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.

@midairchallenger if you bother to read my posts you would know that my argument isn't social services are perfect. You can't just make up things I haven't said to suit your own agenda.

@Parkperson00I think everyone would agree with that.
What people are taking issue with is the way its being suggested that the choice was between his mother or the awful adoption

Yes, it makes people feel safer if they tell themselves social services always make faultless decisions to remove children yet could not possibly protect that same child from being murdered.

People will maintain all manner of delusions to make themselves feel safe in an unsafe world.

You can't have it both ways - either they are perfect and beyond question, or they are fallible and that applies as much to their decision to remove the child as to their decision to hand him to his murderer.

Sorry but this is beyond ridiculous. It's not a either/or.

What do you mean by authority? Are you talking about a local authority, the local council?

I would have thought the courts or police were the decision makers about whether a rapist is charged and then prosecuted and finally convicted?

Nobody here has any access to the court documents upon which the decision was made - by a judge - for Leiland to be taken into care. Nobody can reasonably comment upon whether this was unreasonable. Of course social workers are human and can make mistakes, as can any professional working with children, and I’m not suggesting people who’ve had poor experiences of social workers are all lying because there’s bad in every profession, but an awful lot of neglectful parents are going to say the social were evil and stole their child.

unfortunately also an unintended consequence of these high profile cases and criticisms is that social workers become more twitchy and risk averse and may be more inclined to act firmly or seek the involvement of a court.

I haven’t yet read the full serious case review as I can’t find it publicly but no doubt it’ll find its way to me in due course. But from what I can see the main failing seems to be information not being shared by health professionals in respect of the adoptive mother’s drinking and anger. Social workers won’t know unless this is shared. I know there were concerns over bonding but this, on its own, is unlikely to be seen as an immediate risk of harm. If there had been a fuller picture, it might’ve set off louder alarm bells. Potential adoptive parents already jump through many hoops and I’m sure would attest to how gruelling and at times intrusive the process is, but there are always ways to review this process. Maybe they also need to add requirements to undertake formal drug and alcohol testing rather than take them at their word.

I'm not making anything up, thanks.

Sorry i was trying to edit and it posted it sorry.
There was clearly other better options.
Also the placing all blame of tge social workers when other agencies clearly had a part to play.

Yes, it makes people feel safer if they tell themselves social services always make faultless decisions to remove children

Nobody has said they never make mistakes or that they don't sometimes make terrible ones!

@midairchallenger appears to have a 'unique' way of interpreting posts, to put it mildly.

This. It’s naïve to think that it’s in any way likely a baby would be subject to a pre birth removal and freed for adoption if there is no abuse or serious neglect.

I don’t think it is an individual social workers fault. I think it strongly suggests that the system was not properly set up to explore all avenues of prospective adopters.

I am a bit amazed that even with a baby beaten to death people are still saying that no mistakes are made!

Absolutely.

Its interesting and concerning that two completely different things are being conflated here

Firstly a child is removed, placed in care, while proceedings and assessments look at whether she can make the changes she needs to, in order to safely care for her child. The court feels she cant and that permanent separation is required and orders a placement order

Theres no evidence this was not the right decision for the child

The LA then look for adopters and find a match they think is right and he is then placed for adoption with a view to the LA gaining an adoption order for him. Now there is every bit of evidence that this was the wrong decision for the child. Theres clearly information which wasnt given to SWs to know this but when information did come to light, action was too slow.

The two are not the same. The incorrect decision about the adopters doesnt mean it was also the incorrect decision for the courts to remove him from his mum.

I am a bit amazed that even with a baby beaten to death people are still saying that no mistakes are made!

Please paste the post/s where someone, anyone, has stated no mistakes are made. People are literally now just starting to make things up.

Theres no evidence this was not the right decision for the child

Well yes, there is.

There is evidence (or rather lack of evidence) that the birth mother wasn’t kept informed.

There is evidence that she was engaging with services.

There is evidence that she was not personally considered a danger to the child: rather her relationships were.

There is evidence that a reputable charitable organisation were confident she could parent well.

And there’s certainly evidence that it wasn’t the right decision, given he is dead.

Why?

Class.

No one is saying that that I can see. You don’t have all the facts about the removal from the birth mother so it’s pointless for you to continue to speculate.

as I’ve said, the birth mother would have had legal representation and court intervention to remove the child. Her story doesn’t seem likely at all but we need to hear all the evidence before we can conclude anything.

Exactly this

@Supersee , it isn’t that people are saying no mistakes were made. It’s the absolute insistence that there was more to it and Leiland James should absolutely have been removed - just not placed with the Castles.

The two things stand in direct contradiction to one another, because if a mistake was made in placing Leiland James with the Castles, it is surely at least conceivable that a mistake was made in removing him, or at least that mistakes were made during Laura Corkhills pregnancy and immediately after the birth.

Of course, it isn’t an easy call to make and as I indicated earlier, I do have sympathy with that fact. But I do feel uneasy about the absolute resolute insistence that the article was misleading / there was more to it / he would have been abused / he would have been neglected / she couldn’t parent him.

Thinking about the whole picture - the charity’s response, the placing of Leiland James with the Castles, keeping him with the Castles, Poppi Worthington, the eulogy, when you look at the whole picture, don’t you think there is even a possibility that Laura Corkhill’s version of events, as reported in the BBC article (which isn’t known for purposefully being sensationalist or dramatic) - are correct?

Had the information about the smacking the older child, debt, drinking and counselling been disclosed

The system shouldn’t really be relying on prospective adopters being honest and true, should it?

The two issues, as eloquently explained by a PP, are separate. I'm failing to see how people aren't understanding this.

The only evidence in this area is coming from her and her supporters. We need both sides of the story - we don’t know the details of why he was removed. Obviously there were serious errors with the placement.

It doesn’t rely on them being honest. It relies on them, their referees, their GP, and anyone else involved in the assessment process being honest and sharing vital information which may affect the judgment of their suitability as an adopter.

Finance? No credit check?

The courts had the information and a judge decided on that information that they would order a final Care Order and a Placement Order

Care proceedings are set to finalise within 26 weeks but frequently run over time, sometimes up to a couple of years following Covid, but thats often because more and more assessments are ordered to update on any changes a parent might have made.

Parents counsel will often appeal, will often put in applications for independent assessments, more and more reports commissioned from psychologists, psychiatrists, reports from partner agencies.

But with all of that, and with sustained legal representation you believe that mother didnt know and there was evidence she could parent safely for the childs minority.

The poor care and ultimate murder of the child while in care is not an indicator that the mother was able to safely care for her child, so to use what happened to him as evidence that removal from her was incorrect is a flawed position.