The more scrutiny, the more you struggle. And that's with a great sw and the services actually trying their best. An indifferent sw, or one who always assumes the worst, or some missing paperwork about your background etc and you're fighting an uphill battle. And if you have just one meeting with the one idiot professional in a 50 mile radius, that mild, and manageable pnd, lack of life skills or any other problem that can be remedied if supported early on, can very easily escalate into not being capable of meeting the childs needs short term. And then decisions have to be made quickly.

I also know the shit/ indifferent professionals are just as happy to lie/ twist things to adoptive parents too. Like not explaining the child they think they are able to adopt once everyone is satisfied with the settling in etc isn't legally available for adoption at that point in time. I don't mean because the child has been 'stolen' from birth parents in the majority of cases, simply that the adoptive parents haven't been told the child has been placed with them already to avoid the limbo period in short term care waiting for an adoption order, which of course they have a right to be informed of.

I hope it's a great deal more than 95%!

Thpugh it depends what you count in the incorrect t outcomes. I don't doubt there are many cases where earlier intervention and more money supporting parents.

That the lack of a conviction in a criminal court is not proof of anything, except that there isn't evidence beyond reasonable doubt that abuse occurred

Wow thank god the majority of people believe in innocent until proven guilty.

Even with evidence some posters insist these parents are guilty. Each to their own I suppose and their own agenda.

Let's hope that the people entrusted with trying to sort the hideous tragedy out won't be as biased. Hopefully contact will resume ASAP.

Probably and because of that blatant injustice, some nervous parents will delay taking babies to hospital or GP.

Yup.

Hospital is not a safe place to take a baby if they are showing any symptoms you don't understand.

If anyone suspects abuse, your baby could be taken away and adopted away from you as quickly as humanly possible.

Even if you are entirely innocent, and evidence exists to that effect, they will still power on with removing your child from you, and you will never, ever get them back.

Great message to be sending out.

The rational thing to do, unless you fear your baby is going to die, is to wait it out at home and not tell anybody about the mysterious bruises/bleeding from the mouth.

I really hope this case won't scare people off taking their child to hospital - but I can quite see how it might.

This is an interesting piece, written by a Judge, which explains what he has to do to make a decision that parents have hurt their child. I hope it provides some reassurance that Judges take this task very seriously and don't (at least in my experience) rubber stamp some shoddy case.

But sometimes the medical evidence isn't clear or later shown to be wrong/incomplete. That is not the 'fault' of the family courts. But constantly seeking to find someone to blame is not going to help anyone either. We need to make sure that the professionals who are making these extremely serious decisions and assessments are doing so in a working envrionment that allows them the time and space to make well informed decisions.

I am not sure I can say that of either the working environments for doctors, social workers OR lawyers at the moment.

ooopps, sorry forgot to link.
www.childprotectionresource.org.uk/fact-finding-in-care-proceedings/

I am not sure I can say that of either the working environments for doctors, social workers OR lawyers at the moment.

No, it's extremely worrying.

I also somehow don't see the adoptive parents in this case getting the full truth. 'oh, did we mention that minutes after the adoption order the birth parents were cleared and if that's found out in future the shit will hit the fan'. Adoptive parents 'oh well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, we always wanted a little girl and couldn't be arsed with the newborn stage so quick let us sign and make it legal, screw the birth parents'. I guarantee it won't have gone anything like that.

Re ss involvement, I agree. Even the minority of twat sws can be beaten off if you are mentally strong, have loads of your own support, have the skills to negotiate the system and are otherwise beyond criticism in your parenting. A lot of people don't tick all those boxes. And yet those minority of stories of the system acting wrongly are what many people base decisions on when it comes to anything that may involve ss. In my line of work I've sometimes had to discuss with people whether they should or shouldn't get ss involved about someone else. And it's not a straight forward decision at all, and even when 'yes' is the best decision, deciding how, where and when to report, so it results in actual improvement for the child takes knowledge of the system itself and local professionals. I know exactly who and how I'd get ss involvement locally to give the best chance of the child being removed or the best chance of solving/reducing problems and them remaining. Even down to the likely outcome of an a&e visit depending who the duty sw was. (not because any but the odd one is a twat, just because some aren't as good as others in some situations, being human, not always able to access perfect training and overworked). And the system should not work like that.

Yes parents avoiding medical attention is desperately worrying as that can also go massively against them if ever found out they didn't seek treatment (as well as the obvious physical harm they're risking their child)

I actually know of a case about ten years ago where someone I worked with was involved with SS would have regular injuries to her kids but a "retired HCP" in her family would say not to seek medical advice and she'd decide she couldn't risk it on their advice as they'd tell her social services would remove the kids since they'd seen it go that way before

It was a pattern of regular injuries and no medical attention being sought and I think in the end the kids were actually removed as the kids were being neglected and it all was a lot worse when it came to light but part of it was this struggling mother trying to hide injuries rather than doing what she should have done and getting help for her kids. Because she was already on social services radar from the offset she felt she had to cover her tracks rather than be a responsible parent.

