Domestic Abuse and Care Proceedings - the AWR case (another mum on the run)

[johnhemming]

Hopefully this won't happen to any of the readers, but another mum on the run story has been publicised in the Sunday Telegraph

Here
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/3868100/Mother-flees-abroad-with-her-son-to -escape-social-workers.html

I have put additional information on my weblog here
johnhemming.blogspot.com/2008/12/arw-mum-on-run-with-her-children.html

This is a case which will interest anyone who is looking at how to contest Hague Convention proceedings in public family law.

I know of two cases like this. The other one has been publicised in The Times, but I cannot find it at the moment.

Camilla Cavendish has also written about DV/DA and Care proceedings
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/camilla_cavendish/article5050750.ece

The psychiatrists and psychologists who don't say what the the local authority wants get fewer instruction letters.

It is important for people to remember that a material number of forced adoptions fail (aka are disrupted) and the child returns to the care system. I believe the figure is somewhere between 25 and 50%. For older children the failure rate is higher.

Because the judges prevent parents from getting second opinions shedloads of insane decisions are made.

Amazing how psychologists always find something wrong which will take a considerable time in therapy to 'fix'

Usually 3 years..

How they can put a timescale on it is beyond me.. until you find that three years is considered to be 'too long for the child' therefore the parents have no chance of getting the child back even if they do go for therapy.. the child is then put up for adoption.. usually the adoption proceedings are started at the same time as the care proceedings, therefore the child is freed almost immediately after judgement in the care proceedings for adoption.

Funny that.

BlueSapphire77 has a clear understanding as to how everything has to suit the objectives of the local authority and although it is "very sad" for the parents their child has to be taken off them because of the time it would take for therapy.

When the child grows up, of course, the same problems exist for the child as they were at some stage in care.

I could tell scummymummy was a social worker lol the words they use are always the same.

John i thought you would like to know that i have unsupervised contact with my daughter now after to all intents and purposes having 'given up' and told the ss i was going to stop banging my head against their brick wall, and accepted once monthly contact.. two months after i accepted this, they contacted me to ask why had i, after so many years, just given up. I answered that i was happy with the level of contact, happy with the foster placement, smiled sweetly, and walked away.
I knew that my daughter had been absconding from the placement and had been found a few times by SS walking to either my mums or my house, had been put in a police car by force after one 'walkabout' i knew she wasn't happy, and it broke my heart, but as they had said not to undermine the placement, and insisted she was happy and settled, i didn't let on that i knew different. The FC's got her a mobile phone for her b'day, the instant she got it she was on the phone to me. They allowed her with my permission internet access, she bypassed their parental controls and emailed me from a gmail address constantly. I encouraged her to stay in the placement. She wrote that she was annoyed with me for taking 'their' side, i sent copies to the SW in the interests of openness, the next time my daughter absconded and the police couldn't get her back in the car, (i arrived as they were attempting to peel her fingers off the roof of the car at the same time as trying to push her legs in) the SS called me and invited me to take her to my mothers. Then they made arrangements for totally unsupervised contact.

In the end, my daughter has finally shown how pissed off she is, and found her voice. As in tammy and yvonne's case the truth will out. My daughter states to the SS constantly how when she leaves care the FC who was allowed to get away with sexually abusing her is going to finally be brought to justice. As will the sw who pulled her and broke her arm.

2 more years. We can wait.

In the meantime they have tried it on with new baby to be and have lost dismally, have now said as long as my partner does a CRB check they want my daughter to have contact overnight and as much as possible with new baby. They have admitted to doing my son a great wrong by seperating him from his sister, and have indicated a financial payout.
We will see.

As i said before i am glad you continue to help parents who must feel as low as i have over the past 7 years..

And i still say, yes some parents are innocent and are being headhunted..some HAVE done wrong but all they need is steering in the right direction to make them better parents, NOT the systematic disassembling of their family unit, with no hope of having their children returned no matter what they do, and with no patronising professionals involved.
Some parents do not deserve the gift of children fullstop. I do feel for social workers and they have my sympathy despite what i and my family have personally been put through by them, and i know (i have paperwork lol) that they have used many aspects of our case as a learning tool to make sure the same mistakes aren't made again. Its a shame that comes too late for me and my family but i am glad if it helps even one more family.
It must be hard to weed out the innocent, when you have a suspicious way of looking at everything.
It must be hard to weed out the ones who deserve to have their children removed, when they won't let you see the kids, or are violent towards you when you visit.
It must be hard to help families to change their parenting styles when you can not force them to accept the help you offer without resorting to care proceedings. and hard when the family is willing to work with you but the facilities and services are poor or non existent.

