A mother on the run

[milliec]

Message withdrawn

WOW

I do get a little weary of the comments that SWs and people in child protection are dammed if they do and dammed if they don't. It is their job to be able to spot which children need intervention and which don't. If they aren't very good at that, they should be retrained or booted out. And if they system undermines good social work, that has to be acknowledged and reformed. My godmother was, in her time, a very eminent SW and she is not impressed by current standards.

The SWs responsible for the appalling Rochdale false allegations - proven liars, captured on their own video recordings - are still working. The top bosses responsible for the Victoria Climbie case are still working - in fact the top bod was promoted. It was the girl at the bottom of the heap who took the blame. Tells you everything you need to know about the standards of the profession. I am sure there are good SWs out there doing their best but there is something rotten at the heart of the whole child protection system.

Agreed Edam & the system fails not only the children & families but those good SW's who are banging their heads against a brick wall trying to change things.

There is an aspect of the Public Law Outline (procedures for family cases) which can be read as asking people not to rock the boat viz to "cooperate".

The problem is that the bad behaviour from a substantial number of people involved reflects on those doing a good job.

Interesting report from Ofsted into CAFCASS published recently.

Yes very interesting report if anyone cares to browse

Rather worrying particularly as it covers my region....

Note that the reports indicates that all of England and Wales has a similar "inadequate" approach to writing court reports.

Gradually the truth is surfacing.

Indeed-keep chipping away!!

Bossybritches - the Family Law Reports or the Child Law Reports. There are also a number of journals, such as Childright.

I honestly don't think you would be allowed to see psychiatric reports from any cases heard in any courts; providing 'transparency' in the family courts would not provide you with the information you are after.

Thanks for those references Bessie but it's not for me. Howevber I shall peruse with interest to help me understand the system as it is now.

I don't need/want to see any report but the families and parents involved in Family Courts often don't know where to go if they want to challenge advice/instruction. The transparency I am seeking (as are others who have posted on here)& campaigning for is in the WHOLE system, good practice being encouraged, supported & copied & bad practice stamped out whether in SW/law/CAFCASS or any other MDT involved n childcare/child protection.

The tragic case just this week of baby Jessica is a sad case in point- (although I know it didn't reach court)

"The SWs responsible for the appalling Rochdale false allegations - proven liars, captured on their own video recordings - are still working. The top bosses responsible for the Victoria Climbie case are still working - in fact the top bod was promoted. It was the girl at the bottom of the heap who took the blame. Tells you everything you need to know about the standards of the profession. I am sure there are good SWs out there doing their best but there is something rotten at the heart of the whole child protection system."

The SW's who have posted here seem to see the problem in terms of an imaginary trade-off, where taking care to prevent tragedies means sometimes taking children from innocent parents. The problem is not about trade-offs but accountability. People who cannot or will not due their jobs with a basic level of competence should be fired. In any profession there will be a minority who are not up to scratch or who make terrible mistakes due to misguided notions - e.g. about the prevalence of MSbP or satanic abuse.

This article in the telegraph shows how nobody will be held at all accountable for the Jessica Randall case. It is a disgrace

I agree Upwind. I'm sure the SWs [and those involved in family courts] who post here do excellent work in their fields, but it does worry me that none of them admit to flaws in the current system, and seem to repeat this idea that if some children are taken from innocent parents that is a worthy trade off if one child is saved. It is about accountability, definitely, and they don't seem to realise that taking a child away from innocent parents results in equally ruined lives.

Yes, I am afraid I would rather see 1 child dead at the hands of parents than 10 taken away wrongly from their parents. In other words removing a child should be a very last resort and even offering mothers whom SW think are at risk the right to live in supervised care with their new baby as an alternative to removing the child is surely better. I think I would have rather lived in a secure prissn with my babies rather than have them removed from me but these mothers aren't even given that choice.

What most of us don't really know or come into contact with however is all those cases where parents really are appalling to their children, burning them, abusing them etc and obviously we need intervention in cases where it's needed.

I think we need better defaults too such as mothers and fathers after divorce get the children 50% of the time unless there is a good reason not etc.

