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 social services had no evuidence what so ever that my son had suffered any sort of emoitonal harm in my care, the strange thing was that my son had witnessed a domestic violence incident nearly 2 years prior to taking him into care. I can honestly say hand on my heart that neither of my sons were affected the only thing that did come to light was when i kicked my partner out or refused to see him when he was drinking and if there was no contact with the father my son would become upset and sometimes challenging.
Social services tried to use this behaviour as evidence he had suffered emotional harm but how do you explain that this behaviour happened in the periods were there was no domestic violence incidences.
My son was abused in his first foster placement hence why he went onto have 2 more, the emotional harm was caused by social services aswell as the abuse by being put in care.
The investigation was flawed by social services informing the police that the allegation was made by myself because i wanted my son out of care! I now understand how foster carers get away with abuse and how social services manage to sweep it under the carpet, the jersey childrens homes abuses are a prime example.
Social services are quite willing to listen to the children when allegations are being made against family members but not so willing to listen or believe (even if you have it video taped as in my case) when the allegations are happening in state care.

I have searched the most recent serious cases of child abuse in state care and here is one from America

uk.youtube.com/watch?v=PJRjaf_caAc&feature=PlayList&p=3A4169B8D7306E45&index=7

i could always post some from the uk system but im sure if anyone is under the impression that foster care is a safe option for children this video is enough and doesnt matter where in the world it is.

To be fair, she's also got many examples of people being left with abusive families. But like some posters, she thinks sometimes it's the least worst option for people to stay with (mildly) abusive families - at least, she believes you should take the views of the person concerned into account.

johnhemming.... how have you read "all the documents etc" in particular cases when these are not allowed to be seen by anyone except a party to that particular case and their lawyers and any experts instructed save with the permission of the court?

The lawyer who claims to know about Family Law obviously is unaware of Family Proceedings Amendment (No 4) Regulations which entitles lay advisors such as myself access to all the papers. This SI passed in 2005. Also the 1688 Bill of Rights Article IX entitles me to see all the papers.

I also find it sad that someone thinks it is good cause to remove a child and have him adopted on the basis of the reasoning identified in para 19. I am aware of other contradictory reports in this case, but the family court only looked at part of the story.

If you are referring to me edam, yes in my case social services got it wrong! there is not one person who knows me, my family and my case notes that thinks any different (apart from know it all social services).
Also remember that Cafcass were against my son going into care as she thought my son had not suffered emotional harm and that i did have the 'ability to protect' and that foster care would cause him emotional harm.
Unfortunately it was too late and as i was not present in court that day i could not be joined with her fight to keep him in my care.
As for other cases i cant comment, but i would say that removing children from mothers who have violent ex partners is abusive and its state abuse.
edam please enlighten me on why you would think that my son was better off in care?

Quote: if neither parent was considered capable of meeting / prioritising his needs what should a court have decided to do??

Well i have just admitted in my last post not meeting or prioritising my sons needs..i know what a court would have decided to do had they known, they would have taken him as well. The ss have never shown any interest in my son AT ALL.
I have asked for services for him and been refused point blank, told i was a good and protective mother (based on how hard i fought for my daughter)

Do you want to hear my definition of emotional abuse?

Being told you can see your mummy on mothers' day, saving up and buying flowers for your mum, only to be told the day before mothers' day that you would not be seeing mum because the guardian ad litem had overridden the social worker re unsupervised contact.
Being told "Pack your stuff you are being returned home next week"
Then being told you aren't. No explaination.
Being put on ritalin for ADHD
Then parent is told you do not have ADHD, the ritalin is simply a way of getting you to behave for a foster carer who cannot cope with your incessant chatting about going home, wanting to be with mum, ect. Or is that physical abuse? Drugging a child to obtain control..oh yes, and the ritalin stopped her from eating, SW admitted she was worried child was going to 'die' if she did not begin eating .. "Child is so unhappy and distressed at being seperated from her mum she is showing signs of possibly contemplating suicide. She must be returned NOW with a proper package of support"

Having the same GAL and social worker (and my god, i loved this SW, she was one of the rare breed i'm tellin ya) nose to nose outside court because one wants to return the child, the other is dead against it because of the length of time the child has been in care.
So much for working together.
Same GAL putting a complaint in against SW trying to get her the sack.

