This CANNOT be true - children being taken away from parents to meet adoption targets??? WTF?

[CountessDracula]

I really cannot believe that this can be true.

LOOK

I don't say things like this lightly, but if there's such a thing as a hell, I hope Roy Meadows spends eternity there after he leaves this Earth.

I hope the rest of his life is an imitation of what his eternity will be like.

I really do.

not at all. he was shocking. he is example of system going wrong. i think the blame in cases where his evidence was wrongly accepted should lie with him / the court's overready acceptance of his evidence / other medics overready acceptance of his word as god and the lawyers who were there to put their clients case.

Thing is controlfreaky, in many of these cases, there were other doctors questioning Meadows' evidence but the court preferred his evidence. Maybe his reputation cancelled out anyone else's opinion, I dunno. Or maybe judges, being authority figures, just go for the biggest other authority figure in the room. Or maybe they haven't really thought about how to question 'scientific' evidence and so just go on who can pee higher up the wall. Who knows.

The real issue is that the parents were largely working class with fewer resources and educational qualifications than the middle class lawyers and social workers who run the system (although not exclusively). Often, falsely-accused parents don't speak the same language as their accusers. So their evidence is less likely to meet the prejudices of the judge.

After Marietta Higgs, the Rochdale and Orkney abuse cases and many other similar miscarriages of justice, you'd think judges would have recognised that they need to analyse the evidence carefully no matter what the credentials of the participants. Clearly not. The key social workers responsible for Rochdale are still working, btw.

oh edam i dont disagree with any of that... i cant imagine anything worse than being wrongly accused of child abuse and having your children taken from your care.
i would say i think the climate is changing and certainly medical evidence is not accepted without question etc. it does cut both ways however re a few disreputable doctors.... there was at the same time as meadows heyday a paediatrician peddling his theory of "temporary brittle bone disease" to explain multiple non accidental injuries to babies (multiple fractures). hee too is now wholly discredited.
courts are much more likely these days to question the limits of medical experts' expertise / clinical experience / understanding of their role in medice legal work etc...... but there will always be mistakes. as you said it was other doctors as much as the courts who "allowed" meadows to get away with his unmerited opinions and the resulting consequences for families.

tbh, I knew a couple with a baby, and it seemed to me that social services were deliberately trying to work up a case to take the baby away, trying to steer the mother (who spoke v poor english) into damaging admissions, that kind of thing. At the time, I wondered if ss had some reason for wanting to take the baby, as everything seemed to be pointing in that direction. I was trying to advise them what their rights were etc.
I lost touch with them when I left the UK, so never found out what happened.

Does anyone else feel that there is an ever-growning culture of mistrust of healh officials amongst new mums because of articals ad stories like this?

I hate hearing about this kind of stuff in the news. The thought of children being seperated from their loving parents sickens and out-rages me to the core. It frightens me too.

I have read so many stories about incompetant health officials making incorrect judgements. As you rarely hear the good stories, perception is warped.

I go to Surestart regularly with my DS. One day, althought I was supervising him, he slipped and banged his head. I had to sign an accident form that one of staff had filled out. As I walked away one of the thoughts that popped into my head was 'I hope they don't think I'm a bad mother for this and report me'. Yes, that was paranoid and stupid but a thought. But it entered my head, all the same and I'm not alone. There are allot of Social Services ran baby groups here and most of the mums have felt intimidated at one time or another if there child has had an accident. A friend of mine was sitting with her 8 month old son on the floor when he reared his head back and slipped out of her arms, banging his head. She too had to fill out a form and went home, like me worrying that she would be 'reported'.

Unless there is more open-ness and honesty about child protection issues and professionals are held accoutable for mistakes, the mistrust and vauge fear of some health officials will only get worse. Its unfair on the caring, genuine health officals too.