I feel her fear made her far more harmful to her kids than otherwise perhaps but it's catch 22 because although SS involvement backfired there was clearly a need for them to support the family...

My 95% estimate may even be optimistic.
Professional in all fields make occasional mistakes, plus in this area it seems they are under time and resource pressures.

Hopefully the EHR Court will force the UK to introduce procedures to review the x% of unjust adoptions. They've required changes in other important HR areas.
Maybe too late for this child and these parents, though.

It's not just hospital parents will fear, it's hv, school, the whole lot are on witch hunt alert living in fear of a baby p situation happen under their watch so are pointing fingers all over the place.

It is quite interesting to me how the different sorts of family law gel together or don't.

Lots of interesting discussion here about biology and a clear devide in how important or not it is. All coming down to percieved best interests of the child.

This case there has been no contact with biological family for a year and that is given huge weight.

In the last 6 months I have had profesional contact with at least 15 mothers involved in child arangement hearings in all cases the absent biological father was a convicted abuser in all cases the abuse was witnessed by the child/ren in all cases the mothers were forced to move several counties and the fathers did noting to have contact with children despite initial offers of contact centres, fast forward in one case 9 years of nothing in most of them 3-5 years. Yet the very action of the family court is almost immediate supervised direct contact. The supervision rarely lasts longer than 6 months before it changes to unsupervised over night contact. Because biology is considered almost more important than anything else.

These are all cases where if the mothers hadn't left when they did CO's would have been sought and likely adoption orders. In all but one of them the father is involved in new cohabiting relationships with legit concerns that abuse is a feature.

So in essence "leave or we will remove your children because witnessing DA is CA but a few years down the line you will be court ordered to send them to witness DA with another woman all because in your case the biology of one parent is considered to be vital"

Yes, it really is extraordinary and outrageous that abusive men are still considered parents that children have a "right" to see, no matter how long the estrangement, but non-abusive parents are now deemed as of no importance to a child they saw regularly until a year ago.

It's very hard to see how either decision is about parents' rights rather than about which parents matter most - men more than women, adopted parents more than original parents.

lurk your probally right about the information that was given to the AP.

Yy needs. Along with children who have been deemed at significant risk from the none contact biological father in the past being herded into contact. And then when the mum is understandably distraught it's another nail in her coffin to prove she isn't coping. Not to mention how that at risk phrase is sometimes trotted out on every occasion without making it clear it referred to the father, not the resident birth mother who was at no point guilty of anything but being a victim herself trying to protect her kids. I've read/ heard reports that without any other evidence/ background would be very compelling as reasons to suspect the children weren't having their needs met because of the birth mother when that isn't the case at all.

The children will suffer less and state would save a fortune on wasted nonsense if they personality tested anyone working with children, directly or indirectly. Though this may be a disability discrimination, equality problem. If you keep the narcs and psychopaths out then there will be less problems, it will be reduced to human error issues.

Inequitable.
Almost always the abusive NRP whose contact must be maintained is the father - I wonder if that is because of all the agressive mens's rights groups.
Parent groups have not focused much on the area of forced adoption, or removing kids. Understandable, because they want to protect abused kids, but it may explain the different attitudes wrt abusive dads.

imo, once there has been a conviction for domestic or sexual violence, either parent, any contact must be supervised. And from say age 12, the child should be allowed to refuse such contact.

I imagine any of us parents on here could have our children taken away. It must be fairly easy to find some aspect of how we act as parents that can be grounds for that. Shouting at the children.The children seeing the parents shouting. The parents hating social workers and have the balls to say so. All kinds of stuff. It is very frightening.

I bet any social could make a case to remove my children. Seen father hit their mother. Been exposed to shouting from parents. Parents happy to walk around naked in front of children. Parents not keen on social workers and probably would voice that view with impunity at them. Emotional abuse of sending children to most academic schools in the country with loads of homework and loads of music practice whether chidlren like it or not. I bet I could draw up 20 reasons a social worker could remvoe my children if they were a bit younger (assuming I'd have to pay someone to take huge 16 year olds away now... so missed my chance there to be rid of them)...

..and the day the police arrived and the youngest were home alone too - although thankfully the police just said next time you're home alone don't answer the door. Laughing as I type.

I have only the Guardian links and others, but they all quote the medical expert completely refuting the original medical evidence about fractures etc. and the prosecution accepting this.
They state the prosecution offered no evidence.

Also, the defence barrister has made statements that they have not committed any abuse and deserve the kid back - he is really sticking his neck out if he has the slightest doubt.

Idk on the one hand it's terrifying you could be falsely accused

On the other its reassuring there are people working to protect children

And then on the other hand you have many people being constantly reported by friends and family who have involvement with social services and they spend years allowing the children to remain in a bad situation "because they don't quite meet the threshold"

Things do need an overhaul