Leaving the child in a placement she claimed to have been sexually abused in, because there were no other placements available..also interviewing child in placement about abuse and being 'surprised' that she retracted her statement, by the way the interview was done by a SW..not a police officer, the police were never made aware!

Having a child lead a transient lifestyle..Is this emotional abuse? 8 different placements in 12 months? 22 placements in 7 years?
Changing the childs school twice in a year..secondary school i mean, much harder to make friends..

Sorry but if this is happening to one child in care, this is one child too many..how many others are there?

Think you might be confusing Edam with someone else AWR.

Twinset.. i also agree with the class issue

And i, like you, found my own support network.
The SS destroyed mine when they insisted that in order to get my daughter back i would have to move out of the area all my friends were in and my family, to an area where i knew no one, THEN threw at me in court that i had CHOSEN to move away from my support network..

"She has moved to an area where she does not have family and friends to support her in the return of her daughter. She made this decision without consulting the social services"

WANKERS! I wish i had recorded the conversation that took place where i was told i had to move there to get my daughter back.
As it was i blew their lie out of the water because i did a data protection act request to the council for the minutes of the special cases housing meeting, where the SW had said i needed to move area.. they never quite forgave me for that..

My solicitor said quite often that she was glad she wasn't on their side.

The judge looked at my evidence, removed his glasses, looked at the social worker and said "I believe you owe this parent an apology"

I'm still waiting.........

controlfreakyhohohohohohoho

Quote: "in the para quoted above from a judgment what does johnhemming think should have happened to this poor boy? if neither parent was considered capable of meeting / prioritising his needs what should a court have decided to do?? send him home despite the assesed lack of change? leave him in foster care despite the lack of fundamental security that would involve for him?? do you all think emotional abuse and neglect are not important? isnt it every child's right to expect that they receive "good enough" parenting?"

Consider family, extended family and close friends first would be a good start.

Another good step would be the LA giving the child back when the parent/s can look after the child, or giving the child to extended family without a major costly fight in court.

Stolen children don't want to be in foster care and parents of stolen children don't want their children in foster care.

Parents that don't care, wouldn't bother.

ahh sorry edam if your comment was not made at me.
As for the state causing emotional harm this is also my view on it.

Telling my child he can have contact with mummy then telling him he cant see mummy on a numerous occasions.

Not letting my son see his mum on his birthday, Christmas day and only having 4 hours in 3 months of contact when he was crying out for help to me to get him out of foster care.Social services trying to hide his distress as they knew i would record it by phone or camera secretly everytime i saw him and eventually used that as an excuse to refuse contact(because i was recording).
Again standing in the way of justice,they can have their evidence but i cant have mine!

Taking him out of a school he had just started going to into another school then another (3 foster carers all together)within his first year of school.Isnt school one of the most important times and childhood memory

Telling me i was NOT ALLOWED to tell my son that he was coming home or that i wanted him to come home every time he asked when he was coming home or protested he wanted to come home.I think this is a way social services ensure that the child thinks they are the 'good people' and eventually feel abandoned by parents or not supported.This makes social services agenda to alienate the parents alot easier and get the child believing that the parents do not want them home and maybe the foster carers and social worker are the only people who actually care about him DISGUSTING.

Not letting a child ring his mum when he was upset,instead he had to confide in a stranger acting as 'mother' which he didnt and ended up being in his bedroom alone crying.

Dragging a child crying away from his mum when it was time to end contact which happened more times than any domestic violence incidences.

Making my son sit in a room with hardly any toys along with 2 contact workers taking notes for the whole duration feet away, what quality time with his mum!

Refusing him contact with his grandma because she couldnt 'fit in' with contact centre hours due to having to work.

Refusing him ontact with his great grandma and grandad because they had not been criminal record checked!!! they are in their 70's and only wanted him round for tea!

I could go on and on but i would be here all night.
This is why i left the country with him, he and my family were treated terribly and none of us had done anything wrong,no criminal records NOTHING.
On the other hand if they had treated my ex partner like that i could have understood it to maybe 'wake him up' but even then its the CHILDS right to have contact with his family be it father,mother or whoever.

