Leiland James Corkhill - heartbreaking interview with his birth mum. Obviously upsetting content relating to physical abuse of a baby.

[LastThursdayInJuly]

I can’t post the link but if you Google Leiland James and BBC news the interview will come up.

Of course, some children can’t stay safely with their parents but this case really doesn’t seem one of them. I’m not commenting on what happened to Leiland James afterwards because it’s obviously practically unheard of for adoptive parents to murder their children.

But I am concerned that people like Laura Corkhill are not treated fairly by SS and are not really able to navigate the system properly. I also agree with the woman who observed that it further punished women suffering domestic abuse by taking their children from them.

I think a lot was left out of the article, she was obviously not able to look after him.
But what happened is heart breaking and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, I really did feel for her reading the article.

The women at the refuge supported her version of events.

I know, I have had family members involved with social services, so I know the system isn’t perfect. But there’s more to it. The council said she’d been informed 3 times he wasn’t being taken, but she claimed not to have known.
so I don’t think we got 100% the truth.
The whole thing is awful though and she must be going through hell, regardless of why the boy was taken.

Like with most of these kinds of things the truth will fall somewhere in the middle of the council events and the mothers events. Besides that though it is horrifying to even image a scenario where your baby is taken and placed with people who would be so abusive that they kill him.

It's a truly awful thing that's happened all round and I hope that this mother has support in real life.

Despite what the press makes out, social workers don't just swoop in and remove children willy nilly. Many multi-agency meetings take place prior to the decision. The birth mother clearly couldn't/wouldn't keep him safe.

I was a bit cynical when I saw that, but I do think the council are lying.

For one thing, there is no paperwork to support their version of events and for another, the women supporting Laura Corkhill at the refuge weren’t told either.

I do think on this occasion they didn’t follow procedure properly, but that’s my question: what do you do then? If someone like Laura Corkhill suspects things aren’t being done properly, what can she do?

If she objects she’s not cooperating with social services and she’s probably lying anyway. I know this isn’t what you are personally saying, @GyozaGuiting (please don’t take it as such!) but do you see what I mean? She’s in an impossible position.

@Supersee except in this case, that does appear to be exactly what happened.

And this is the concern: people say -

Social workers don’t just swoop in and take children.

Theres no smoke without fire.

There must be more to it.

Etc.

It immediately puts the birth parents (who often won’t have the best education or support systems anyway) at a huge disadvantage.

I found this article incredibly disappointing from the BBC. The story is absolutely heartbreaking. The birth mum has had an awful and incredibly unlucky experience.

However, a child is not removed a few days after birth without them being incredibly at risk. A court makes this decision, not social workers. The woman was unable to demonstrate she was able to change. The child would have been at risk in her care.

Articles like this demonise social services. They are ‘damned if they do, damned if they don’t’. It’s an incredibly hard job and cases like this are incredibly rare.

There were clearly massive failings in this case, with the fact that abusers were allowed foster parents. We do not know from this woman’s account that there were failings in having the child removed in the first place.

It says the child would still be alive if he remained with her. If she was unable to demonstrate she was able to abstain from relationships with abusive men then the child may have been just as at risk remaining with her.

While I suspect there is probably more to this I would very interested to see if the council had paperwork to show they had followed correct procedure and that mum was told that her baby would be removed. Surely it should all be noted? We are always told of the amount of paperwork involved in social work.
People in the mums position are pretty powerless. Like you say OP if they dare to questions things then they are automatically seen as not cooperating and not believed.

Having witnessed social services act in a very similar manner towards someone I know I can well believe the mothers version of events is probably not far from the truth.

My friend did get her child back but only after they were taken away for over a year. She was lucky to have family who paid for a bloody awesome legal team who did eventually manage to prove that the lies the social workers were telling were indeed false.

And before anyone says 'but you didn't know all the fact'. I do. I was present for a lot of the meetings in support of mum and have read all the paperwork and minutes of meetings.

@acquiescence - so do you believe the actions of social services are never misguided, wrong, naive, ill judged?

That’s clearly not true, but usually the above apply to cases where perhaps it is believed children should be removed and aren’t. This seems to have worked the other way.

Laura Corkhill personally was not a danger to children: the risk came from (if the article is to be believed) a propensity for relationships that were violent.

Of course, a home that is violent is not one a child should be raised in, but in this case, Laura Corkhill was not in a relationship at all. Moreover, she was being supported by a charitable organisation.

