family courts - times campaign

[tatt]

I've no personal experience of these courts but the stories I have read make me pretty concerned about the secrecy around them. Read the story here and if you are also concerned sign up to their campaign

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/camilla_cavendish/article4271773.ece

What happened to thatbyoung girl that has been on tv? She had been on 'This Morning'.
She was 22 I think, and pg. Social services were going to whip her baby away as soon as it was born, because she had been depressed as a teenager! A phsycologist (sp?), that had never met her made the final decision that it was best for baby to be removed.
She had been fighting her case whilst pg, does anyone know what happened?

Oh, shes here.

I have written to my MP.

The problem is the 'experts' are paid by social services, so not exactly unbiased plus if they give them the report they want SS will come back to them again, guaranteeing a good regular income. You can get your own 'expert' but this is usually quite difficult on legal aid. SS will then only pick out the bits that support their case and ignore the rest or as in my case 'lose' the report completely if it doesnt say what they want.

I want to send my best wishes to Fran Lyon in case she reads this, but warn her that they haven't changed their mind about taking your baby by ofering a 'mother and baby placement' They will still apply for a care order in case the placement fails, then try their best to make sure it does.
I went to one of their mother and baby placements which turned out to be completely unsuitable. When I complained they agreed that it was unsuitable but used this reason to take my baby away 3 days later.

Very good point, smallwhitecat, The paediatric profession should be ashamed of Southall, Meadows and their acolytes. They should be horrified that children and parents have been harmed when loving families have been torn apart. Instead they have been busy pretending that they are somehow the victims and are too frightened to work in child protection. As if!

The only paeds who have come up before the GMC in relation to child protection are Southall and Meadows. If doctors do their job, there is no problem - even for those who are crap (and it's inevitable as in any other walk of life that some are less than brilliant). Even paeds who have persecuted parents on the basis of injuries that were actually caused in hospital have escaped censure.

and it's very disturbing if medical expert witnesses are, as it seems, tailoring their reports to their paymasters. I used to work for an expert witness in another field and he was always very clear that his responsibility was to the court, to give a true opinion to the best of his professional knowledge and to state very clearly where his area of expertise ended. Unlike Roy Meadows who merrily made up statistics that went unchallenged by a court. Judges are supposed to be experienced at testing the evidence, yet many have clearly just taken the say-so of doctors and social workers.

I have been in touch with this lady www.geocities.com/miaandceara who used to have a website about her case, but it seems that now she's taken that down because her campaigning has been cited against her (or that's how I read it from what she has on the site now)

I am not here to deny that there have been terrible miscarriages of justice in the family law system. There have been.

I would support more open-ness in court proceedings, if only to help bring an end to the kind of fear and hysteria I see reflected here. Family courts are private to protect the children but I agree there needs to be a way to have more openess in the system while protecting children from having every detail of their family life being open to reporting.

I've worked in the family law system for over ten years, representing parents AND local authorities. I just don't recognise at all what is being described here. I'd say about 95% of my cases it was absolutely clear why a Local Authority was issuing proceedings and frankly they should have done it years ago.

I think it is worth bearing in mind that not everyone who complains to their MP/newspapers actually has a case. There are some very, very bad parents out there and if you leave the children with them, the children will die - from neglect or from application of physical force. Or if they don't die, their future emotional development will be utterly compromised by constant exposure to drunk/drugged/violent parents/carers.

That is the very stark reality social workers have to grapple with on a daily basis and I feel real sympathy for most of them. I wouldn't do their job for the money they get.

So yes to more exploration of how we deal with the levels of fear and mistrust which I can see are very high, but no to slagging off a whole system when the worst i think you can say about the vast majority of those who work there is that they are over worked, over stressed and under funded.

Your post is quite reassuring to me Spero and as you say the family law system should be more open if only to prevent fear and misunderstanding. I do believe that the majority of children taken from their parents are taken for the right reasons and in most cases it really is the only way to guarantee a child's safety.

However I do think that opening up the system and shedding light on the grey areas can only bring benefits, not only to the children and families involved but also those who work within the system. I think that in these situations as hard as it is to achieve there has to be 100% accuracy. The destruction and pain caused by "mistakes" is unfathomable and cannot be permitted and I do feel that opening the family courts up to public scrutiny - obviously with other protective measures in place to protect children's privacy - would work to prevent this.