Controlfreaky-agree with a lot of your points but disagree that the theshold of state intervention is high.

I know this because I'm a social worker whose child has also been subject to a Section 47 investigation. As i said in previous posts this was due to me calling the police because I feared an argument with my ex partner was heading towards a violent situation. There was no history of domestic violence and the investigation was triggered by local child protection policy that any incidents reported to the police involving a family with a child under one woud be followed up as a statutory Section 47 investigation.

I accept that situations such as these may warrant further invesigation-but at the level of a Section 47 investigation regardless of the circumstances?

I work in adult services and if my team intervened in every situation using our statutory powers it would alienate the clients we are supposed to be supporting and is frankly an abuse of human rights. Surely it should be about weighing up evidence/potential outcomes/risks etc and then planning a proportionate response.

I too used to believe the threshold for state intervention was high. Its been a hard lesson for me and a painful one.

no, wasn't me, AWR, nowt but sympathy for you here.

Synpathy for you AWR. Sounds like you have been caught up in a state machine nightmare.

johnhemming.... didnt know you were acting as a "lay advisor"..... why dont the people you help have professionally qualified legal advisers given that in childcare proceedings parents are entitled to the same??

AWR i sympathise with you..i too have been handed reports that have made me go WTF?? Is this about me?? And when i am i supposed to have said/done THAT??!!

Yes, they are allowed their hearsay evidence.
Jenny Stevenson : Clinical psychologist.. "Are you saying that a social worker tells lies?"
Me : "Yes i am, here's the proof."
JS : "Sorry don't have time for this, lets get on with your assessment, by the way i have worked in SSD and with SW's and i have never known one tell a lie of the magnitude you describe."

Maybe someone should come up with a machine to strap to these people that gives them electrical shocks if they lie..then we would see if they still had the courage of their convictions.

Tutty..sec 47's are shite..they do not allow long enough for the family to fully represent themselves, the timescale is too short, and the poor, yes, poor overloaded SW has this crappy timescale in which to decide whether to instigate CP..after maybe one or two visits with the family and child..their hands are tied as to the amount of time, i feel sorry for them in this situation, many SW's have agreed the time is not long enough for them to make a fair assessment.

Supervised contact..don't get me started! Well ok, if you insist.
You are not allowed to tell your kids you love them.
You are not allowed to tell them you want them home.
You have to sit in conditions akin to sitting in the doctors waiting room for 2 hours or more.
You know nothing about your own child because the SS do not give you feedback on the child, school/placement, nothing, so what do you talk to them about?
There are toys, yes, about four or five of which may be suitable, my DD was older, so not interested in toys, she wanted to go out. Not allowed.
She wanted to go swimming, bowling, cinema, horse riding, or to the park, things we would do normally..not allowed.
Then the SS say that contact is unsatisfactory. Well..they set it up, they run or are affiliated with the centres these contacts are held in, why don't they do something to improve the contact?

AWR..funny how they can drag a child forcibly across a room without it being called physical abuse isn't it? My own dd was dragged so hard she went across the floor on her face and couldn't get up..even if she had wanted to, oh, and the SW did it so roughly that my dd wrist was broken again (she had just come out of plaster following an operation to fix an extremely bad break in both forearm bones)

Also have experience of them refusing to place/allow contact with extended family.

Its sickening that we both could probably carry on all night. Now this is TWO children too many, yours and mine, this is utterly unacceptable that this sort of thing should happen to even one child in care.

Also may i quote from your post

Telling me i was NOT ALLOWED to tell my son that he was coming home or that i wanted him to come home every time he asked when he was coming home or protested he wanted to come home.I think this is a way social services ensure that the child thinks they are the 'good people' and eventually feel abandoned by parents or not supported.This makes social services agenda to alienate the parents alot easier and get the child believing that the parents do not want them home and maybe the foster carers and social worker are the only people who actually care about him DISGUSTING.

How true this is.
They are manipulating the child.

Its a disgrace.

They should have juries instead of just one family court judge in care proceedings. Then maybe the instances of abuse and manipulation of families for gain and profit would cease.

A number of solicitors paid to act with parents consipire with social workers to undermine their clients' case. I obtained this information from a social worker who explained how this is done.

