Latest news - ONE child has been returned to parents after the post-Cannings reviews. But they are going to start a new enquiry into 30,000 past cases using "expert" witnesses.....
from yesterday's Evening Standard
Meadow row sparks shake-up of expert witnesses
A COMPLETE overhaul of medical evidence in cases of alleged child abuse was unveiled by the Government today.
Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson will lead the review after several acquittals of women wrongfully convicted of murdering their children.
Angela Cannings, Sally Clark and Trupti Patel were all jailed chiefly on the discredited evidence of Professor Sir Roy Meadow that several cot deaths in a family were grounds to believe murder had been committed.
Children's Minister Margaret Hodge told the Commons the review will set a standard of competence for medical expert witnesses.
Mrs Hodge said that out of 5,000 current cases of suspected abuse, only one unnamed council had reversed a care order and handed the child back to parents. Only 47 cases involved disputed evidence. The minister announced a new survey into 30,000 historic cases.
Mrs Hodge said: "The concerns surrounding reliability of expert witnesses are ... substantial and are worsening the already acute problem courts are experiencing."
Sir Liam will report to ministers early next year, Sir Roy developed the theory women may deliberately harm their babies to draw attention to themselves. He called the condition "Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy".
Mrs Hodge said she would order a review of cases involving Dr Colin Paterson, a discredited expert struck off this year over his theory of temporary brittle bone disease in children.
And this from Today's Independent:
Leading article: Expert medical opinions must be open to challenge
THE REVIEW of the role of medical experts in child abuse cases announced yesterday by the Children's minister, Margaret Hodge, is overdue. A succession of court rulings over the past 18 months in which women have been falsely accused of killing their children has gravely damaged faith in the trustworthiness of independent experts in these tragic cases. And this week's condemnation by the General Medical Council of the paediatrician David Southall who, on the basis of evidence gleaned from a television interview, accused a man of killing his baby son, has underlined the need to restore public confidence in the procedures for dealing with such cases.
The system needs to be re-balanced. Too much weight has been placed on the opinions of experts, such as Professor Roy Meadow, who have often used emotive language to get their point across in court. Such expert opinions are often taken as authoritative. If they conclude that a baby has died due to injuries inflicted by a parent then, more often than not, the jury reaches the same conclusion. This is in sharp contrast to civil cases, in which the opinion of any sort of expert is often treated with a greater degree of scepticism.
Of course, it is in no one's interests that we create a system whereby the burden of proof becomes so heavy that no parents are jailed for abuse to their children, or where it becomes almost impossible to remove children from families for their own safety.
Abuse does occur and Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy, in which mothers supposedly harm their own children to get attention for themselves, has not been totally discredited as a theory. Investigations are already under way into the cases in which mothers have been imprisoned, on the basis of expert evidence, and the majority of verdicts that have been re-examined so far have been shown to be sound.
Nevertheless, public confidence can only be fully restored by a thorough investigation into how the criminal justice system operates in this intensely emotive area. While expert medical testimony will always play a role in such cases, it must never again be so uncritically accepted.
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What Margaret Hodge actually told the commons yesterday was:
Medical Expert Witnesses
The Minister for Children (Margaret Hodge): I am making this statement with my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health my right hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman).
Widespread concern has been expressed about the quality and validity of evidence given by medical expert witnesses following the recent appeals against convictions of mothers alleged to have been responsible for killing their children.
Medical evidence from expert witnesses plays an important part in court proceedings. Proceedings in the criminal and family courts are different from one another and do not follow the same processes. Requirements differ between them in relation to standards of proof, rules of evidence and admissibility of material. In criminal procedures, the competency of witnesses and the evidence of the prosecution can be challenged. The prosecution has to establish facts beyond reasonable doubt. In civil proceedings, evidence is assessed against a threshold of proof that is based on the balance of probabilities, though there too the input of expert witnesses may be tested by the parties to a case and by the court, before judicial determinations are made.
The concerns surrounding the reliability of expert witnesses are both complex and substantial and are worsening the already acute problem which the family courts are experiencing in finding experts of high standing to give medical evidence in proceedings, particularly where child abuse is suspected. Nonetheless, these issues of concern go beyond child protection or children's cases and involve the scientific basis for medical evidence given both in criminal and civil courts, and extend to other areas, such as forensic pathology.
We have already taken a number of steps. I have, as indicated in my statement of 23 February 2004, issued guidance to local authorities in Local Authority Circular I (2004)5, asking that they review the cases of children who are the subject of current care proceedings or where local authorities are exercising responsibility for children who are currently the subject of care and related orders. The results of an initial survey have today been placed in the Library. The survey was carried out by the Association of Directors of Social Services, and asked questions relating to the first stage review we asked local authorities to undertake. This first stage review covered all of the cases of children who are the subject of current care proceedings. This stage did not cover children who were already the subject of a care or related order. These cases will be reviewed as a second stage review and a more comprehensive picture will be obtained once this second stage has been completed.
Of the 150 local authorities with social services responsibilities, 130 have responded to the survey. The 130 local authorities reported that the number of cases in which disputed expert medical evidence features, or is anticipated to feature, is relatively small, arising in only 47 out of the 5,175 cases. There were a total of nine cases where the impact of this evidence on the live proceedings is already known. In one of these cases there has been a change in the local authority's care plan. In a further 38 cases, the proceedings are not yet sufficiently advanced for it yet to be clear whether the disputed medical evidence will result in a change to the care plan. The further survey of the second stage review, which is now being commissioned, will ascertain the extent to which the review of existing orders, perhaps 30,000 in number, has led to changes in current care plans. The results of this second survey will also be placed in the Library.
Nonetheless, the results of this initial survey should not give rise to complacency that the interests of children and their families are being optimally served. We are, therefore, also announcing today a programme of work to determine how best to ensure the availability and quality of medical expert resources to the family courts. Sir Liam Donaldson, the Government's Chief Medical Officer (CMO), will lead this work and plans to involve a wide range of interests, including judicial, I legal, clinical specialities, scientific, statistical and consumer interests, as well as health regulatory bodies. The CMO will determine how this work will be taken forward.
I also wish to take this opportunity to highlight the publication, on 14 May 2004, of the judgment of the Court of Appeal in the family cases of Re LB and Re LU. This important judgment sets out clearly the ways in which the judgment in the case of Angela Cannings impacts on the family jurisdiction. I will be writing to local authorities, in order to draw their attention to this new judgment and to the action taken by the GMC in relation to Dr Colin Paterson's past performance as an expert medical witness in certain family cases.
The main thing that I'm pulling out from that is that the emphaisis is totally on whether the reviews are leading to changes in "current care plans".
Bunglie I think your case will be in what she is describing as the second stage review - but as the care arrangements are going to be well established in all those cases, and reversing them will cause disruption, I don't expect that they'll get any high figures from that one either. Note that they are not recording seperately cases where it might be considered that they got it wrong, but so long ago that they won't now reverse it, only those where they are changing the care arrangements - a fudge if ever there was one.
You need to get your MP to press for the "no change only because of elapsed time" figure to be included in the survey. He might also be able to get the more detailed survey results from the House of Commons library if they are of relevance to your case - it would at lease give you a reference as to what questions are actually being asked of Social Services Directors.