I think that there is more mistrust of what might be described as old authority figures full stop. People appear to start from a position of mistrust and feel a need to be reassured rather than from a position of faith (which could of course be misplaced). I'm not sure that this is entirely a bad thing, but it does make life difficult I think all round. For example the targets in this particular case were designed to encourage local authorities to be more proactive in finding new homes for children in care because it was found that some areas had high levels of children who were in homes or moved about between foster families, which was obviously not good for the children. It had nothing to do with taking more children away from their birth families. Now of course it is true that younger children are easier to adopt, but this is only one target of many so it is a little absurd to suggest that authorities are suddenly removing lots of babies to massage a single target (although I abslutely accept that game playing on targets is rife). Having children in care is expensive and generally avoided on the whole. I would suspect that rising numbers of babies being removed may be more to do with increasing numbers of drug addicts, as that is one reason why babies can be removed (and unfortunately may occur several times despite warnings). However as I work in the public sector I may have a more rose tinted view than some (and you don't want to hear some of the stories that colleagues of mine who have worked in child protection have told me).

tigermum, most places have accident forms (I had to do one when ds jumped into the deep end at a swimming pool once) it's part of H&S legislation, and is there partly to protect the organisation from being sued, and partly so that they can make sure there aren't design faults in buildings or other safety issue staht should be fixed. It's not so SS can keep tabs on you, so really don't worry. The forms are most likely sent to their H&S department, along with one's that staff have to do as well if they trip over wires etc.

Hi Uwila! The resident vs. domiciled issue comes into play if you are bringing in money from the usa to the uk. The money (and how it is taxed) is treated differently depending on if you are resident or domiciled. It can be circumvented however. Anyway, probably worth doublechecking with a expert before getting the citizenship so you can set things up correctly. But otherwise well worth getting the dual citizenship.
I'm am thoroughly happy back here in sunny los angeles. And very much enjoying not having the constant intrusion into my private life by the public sector. It's something that as an american we have much less tolerance for the an the brits. I found the concept of a health visitor coming into my home very odd. Particularly when I realized how dumb and useless mine was.
By the way, some very large percentage of the children removed from their parents by Roy Meadows were blonde an blue eyed....a little odd don't you think. Also, I hardly think that the lawyer that you get that's supplied by the state is going to be the best.....And many of the ss staff making the decisions are undereducated, undertrained and overworked.

My sister works with SS although not a SW herself. And some of the stories she tells... one that sticks in my mind was about a young woman with a learning disability who had a baby. She was in a consensual relationship. SWs took it upon themselves to decide she shouldn't be allowed/the baby shouldn't be allowed to have a relationship with the father. Intimidated the girl into going into a mother and baby home after leaving hospital when she was actually capable of looking after the baby at home with her family's support. Old prejudices about people with learning disabilies still exist. But SWs should know better and should act as professionals, not witchfinder generals.

Thing is, if you are bossy cow, that job gives you full rein to bully vulnerable people. While all the while convinced you are doing the right thing. Because you think so so it must be true. The modern day Lady effing Bountifuls. Aristocracy isn't allowed to patronise the working classes any more, why should SWs get away with it?

I do recognise that they see some terrible, heart-breaking things. But that's no excuse for bullying people who are trying to do their best.

Oh, one of the things that shocked me about the girl with LD was that SWs interpreted the father's actions to suit their own agenda. So when he visited her in hospital, that was 'over involvement' and somehow wrong. The poor man just wanted to see and support his family, FFS!

Yet they refused to intervene when families were abusing people with LDs - keeping them at home purely to have access to their benefits, for instance.

Any professional job that gives you power over other people, whether it's being a care assistant in an old people's home or head of social services attracts bullies and those who will misuse their power. It's the job of the profession to root these people out. Yet the Rochdale SWs are still working, as is the director of SS who was responsible for the Victoria Climbie case.

I am seldom so much in agreement with you, edam!

my children's school has a resident social worker who hasnt got enough to do and is currently trying to insinuate her way into our family. (single parent, I must be incapable of coping, eh??!!)

Martini, but there have been a fair few incidence where Social worker have messed up big time with whatever agenda on their mind, and if those would be acocuntable for their actions that surely would be helpful.
But, I do hope you are right and that this doesn't happen, because then I am not all that naive afterall...personally I could not imagine it to be the "easiest way, neither.

that's horrific

There are too many stories of bad SWs for me to think that none of them are true. I've seen a couple on MN over the last year or so. Any child wrongly taken from his/her loving parents is too many. There should be zero tolerance for this. ZERO!

I hae never really had any involvment with HVs or SW. And the more I read on mumsnet the more they scare me.

Edam...good point this one:
"Thing is, it's hard to increase adoption rates, because most of the kids in care who aren't adopted aren't suitable for adoption. They are 'hard to place' for a variety of reasons. So if you want social services to increase adoptions, they are going to have to find more 'adoptable' children."

