terribly sad story about wrongful adoption where the birth parents have been proved innocent

[edam]

Today programme look at 2hrs 10mins in this morning had a segment on the case of parents who were accused of abuse, their children were taken away and adopted. Now it's finally emerged that the parents are innocent but the Court of Appeal says the adoption order is permanent and can't be overturned.

I do understand that adoption has to be solid and safe but surely the courts and social services could promote some form of contact between innocent parents and their children?

In what universe does the 'best interests of the child' = refusing to recognise and address a miscarriage of justice? Surely the child has a human right to a relationship with their birth family?

Just makes me even more fearful of SS after the stream of stories about miscarriages of justice and heavy-handed tactics. I would NEVER ask them for help.

Horrible thought - to have your children taken from you through no fault of your own but agree with Kew's posts - the children have not been with their biological parents for 5 years, at least half their lives. They were taken due to fears they were being mistreated. This is not the case with the adoptive parents who have been caring for them the last 5 years who have presumably been caring for them well with no concerns over mistreatment. To take them away from these parents would be terrible - 2 separations from their parents in 5yrs. Also think their current (adoptive) parents are in the best position to judge what's in their best interests re. how/when to establish contact. Am at some of the comments re. adoptive parents. At least the children have been in a consistent, family environment for the past few years, not in foster care.
I also think social services are damned if they do, damned if they don't. Not enough action in Baby P, too much in this case. Care orders increased hugely after Baby P, unsurprisingly, they don't deal in absolutes but suspicions and risk. Law is clear that whatever action is taken must be in best interests of child, presumably that's what they felt when children were taken into care (and validly reading court report)

'However law is rarely made on exceptions, and in this case a change in law not in interpretation is required. '

Changes in law are paramount to the forwarding of civilisation often enough. Changes in law are necessary and advantageous in many cases - such as here, we need to end all secrecy in these family courts. We need a change to address that.

When does an exception become not an exception but the righting of a wrong?

Because if we take your interpretation, well, then, women were once excepted from voting, and men with no property, abortion used to be illegal, etc. etc.

What is just an exception to one person is the righting of an egregious wrong to another and/or the denial of a basic human right to another.

Putting what is effectively a statute of limitation on parenthood is also a dangerous precedent, IMO, particulary because if you use precedent to guide the law, then such precedent can be applied to other areas of family law such as custody issues and grandparents' rights.

I think we need to come up with better than what we've got now, and here's a chance to do that, but it involves everyone opening their minds and trying to broaden their horizons.

Still don't see it as a fruitless endeavour, however, because that's a pretty defeatist attitude, even for a die-hard pessimist like me.

I have worked in a Contact Center (supervised access) and have seen children reunited with parents (usually fathers) after several years. In fact, I've even had to introduce a father to his 7 year old son.

Contact is lost for a variety of reasons, but almost always, more contact, rather than less, is encouraged.

This case should be the same....

Laws change all the time, for finetuning, changes in public policy, changes in society. That is what our elected Parliament is for. Short of our fundamental constitutional rights, nothing is set in stone.

People may be interested in this story
www.mailonsunday.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1142243/The-228-child-deaths-didnt-want-tell-about.html
which is the other side of the same coin.

The Court of Appeal judges are always going to place in the judgment those things which give substance to the argument that the system is the "best of all possible worlds".

With the Websters case the following are important points:
a) They were not allowed a second opinion at the initial stage
b) Their appeal lawyer had to work for free (although I think there was some funding for the hearing).
c) The initial process involved pressurising the Health Visitor to change her view (obtained after many years experience of two generations of the same family). The Health Visitor has now retired.

It is no good the CoA judges having a go about the delay of appealing. All sorts of hurdles are placed in the way of parents trying to argue their innocence. The biggest problem is the absence of second opinions.

Place yourself in the role of this mother
www.bailii.org/eu/cases/ECHR/2008/1124.html
Who was prevented from instructing her solicitor to oppose the proceedings and also presented from obtaining a second opinion to challenge the view of the expert - paid in part by the local authority - that she was too stupid to tell a solicitor what to do.

What about this case
www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2009/02/14/social-workers-who-snatched-four-day-old-baby-put-her-u p-for-adoption-over-unproven-abuse-claim-115875-21123598/
Where the medical evidence is unreliable and disproven by a recent report of clinical records.
See my comments here
johnhemming.blogspot.com/2009/02/sbs-research.html and associated links.