A complete overhaul of the system is required methinks, with a non patronising 'muscleflexing' approach is taken with families who are willing, and harder penalties are taken on those who refuse .. the children must come first but to all intents and purposes this means supporting the parents to make the right decisions and no one will take advice off a group of people known to 'take your children and never return them'

Gonna stop there as going into rambling phase lol

Is 'open adoption' done much here? I'm from the US (live here in the UK).

I know that open adoption, where the birth parents are able to keep some form of communication with the children seems to be beneficial. It depends on the circumstances, but know of a case where there was serious neglect (not direct physical abuse) but the parents were OK with the adoption as long as they could do cards/presents at Christmas and Birthdays and intermittent calls/letters.

Would this be a helpful bridge so that contact isn't lost between birth parents where the children really would thrive better elsewhere?

What I find sad is that all of this really makes the children's lives miserable. The parents can cope better, but the children end up really damaged by the state.

It is interesting that the figures demonstraet that those states that undermine the family in the way that England and Wales does have more deaths from child abuse.

For eample the WHO stats on babies dying from nutritional problems show the failure of our systems.

We don't support families in England we hit them with a hammer and it is the children that suffer the most.

There is no doubt that social workers do a very difficult job, for all the reasons outlined by BlueSapphire. They will make wrong decisions. On one hand, Baby P's social workers did not remove him from his family and on the other hand, families are being torn apart for flimsy reasons.

In the light of the likelihood of that wrong judgments will be made by a system that is underfunded, overloaded and poorly managed, I cannot see any justification for maintaining the secrecy of family courts. The secrecy can end up being conveniently used as a veil for incompetence where there should be transparency and accountability.

Johnhemming, not surprising that the councils will use psychiatrists and experts who support their case. But does a court really deny the parents the right to call their own expert witness? What could be the justification for that, when the parents are fighting to keep their children? I am sure many parents would put keeping their family together above their own personal freedom, yet an accused in their own criminal trial would surely be allowed the right to call their own expert witness in their defence but not a parent in a family court case?? Sounds medieval.

This is a really interesting thread. Sorry, I don't have much to add but I do agree with a lot of what has been said here despite thinking differently when the Baby P case was in the news (when the children should clearly have been removed from the mother).

But does a court really deny the parents the right to call their own expert witness?
Sort of.

A joint instruction happens for the expert and the parents are generally not allowed a second opinon. OTOH the local authority can veto an expert which is where it all falls apart. Then solicitors generally (but not all) tend to want to be on side with the LA which means for example today I had a case where the barrister conceded the case against the parents when in fact the parents did not want to concede it.

An awful mess.

Full of corruption.

johnhemming, the case you quoted recently with all that psychobabble nonsense is truly shocking and clearly the state gone mad.

However, I think you should also acknowledge that sometimes the state does support the family over the child, with tragic consequences, such as obviously the Baby P case when a large council house and benefits were provided, free childminder, parenting classes etc but all these are worth nothing if the state can't spot that a convicted animal torturer has moved in to a household overloaded with existing problems such as older siblings known to have been abused.

I agree with Blueshoes about opening up the family courts which I think I read recently in the Times was going to happen? And I know from my own previous work relating to personal injury cases that "expert witnesses" can very much be bought- I only ever instructed the ones that I knew would be likely to see things our way.

Johnhemming, if the barrister conceded a case against the parents which the parents did not want conceding, that is surely grounds for disciplinary action against the barrister?

I am confused. Are family courts really 'courts' ie with 2 parties, the council on one side and the parents on the other, each having independent representation? If the council and the parents cannot jointly agree the expert witness, what happens then? I would hope that each party then calls one expert and the judge decides which is more credible.

The problem I assume for the barristers is that there is generally no money to be made from families, so they all want to get the LA instructions - a nice little earner. That is a conflict of interest for them to ostensibly act for the parents but really seek to sweeten the opposing side. This is a recipe for a grave miscarriage of justice. My heart bleeds.

In the baby peter case the mother needs to have her reproductive organs removed not just her child/ren.
But i have to ask how many children might be in a situation, say for instance, where a parent knows their own parenting was crap, and don't want to go the same route with their own kids, yet are trapped in the cycle because they do not know how to do it differently?
There is nowhere these people can go and say 'i have a problem with my parenting and it is affecting my children' without the fear of having their kids taken away or being judged or as john says .. of being hit with a hammer.

I admit my own caregivers as a child were CRAP. I admit to watching programme after programme on the tv about positive parenting. I was self taught.

This is what is wrong with the 'system' it is too bloody heavy handed with the wrong people..easy targets, willing victims.. the ones who come for help and lose their kids.