This is done sometimes by conceding the S31 threshold against the wishes of the client, but normally by agreeing expert witnesses who are likely to submit to the "advocating for the child" from the local authority and produce a report that suits the objectives of the local authority - a second opinion of course being not permitted without the permission of the judge.

There are a small number of Family Law Panel solicitors that I trust, but the new legal aid rules make it much harder to change advisor. Hence if we wish to fight care proceedings the best option at times is to act as Litigant in Person with a Mackenzie friend.

One case we have got into the European Court of Human Rights through this route is R.P. v The United Kingdom which looks at the procedural unlawfulness of many common Family Court procedures.

Interestingly the Equalities and Human Rights Commission may be intervening on this case in support of the position I have been advocating.

In any event there is no rule that prevents people having a lay advisor even when they have lawyers.

However, I know where the corruption is and I will, over time, manage to prove that this corruption exists.

controlfreakyhohohohohohoho

If I am answering "out of my place", please advise, so I can "get back in line".

Quote: "didnt know you were acting as a "lay advisor"..... why dont the people you help have professionally qualified legal advisers given that in childcare proceedings parents are entitled to the same??"

Professional advice from a legal professional sometimes differed with the advice from a law advisor.

Sometimes a legal advisor is asked to comment on the lay advisor suggested advice and the legal professional wouldn't offer that advice (for what ever reason).

The legal professional is (usually) expected to agree with the LA or guardian's recommendation to avoid a contested hearing, otherwise the legal services commission needs to be informed. LSC considers if the hearing should be funded for a contested hearing.

Sometimes the lay advisor's advice has prevented an adoption or diverted from the LA suggested care plan, which has (only just) managed to keep a family together. Evidence that the LA has with held (or solicitor for the parents has with held) makes the world of diffrence in a court case.

I can think of no less than 10 cases where children might have been divorced from their family if it weren't for a lay advisor's actions or advice (ask AWR, she had more than one lay advisor)

AWR - Thankyou for sharing your story
I watched the youtube video - the bit about tying your sons hand to his teacher so he wouldnt escape

Are all your children with you now? I truly think they should be

Love to you and your kids

Bluesapphire, I thought your point about a jury rather than just relying on one judge was a good one. I've worked in the court system before and there's no doubt that some judges are better than others and some get a bit power mad, full of their own importance and just plain wrong sometimes.

why the chippy tone N1? what did i post to make you think my attitude was one of you "getting back in line" etc?? my reply to jh was purely factual, i didnt realise he was seeing court documents in his role of lay advisor... of course if people want the involvement of a lay adviser they should have one.

i did post originally that i am sure there are cases where the system fails all involved and children are taken away from families where that is not the right answer / appropriate / whatever. and of course for anyone involved in these cases that is a real tragedy.

what i dont accept however is the picture painted of widespread corruption and collusion by lawyers / sws / experts / the courts. and the reason i dont accept is it from my own professional experience.

The best place to find a solicitor is to ask a social worker you trust like i did, which ones they fear.. i had a list of 2

The problem is that these solicitors sometimes represent a child, the SS, or parents, so .. if you know a parent or child may only use (pay ) you one off, but the SS will provide you with lots and lots and lots of work and money, and also the parent has to prove that you deliberately threw their case, whats wrong with slightly throwing the unsuspecting parent to the wolves to secure further work from ss who are going to be around a lot longer and be more profitable??

Answer me that..eh? EH??

I am not clear as to how widespread the corruption is. It may be relatively narrow in nature. I am pleased that cfhhhhh accepts that there is some corruption in the system.

Just searched for that This morning episode on youtube..
ITV This Morning and SS Secret Courts Pt 1 + 2
As i feel they would have proven a point.

Unfortunately no longer available cos of tight arsed ITV and their copyright crap sigh.

John...

Is Denise Robertson still on board and willing to help some of these families? I understand at one point she was extremely upset with the way things were in this country.

err, where did i say that jh?? i said i accept that sometime the system fails.... and fails imo because it revolves at the end of the day around humans exercising their judgment and that will never be failsafe. in child protection things are often not black and white or straightforward but complex because families are complex.....