Spero - I would imagine that most children taken away from their parents are done so for very valid reasons. However, the hysteria is caused by the secrecy of the courts. Our imaginations go into over drive.

Rape cases are reported in the press with the victim keeping their anonymity. I am sure the same could be acheived with the family courts.

The thing is, Spero, if the system is as good as you say it is, why have there been several judgements recently where the judge has slammed SS for, amongst other things, removing babies illegally, without a court order? For flouting basic procedures? For ignoring the needs of children in their care who become parents and just reaching for the 'snatch the baby' option, ignoring their own legal responsibilities?

Why are the Rochdale social workers - proven perjurers, caught on their own cameras tormenting little children - still working and protected by their profession? Why was a junior social worker hung out to dry over poor Victoria Climbie while her bosses won major promotions at a national level?

Concern about the activities of the family courts is not hysteria. It is genuine concern about something that is very, very wrong. The same features keep coming up again and again.

Just because the vast majority of child protection cases are - you say - clear cut, doesn't mean repeated wrong-doing is OK or anyone who says 'this needs looking at' is hysterical. Poor practice, law-breaking and unprofessional behaviour should be addressed.

I agree many SWs are overloaded and child protection tends not to be well-resourced. Excellent reasons for SWs and anyone who cares about child protection to address the problems with the family courts. Because opening up to scrutiny would demonstrate that departments running with 50 per cent vacancy levels cannot do a decent job.

and why, or why, were the couple featured on BBC's 'The Man With 20 Kids' still allowed to keep their children when they were living in appalling neglect, with alcoholic parents and some of them not in school?

if the courts can protect the confidentiality of rape victims, it can do so for family cases.

it's already done in other countries.

and there needs to be accountability - criminal accountability as well.

Spero You're right I was HYSTERICAL when my baby was taken from me

Of the 95% of cases you say were justified do you really feel that removing the child from its family was the best course of action?
Wouldn't a different form of intervention, where a child stayed within its family receiving ongoing help and support, been in the best (although more expensive) interests of the child, in a vast majority of cases?

And that still leaves the 5% of cases where a child has wrongly removed from its family and in some cases permanantly adopted away from its family. Is it really acceptable that such a high percentage should have their lives destroyed, in order to protect the few that genuinely this form of action?

Whilst you state that if left with theeir families these children's emotional welfare is compromised , you fail to also mention that children in care are more likely to

• leave school wih few or no qualictions
• abuse alcohol and drugs
• be involved in crime
• get pregnant as a teenager
• have poor mental health
• be homeless 2 years after leaving care
• become (long term) unemployed

The system as it is now is failing huge numbers of children, whethe they ae with thei families or not,and ts simply has to change. The first step is to open up the Family Courts.
Attitudes that imply that most people who lose their children deserve it means that ,unfortunatly, this will not happen.

The case where a child was removed from her mother without court order led, quite rightly to utter condemnation from the judge. However, what the newspapers were LESS keen to report is that when the LA did it properly and applied for an order, they got it and the baby was removed again. that child's mother very sadly, could not care for a young child.

Fiodyl, if you were in the minority of cases where awful mistakes were made, nothing I say can make you or your children feel better about what happened. I can only say that I am very aware of the anguish and heartbreak caused by removing children and I have fought very hard against LA when I thought they were wrong. Most times, I won because I was supported by the children's Guardian.

I didn't 'imply' that most children are taken away because their parents 'deserve' it. I said explicitly that most children should have been taken away because they deserved a right to a life free of pain, misery and exposure to all sorts of horrible things that some adults seem to think is ok to expose children to.

No parent 'deserves' that to happen. But some parents are so lost in their own problems, stemming from their own awful childhoods, that they are just unable to care for a child. This isn't moral condemnation, it is recognition of a horrible sad truth.

I totally agree with you, outcomes for children in care are appalling and we should as a nation be ashamed. But i'm afraid to say that I think most of the problem there is that children are simply left far too long in home environments where they are constantly exposed to conflict/drug addiction etc. By a very early age the damage is done.