Given what subsequently happened, can no one accept that maybe SS were wrong? Or does ‘wrong’ only work one way?

Exactly @Thesearmsofmine

’damned if they do, damned if they don’t’ seems to apply equally to the birth parents in this case.

Yes, I have a friend who was poorly treated by SS too. They most certainly did not follow correct procedure and she was far too scared to rock the boat so wouldn’t seek legal advice. Thankfully she got her child back.

SS needs a huge overhaul but that takes money and it’s not going to happen any time soon.

I believe every service can and will make mistakes. I just don’t think we have clear evidence here, from the birth mother’s personal account, that it was a mistake to remove the child in the first place. The serious case review is pending. I am certain that serious failings will be found overall.

What I am saying it that an alternative outcome to this could have been:

Child remained in birth mum’s care. She manages to remain away from abusive men for a year. She then allows an abusive partner into her house. He is violent toward her, and the child, the child sustains serious injury at his hands or dies.

This was the outcome that social services were seeking to prevent. This could have happened.

That could indeed have happened @acquiescence but ongoing support and intervention is the answer there, not removal.

We cannot remove children on the basis of what ‘might’ happen.

It is not just social services here who failed but the whole system around child protection. What did the police do when Laura’s ex partner beat her so severely that she miscarried her baby. He could have killed her too. Surely a crime as severe as that warrants a jail sentence. What was done to protect her from her abuser. If anything real had been done the first two children would not have been taken away.

Unless you have been a victim of abuse of worked in the system you don’t understand how bad it is. It is very common for children to be removed from their mums because their mother is a victim of abuse with very little support for her to keep safe. This then exposes the children to more abuse.

Mother would have had free legal representation throughout the court proceedings (and it is the court which endorses the plan for removal and adoption - she will have had opportunities to make her case). I absolutely do not believe she was not aware of the plan for removal or adoption. I don’t doubt the council has made mistakes in its dealings with mum once he was removed and after he died.

The serious case review is due to be published today which is done by an Independent Reviewer. They usually set out the timeline of a child being taken into care, prebirth assessments etc. I don't doubt Laura Corkhill is absolutely devastated by Leiland's death but the adoption plans and removal would have been through court and she would have been appointed legal representatives to deal with the court aspects.

We cannot remove children on the basis of what ‘might’ happen.

Children are removed based on the risk of future harm all the time.

No which is why there is very likely more to the story. children very rarely get freed for adoption and rarely on the basis the mother claims. While I don’t dismiss her account, we need both sides of the story.

I have worked in social work. Unfortunately the reason so many parents who are suspected of abuse are often not believed is because so many don’t tell the truth again and again and again. We should listen to both sides of course but I am sceptical. She would have had legal advice many times before the child was removed.

We are having a serious case review so evidence will be heard from all parties as it should.

We cannot remove children on the basis of what ‘might’ happen.

Bloody hell, of course you can. It's called safeguarding.

This is exactly what I thought.

Completely agree with you. I’ve seen comments about how ‘there must be more to the story’. I feel awful for people who are that naive because the fact of the matter is, anyone making those comments, if they were beaten up by their husband today and reported him, and left him, children’s services will NOT treat them as victims. And it could happen to any one of us. social services will automatically (and wrongly) assume DV victims can’t protect their children. They don’t always recognise how hard it is to escape these relationships- if you don’t immediately have somewhere to go and settle then they consider your children at risk. And DV victims are almost always women. Don’t underestimate the misogyny steeped in public services. There is far more scrutiny of women in these cases than men. They make assumptions about every woman based on “well sometimes women go on again into other abusive relationships”. They apply that logic to victims by default

The fact is, Laura Corkhill was not in an abusive relationship at the time of her pregnancy, or in fact any relatioanship, and they decided that as a past DV victim she isn’t fit to be a mother. She turned up to contact centre visits and bonded with her so , but it’s wasn’t enough because she ant turn back time. They literally punished her for surviving DV. Please don’t think there ‘must’ be more because it’s an uncomfortable truth that actually there often isn’t more to it. And it could happen to you.

And they wonder why women don’t report DV.

Those women are amazing. Women Out West is a recognised support service that does brilliant work. It’s not just her mates and I would believe it when they say that social services cocked up

Let’s not forget the authority that was supposed to protect Leiland-James was the same authority that allowed 11 month old Poppi Worthington’s rapist to walk free. I’m inclined to believe that they were useless once again