I would rather not see one child dead.
But i think both analogies are false. One should not mean the other. It is the accountability issue that i think gets ignored.

i hadnt heard about that case,its awful

it gives the overall impression that the only thing SS and HCP's give a shit about is being seen to be doing a good job,and reaching government-imposed targets so that they continue to get whatever funding they need.

what sort of a system is it where mothers have to flee the country because SS think they might harm their baby after it's born,yet there are babies being horribly abused and murdered by their parents and nobody gives a rats arse about them.

xenia-i dont get your point about mothers and fathers having the children 50% of the time after divorce?i was unaware there were any issues regarding contact in the family courts at present?

Exactly ruty ACCOUNTABILITY-no-one wants to point a finger at anyone else and say this is where the buck stops.

As I've said before when did we last hear of a social worker being sacked for incompetance?

It's not rocket science to see that if the public could see a clear level of accountability & an ethos of doing the best they can to keep up standards within the Family Court System (including naming & shaming or sacking those who cock-up)then confidence would grow in the system.Good social workers have a helluva time forging relationships with a lot of their clients because of previous bad handling/communication. Families in fragile, vulnerable situations are hostile and defensive and if they have been let down by the system previously they will taken longer to form trusting relationships again with the very people who could help keep their family together.

In most cases after divorce many fathers are told to think themselves lucky if they have the child every other weekend. Many are very very distraught (as any mother can understand if the same were to happen to her). There is an assumption that men seeing a child once a fortnight is fine and more than enough. It's a huge injustice to men many of whom really want to see their child every day. Some couples particularly where both work can agree to have the children half the time each but there is no presumptoin for that. Instead there's a presumption fathers might see their children every fortnight. So I think that is very unfair. it is not as bad as forcibly adopting a baby but it is another example of a parent being deprived of proper contact with their child and countless mothers deny that contact in a very unfair way.

xenia- although its a horrible thought, i agree with you.

have noticed far too many threads on mn recently that say 'shit, my child's banged his head, hospital will think i'm an unfit parent'. and they do this because they KNOW its a possibility.

also agree that fathers often get a rough deal.

edam, i quite agree with you on the 'damned if they do, damned if they don't' attitude i've seen a lot from the sw's on here. and i don't doubt that they do good work, but they also rip families and lives apart with no accountability. in any other sector of work, some social workers would have been out on their arse long ago.

Xenia it is so true- my DH would be distraught if he only had contact with the DD's every other week & the kids miss out on extended family contact too with grandparents & cousins. It must be heartbreaking as a grandparent to lose contact with your GK's through divorce of your child.

BossyB wit hrespect there have been SW sacked for their role in abuse cases - going back to Jasmine Beckford and all since.

in less controversial cases you won't hear of them, as it is too mundane to make a national press.

Besides, SW who leave do so after lengthy periods of sick leave as they are too strung out to to handle the unremitting pressure that ofetn comes with child protection cases. There is not simply enough hours in hte day to perform sometimes even the core tasks they are told they must do.

And yes, a massive feature of day-to-day CP work is "screwed if you do, screwed if you don't".

SW are not my favourite breed. But our approach to CP reflects societies attitude to their client-group i.e. children. We tolerate levels of poverty, more edudation, abuses of various types, with piss poor levels of investment in them.

Startling cases DO reveal inadequacies in the system, but bashing SW who work in this exhausting field, often to their own personal detriment, is totally unfair.

Posters who do this would have their opinions altered should they ever have to witness the sort of work being successfully acheived on a daily basis.

I make all my children visit their other grandparents once a year (they don't live near) because I don't think it's fair that they lose the grandchildren after a divorce (and the younger ones see them about three times a year). But if I didn't make that effort I don't think it would happen. There is nominally a legal right for grandparents and others to apply to see the children but it can be very hard to enforce. It is very hard for fathers to get workable orders to see their children as mothers are rarely jailed who deny them contact. Hopefully that is being worked on at the moment. I got slightly off topic from adoptions however. But it's a similar issue - a parent wanting to see their child and denied it and I bet there are far more fathers denied contact (and a few mothers) after divorce than parents whose babies are forcibly adopted. So in a sense it's a much greater injustice.

that could, ironically, read poor education, even.

and the OP reveals this, does it not? A totally unsubstantiated article printed in a paper that "likes" this sort of thing, in order to make money out of this sort of thing.