In most of my cases the LA has worked with the family for YEARS. Many of my clients have very expensive residential assessments which just confirmed what everyone already knew.

I do think things have to change and I don't want anyone to feel that I don't understand or am not sympathetic to the utter misery parents feel when exposed to care proceedings... but I repeat, i don't think continually bad mouthing the professionals who work in this field and saying for eg that they set out to 'snatch' children to meet some gov target (utter, utter offensive bollox) is the right way to go.

I'd be interested in how people think there could be more openness in court reporting, without exposing children to having all their families dirty laundry washed and hung out to dry in public. For eg, if you name the parents and where they live, its not hard to work out who their children are. Do you think it can be done by anonymising all participants and not revealing the area?

O and just a thought - Edam, why do you think a lot of departments are running at a 50% vacancy level? Why is it that the social workers I meet are now Polish or south African?

Because we are running out of people prepared to do the job and take all this flak.

take all this flak - yeah, right, social workers are the victims here. Just like paediatricians. Tell that to the Rochdale children, now adults, who have had no justice, no recognition of the wrong that was done to them.

SW is an unglamorous job and child protection is the least glamorous arm. And many council chiefs aren't that bothered - they just don't work hard enough to recruit and retain their staff. The head of SS in my County Council earns well over £100k yet there have been damning reports into his department. If SWs campaigned for reform of their profession, its treatment by those in charge and greater accountability they would have my support.

The appalling results of a life in care - prison, homelessness, no qualifications - are not just because these children come from bad homes. The care system itself fails them, too - what does it do for a child if they are dumped hundreds of miles from home, in remote places, because property is cheaper there?

And then know they can be shifted at a moment's notice - a SW turns up on the doorstep when you get back from school and says 'right, we are off'? This happens OFTEN - kids in care are constantly shifted around. How the hell can they survive with no security and constant disruption? These are the most vulnerable kids who deserve the very best support. And we fail them horribly. If SS were raising merry hell about this, they would have my support.

Instead, they hush up wrongdoing in their own ranks, go into a huddle and hide behind 'oh, it's the horrible press who make us look bad'. And slag off parents who dare to try to fight for their children.

I have emailed my MP too.

Have e-mailed my MP about this.

Part of the reason many people don't want to be social workers is that they couldn't bring themselves to do something,because of policy,procedure,managerial incompetance and financial constraints, that is morally wrong and by far not in the best interest of the child. I agree with edam that SWs themselves could do alot to make their job more appealing.

Until April this year there was a target for local authorities to adopt children, but regardless of this far more babies and younge children are taken from their families than older children/teenagers and twice as many babies are adopted now than 10 years ago.

Is it just a coinsidence than the majority taken happen to be in the most easly adopableage group?

IMO SWs do tend to give up on kids once they are past age 7 or so and wouldnt be easy to adopt

there was a very good point made in The Times article that SWs have no regard for the child's privacy, in fact. Adoption magazines are full of pictures of named children with their personal details. Like puppies for sale. Very disturbing. And gives the lie to the claim that secrecy is about the child's needs. It's not. Clearly publicity/secrecy is about what suits SS's agenda.

Spero to answer your question about court reporting- surely its not alot different to reporting on a case in criminal court where children are involved- names,addreses with held plus any particularly identifying features of the case.

About the young woman who had her baby snatched illegally- how do you know that she is unable to care for a young child if she has never been given the chance to care for a young child? Is it based on yet another 'expert' opinion?

thats very true edam, in fact some of the adoption magazines I read a few years ago went as far as detailing the birth families background and difficulties they had experienced in their early life.

I feel sick reading them it like reading the 'free to a good home' ads in the local paper.

and no one answered my question.

how is it that the 'father' and 'mother' featured on shows like BBC1's 'The Man with 20 Kids' have all the children with them, despite appalling neglect as a result of uncontrolled alcoholism, but SW continues to try to take babies from the likes of Fran Lyon?

why is no one able to answer that?

well, rhetorical question there.

people are not targets, end secrecy in family courts and make those who fail to act responsibly liable for their actions same as doctors and nurses are.