Laws change all the time, for finetuning, changes in public policy, changes in society. That is what our elected Parliament is for. Short of our fundamental constitutional rights, nothing is set in stone.
The problem in Family Law is that it has mainly been left to secret family courts where some really strange decisions are made.

Yes, but I was under the impression that the Adoption Act 2002 there was a clause whereby an adoption could be set aside, but only under exceptional circumstances, and this case, if nothing else, is just that...

What the judgment reveals is that at least one adoption has in fact been set aside.

Prior to the Webster judgment I was under the belief that this had never happened in the UK (It happens in Ireland). Tbere was a scottish case that came close.

This is a case where soon to be 5 siblings have been split up. Three are individually with different families. Two will be with the original family. The best people to resolve this are not the judges, social workers or experts, but the parents and children.

Thank you for your input, Mr Hemming .

haven't read the whole thread...

If these children were taken away and wrongly adopted it is tragic beyond words. But firstly, they haven't actually been proven innocent have they? A new possibility has merely emerged - and afaik it hasn't been proven that the child in question was suffering from a feeding disorder or any other disorder either at the time of the incident or currently. Therefore, although they could be innocent, they still might not be.

Secondly, no-one can surely believe that it would be in the best interests of children who were taken away from their parents at age one and two and placed with adoptive families, to be removed from the only people they know as mummy and daddy and given to strangers? Surely this needs to be about what is in the best interests of the child? And how ever innocent the parents are, overturning adoption orders for children who would not remember these parents could never be in their best interests imo.

Even contact would surely be very unsettling? After all do we know what these children were told about why they were adopted? If they know that they were adopted because their birth parents hurt one of them, can you really say to a six yo, "oh, remember we told you your parents hurt your sister? Well we got it wrong, and now you're going to go and live with them/are going to have to see them once a week/month,"

It's so hard, because as a parent I can only imagine the devostation at losing custody of a child, and then not being able to do anything about it if it came to light that I hadn't done anything wrong. But I can equally see why it wouldn't be in the best interests of such young children to suddenly change the dinamic of their lives. Not until they are old enough to really appreciate/have a say even as to whether they would like contact.

wannabe...but what, in the future, these children find out that they had been taking wrongly from their Birth Family , but that their Birth Family ddn't fight for them....I think that could cause major feelings of rejection...i.e....oh, you had new children then, so didn't want us...iykwim...

JohnHemmings posts were very interesting!

I was thinking about this this morning and think that a lot of this birth parent/adoptive parent is missing the point.

It could just as easily happen to an adoptive family that they find themselves in a situation where SS say they have been abusing their child and so on until the child is removed and put up for adoption away etc.

It is about parents of children having those children removed permanently.

A lot of people seem to be taking it that people who say the children should be returned are devaluing their position as parents, and that the children should remain with their adoptive family. Which is fine - just bearing in mind that the family the children came from could be adoptive as well.

In other words this could happen to anyone, any parent, but presumably those people would agree that it was in the best interests of the child if it happened to them.

I would also be interested to know (but we can't find out, because of the closed nature of the courts) what proportion of the families who end up in this position are on benefits/council accomodation etc. Child abuse happens pretty much across the board, irrespective of class, money etc etc, but i am willing to bet that people who are on the authorities "radar" simply by dint of being on benefits etc fall under much more scrutiny than those in other circumstances. I somehow doubt that lords and ladies and captains of industry have as much attention on them. i also doubt that people who can afford decent lawyers end up having as many chidren removed...

I was confused by John Hemming's Mail on Sunday link which he said was "the other side of the same coin". Mr Hemming usually argues against state intervention but these cases showed exactly why social services are essential (unless the point was to show how much reform is needed?).

One point we've not discussed is that the children have been split up and adopted into two separate families. So they have not only lost their birth parents, but their siblings, too (the two that are still together have each other, at least, but it is not the same). Can't see how banning contact between the members of this birth family can possibly be in 'the best interests of the children' who have suffered a double loss.

The "coin" is that the decisionmaking process to determine which children should be taken into care fails. It fails by taking the wrong children into care. On one side you have the Websters (a false positive) on the other side you have Baby p (a false negative).