I actually work with children that are in the care system (not a social worker, just a Bank Residential Support Worker)
And, maybe if more help would be offered with difficult chidlren even once they have been adopted, then some children that are difficult to adopt out might be more "adoptable"...but, once they are adopted they are released from Care and no help seems to be offered.

And, dare I add, if there was more tolerance for gay, single, differrent race and older adopters, then there might be more adoptions of the "less desireable" children.

I see the other side of things where my stepchildren are in a horrible horrible horrible home situation (mother is a drug dealer with heroin addict drug dealer boyfriend; children only attend school sporadically; cigarettes, alcohol and drugs are freely available in the household) and ss refuses to do anything about it and of course, dh, being a man, is not considered an equally viable parent. ok, I'll shut up now... it just gets me so wound up!!!!

I know social services have done some terrible things, both by not doing what they should have done as in the Victoria Climbie case and by being overzealous or acting on poor advice and taking children away from their parents when they should not have done, but what is being alleged in this case is that they have been taking children away from their parents simply to perform better against a management target, which is a very different matter, and I do not believe they have done it.

Firstly, even assuming the senior management to be completely target driven, they will have other targets. There will be financial targets and performance targets on their other responsibilities, which they would risk not meeting if pouring their resources into removing children unnecessarily - which would surely be an expensive business as the parents are likely to fight back. I do not know whether they would have a public relations target of any kind, but even if there is not they would be aware that adverse coverage in the press could be career-limiting.

Then they would have to persuade the ordinary social worker doing casework to go along with their evil plans. I simply don't believe that many would go through the processes necessary to remove a child from a family without believing that action to be in the child's best interests (I'm not saying they're always right, please note, but I don't think they'd do it purely to meet targets).

Someone earlier on the thread (sorry - I've forgotten who it was) asked why there are adoption targets anyway. Several years back, the big scandal was that social workers (particularly those working for Looney Left councils) were keeping children in the fostering system long term rather than letting them be adopted in order to keep up links with families when that contact was doing the children no good at all, and being moved between foster homes was not giving the children any stability. I understand it was in answer to those concerns that adoption targets were introduced.

As these are allegations of performance measure fiddling, I find it odd that nobody is quoting any actual figures (if they are and I've missed them, I'd be very interested to see a link). Presumably children would need to be removed from their families unnecessarily on quite a large scale to make a significant dent in the performance statistics?

Another odd aspect of the story is the singling-out of parents with low IQ. I can see that they might be a vulnerable group, but would their children necessarily be that easy to place with adoptive parents? Surely it would be a risky strategy to do that purely to fiddle the targets?

Parents with learning disabilty do have NT children so yes, they can be easy to place. I know it's not as simple as all social workers bad, all parents good. But there is something very wrong with social services and it needs reform to sort it out. At least we've now got a body that sets professional standards, which is a start. But I don't get the impression that SWs as a profession engage in much reflective practice or soul searching. Maybe I'm wrong but certainly not the ones my sister comes across. When there is a scandal, all you can hear is the sound of the senior people in charge rushing to get out and escape responsibilty and being promoted elsewhere.

Btw, my godmother is an eminent former SW so I'm not anti-the profession.

SWs use supervision a lot, and there is a lot of case review work. Less audit type activity or professional standards as is now common in healthcare. It's a very performance management orientated culture (there are a lot of targets and inspections, mainly led by CSCI). There is a huge amount of review around child protection cases, both routine, and also it is a statutory requirement to review all child deaths across all organisations. So organisations do a lot of reflecting, maybe individuals do less, but are probably subjected to more reviews. Oh and they write things down more too. This is just a comparative view from health, I don't know what people might consider the "right" amount of time to take out for reflective practice, and of course if there are staff shortages then there is a great deal less time for everything.

They wanted to do this to my ds

"Mr Holmes added: "If birth parents believe they have had their child taken into care unfairly, they should lodge a formal complaint with their local authority. I believe that this is rare. I certainly do not believe children are systematically being taken into care to meet adoption targets."

Pah - lodge a complaint - not likely. In my case I wasnt and am still not allouwed to discuss the intricasies of the case but there ware huge gaping flaws with irretrievable damage doen to the family unit. The idea of actually taking on the social worker and gal involved fills me with complete dread as they were all powerful.