And do you know, if the social services believe their care is so good, why is it that children in care who have children before the age of 18 are subjected to all sorts of crap to prove their upbringing in care has not impacted on their parenting??!!
In other words, these kids are either battery hens for the adoption 'market' or they are assessed to death for something that isn't their fault..So if care is soooo good, wouldn't it be that the SS could say 'our caregiving is of such a high standard we are churning out the next generation of excellent parents' and would not have to assess these girls parenting at all?

I think the best rate of pay is to work as a solicitor for CAFCASS which pays an extra 15% compared to legal aid.

MaryMarriott misses the point about Baby P. The reason Baby P was not taken into care was that they had hit the target for children in care and therefore were holding back. The figures are in Hansard.

The fact that in Haringey there were two children in care because of being spoken to in a way which undermined their self esteem is indeed relevant as well.

But haven't the court application fees soared recently? From about £400 - £2500 to make an application to commence child protection proceedings? Has this had any effect on the the process?

OK- I see that as a social worker in a completely different field from the one under discussion I am deemed by other posters to be unfit to have an opinion as "lol the words I use" are indicative of my shite and biased profession. I will therefore not take any more of your time. However, I will repeat once more that I believe that both children and their families deserve those working with them- as social workers, judges, psychologists, MPs, advocates- to have very careful consideration of the evidence and neither to minimise what may be very real problems nor to take disproportionate action when family problems may be solved in other ways than removing the child. My problem with some of the posts on here is that they seem not to be based on this kind of consideration.

I am also surprised at the number of people that simply deny the whole concept of emotional abuse. Arguing that anyone could be accused of emotional abuse and that therefore it is never a real and serious problem is like saying that because many parents have occasionally been slightly physically rough with theur children or punished them by a smack there is no such thing as serious physical abuse. Have you seen the Barnardo's advertisement currently airing?

Hi scummymummy, sorry i didn't mean to demean you in any way nor was it an attack on you, or your profession.. you would have a very valid opinion on a post like this and also a very valuable one. Aim is not to alienate anyone in a situation such as this. A them and us situation is definately what should be avoided.
Your posts are not a waste of our time and i hope you consider not of yours either.

sorry about the way i put the 'words you use' sentence, its hard because in type you cannot put any emotion into the way things are said, its just that the same words are used

Take where i would say 'naughty little shit' you and those in your profession would say 'challenging' am i right?
Joking abt the naughty little shit thing honest

Scummymummy: the question on emotional abuse is whether the emotional abuse of putting a child ... remember a child ... into state care is justified on emotional grounds. Given that the action itself is traumatic for the child there has to be a very high threshold. That is clearly not met in the cases being discussed here.

I note that you have given up arguing on the judgment in respect of the S case now I have quoted the key paragraph.

It is also important to member that the state resources wasted on S and L cases are resources not available for Baby P etc.

As to the question in respect of the costs of the applications. Care proceedings have a cost of the order of £25,000 plus. Hence the court application itself is not that improtant. The cost of keeping a child in care normally lies within the £40-50K territory (pa). Hence you will note that the only practitioners complaining about the change are those that are losing money - the lawyers.

The Public Law Outline has a greater effect.

I think as this website is for mums it is also worthwhile pointing out how many mums get involved with the SS when they are diagnosed with PND and are usually assessed on emotional abuse and neglect..

At a time when they are going through hell emotionally do they really need this crap? I think not.

And imagine having a SW walking into the room after you have just given birth and walking away with your baby.
And refusing to allow you to bond with or even supply breast milk for your baby.
Or "allow" you to milk yourself like a cow and supply the FC's with milk to feed your baby.

All things that really do happen in this country and in this day and age which i think is positively medieval.

I don't think such awful things would have been as commonplace in medieval times.

On the issue of emotional abuse, it is heartbreaking for a child to have to live through that. Yet the outcomes of children in care is so dire as to require the need for caution in removing a child from its family for emotional abuse per se.

I would therefore agree that more research needs to be done in this area between keeping an emotionally abused child in their family v. removing them into the care system. It is really a rock and a hard place.

I agree with bluesapphire that PND poses a huge dilemma and for many women a flashpoint of concern should emotional abuse be a definitive criteria for taking a child into care.

I'm not sure I understand this fully. The summary of report quoted indicates that the mother had failed to reach targets set by social services, that the father was unable to consistently parent the child and that long-term foster care was recommended.

Sounds like a good plan.

I assumed that the 'not meeting targets' part is related to where they describe that she doesn't see any need to improve her parenting skills when her child has an attachment disorder.

The very least she needs to do (and show to do) is take up the challenge of engaging with her childs attachment disorder.