I have written an article together with two social workers explaining the problems with the decisionmaking process in Childrens Services here
www.familylawweek.co.uk/site.aspx?i=ed27933

Then the family courts might as well not exist for all the good that they do. They basically rubberstamp the proposals from the local authority in the vast majority of cases.

There is a further problem with the forced adoption process which is that substantial numbers of forced adoptions fail. Furthermore they can reverse at the age of 16-18 as children make their own decisions and vote with their feet.

The government have not done any good research as to what proportion of children that go through forced adoptions end up back in care. They have looked at the figures where the local authority does not change - which is about 10%, but anecdotal reports from staff working for the NSPCC give a figure of more like 25%+. I was even given a figure of 50%, but that will depend upon the age of the child.

The original three Webster children are with three different families.

Blimey John, those articles you have linked to are horrifying. So glad you have been doing such desperately needed research and extracting figures and serious case reviews.

Agree with you that the problem is false positives AND false negatives. Children's services and the family courts are failing both children who are being abused and innocent families.

Social workers have posted on MN about being tied to computers but I didn't realise that meant eighty per cent of their time - no wonder they can't do their jobs properly.

Thanks for clarification johnhemming, and I agree with the Comment at the end of your familylawweek article.

edam, totally agree about the siblings being split up. Can't understand this, a requirement of adopting families should be that they welcome siblings.

"The original three Webster children are with three different families"

Actually, the oldest two are with one family. The youngest child is with another family. They have sibling contact three times a year.

ellabella4ever. I accept that you are likely to be right although on a cursory scan of the judgment I cannot see anything about this.

It remains that 5 siblings will be split into three families. According to ellabella three have sibling contact three times a year and the other two with their birth parents don't.

Ellabella, I have read your comments with interest. As an adoptee myself, I feel that there is something important that you are failing to take into account which is that most adopted children are desperate to please their adoptive parents. So if we are asked if we would like contact with birth parents we are likely to say no, because we know that is what our adoptive parents want us to say.
Even as adults,many adoptees hold back from contacting birth parents for fear of hurting their adoptive parents. You have to take that into account when you take about what adopted children want.
My mother would tell you that she wouldn't try to stop any of her children contacting their birth parents if they really wanted to. In fact, she minds desperately, and we can tell.

If the first 3 children have sibling contact, then what is so dire about them having face-to-face contact with their birth parents? After all, they must surely know that they used to be part of a family unit that has now been split up. What is so wrong about introducing the birth parents into this equation, especially in the light of current circumstances.

Good point, glencora. That would make sense.

johnhemming's point about what percentage of forced adoptions fail is also very interesting. Definitely need more statistics on this. But reading about how johnhemming's attempts to gather info on serious case reviews from the local councils was not well received, even though there is nothing inherently confidential about such info beyond its power to embarrass the government, I cannot see that happening too soon.

This secrecy around the family courts, supposedly in the interests of the child, is becoming an all too convenient veil for concealing how our most vulnerable members of society are being failed.

Over the weekend the Information Commissioner has been getting involved in the refusals of information from 21 authorities. We are now down to 17.

From the Mail investigation - thought it was worth pulling out for anyone who didn't have time to follow the link and read a very lengthy piece: 'Children's services are like a computer infected with several viruses,' says Professor Michael Preston-Shoot, who spent years as a social worker after qualifying in 1976 and now, as Dean of Health and Social Sciences at Bedfordshire University, is one of the field's leading experts.

'The viruses are poor management and leadership, a shortage of resources, political interference and the sheer irrationality of much of what the Government has put in place. Social workers find themselves in an environment that does not facilitate good practice.'

The only effective 'anti-viruses' are whistleblowers within the system [he adds].

AND the authorities seem to be underestimating the number of child deaths:

Before Baby P, ministers often claimed that numbers of child abuse and homicide cases were steadily falling, citing World Health Organisation tables as evidence that Britain's record is among the best in the world. Indeed, the latest WHO figures say that in 2006 only 11 children aged 0-14 died through homicide in the entire UK - just over one child per million.

These statistics are supplied to the WHO by the Department of Health and, it can be safely said, are worthless. A more reliable source is the Home Office, which publishes figures for homicides for each age group recorded by police. To take only children aged 0-4, there were 32 such killings in England and Wales in 2005-6, and 41 in 2006-7. For 2007-8 the figure, published this month, was 45 - a level 50 per cent higher than those recorded annually through most of the Eighties.

Also adds this doesn't include deaths by neglect.