Take more babies away from bad parents, says Barnardo's chief

[bubblebutt]

Many more children need to be taken into care at birth to stop them being damaged beyond repair by inadequate parents, the chief executive of the children's charity Barnardo's has told the Observer

How you can you say that when they the parents don't know how they will turn out themselves till after the event

Martin Narey called for less effort to be directed at "fixing families that can't be fixed" and for social workers to be braver about removing children at risk .

what tosh some families can be fixed and yes some cant but come on that means all babies that are under the SS would be taken into care because he fears another baby P and that is so wrong on many levels. A lot of families out there are going to suffer because of this reporting.

After revelations about the neglect and dysfunctional background of two young brothers from Doncaster who viciously attacked an 11-year-old boy and his nine-year-old nephew, social workers have once again come under fire for failing to intervene at an early stage.

this is alleged neglect and abuse no one knows this except the kids and their parents SS have to do a report and have to get all their facts together BEFORE they can remove a child. This takes time not 2 minutes. Another reason mistakes are made as there isnt enough Social Workers.

The brothers, aged 11 and 10, had been known to social services and police for several years. Their mother had allegedly given them cannabis as toddlers and forced them to forage for food in bins, while their father was allegedly a violent alcoholic. Despite this, the pair had been taken into care just three weeks before the attacks. The case has led to Doncaster social services opening an inquiry, its seventh serious case review since 2004.

What do they expect the SS to do wave a magic wand and its all better it doesnt work that way.The 2 boys are damaged now and need help as much as the other boys do.

Calling for more children to be in care from the moment they are born, Narey, a former director general of the Prison Service and previously a permanent secretary at the Home Office, made clear he was not reacting to this case in particular, but to issues with Britain's child protection services that needed urgent attention to avoid failing many more troubled young people.

Yes he is and a lot of families are going to suffer because of it.

"If you can take a baby very young and get them quickly into a permanent adoptive home, then we know that is where we have success," he said. "That's a view that is seen as a heresy among social services, where the thinking is that if someone, a parent, has failed, they deserve another chance. My own view is that we just need to take more children into care if we really want to put the interests of the child first.

So some one struggling is going to leapt on and the child taken away all cos she isnt coping the way the SS want and some want you to go after there arses cleaning em when they are old enough to do themselves Oh there is SS like this out there or the one that comdemns you if you cant cook and give your kids microwave meals all the time or something out of a tin god forbid they do that,

"We can't keep trying to fix families that are completely broken. It sounds terrible, but I think we try too hard with birth parents. I have seen children sent back to homes that I certainly wouldn't have sent them back to. I have been extremely surprised at decisions taken. If we really cared about the interests of the child, we would take children away as babies and put them into permanent adoptive families, where we know they will have the best possible outcome."

If the family is beyond repair so be it but what if they have turned there life around and can get their kids back why take that chance away as some SS do just that. they seem to tar every bad parent with the same brush hence why the SS shouldnt be there after 3 years as it makes them jaded in what they see everyday.

He said he understood his views would be seen as "illiberal heresy": "I think if social workers were courageous and sought to intervene quickly, and were supported properly in that, we would see far fewer problems."

As above and also there would be a national out cry from parents that have done nowt wrong but asked for help to be told they are neglecting their child(ren) when they clearly need help to be a better parent. Not penalized this way.

While foster care was on paper a good option for older children who had to be taken into care, he said, a shortage of suitable placements meant that children were suffering from a lack of stability. "What troubles me is the number of children I meet who have had vast numbers of placements. Last week, I met a 15-year-old girl and her foster mum. It was her 46th placement. The woman said that whenever there was a row or disagreement, the girl went to pack her bags. She expected to be sent on.

there isnt enough foster parents in the world as they are told to see the foster side as a business and it so isnt its helping and nuturing and caring for a child that needs your help

"It is undoubtedly a good option when children have been taken into care to replicate the family in foster care placements, but I have spent the past four years meeting a lot of children in care and I can tell you that it is by no means anything out of the ordinary to meet a child whose foster placements run into double figures. There comes a point where we have to accept that it is not working."

As above

Philippa Stroud of the thinktank Centre for Social Justice reacted cautiously to Narey's comments. "If the model is to move children very quickly to adoption, not necessarily from birth but certainly under a year, then that is something we would support," she said. "We need far more early intervention to try to stop this disintegration of the family we are seeing, but we would like to see more working with these families. What we recommend is the model of the mother and baby going into care, filling that hole and giving the whole family a chance. "With child protection, all the legislation is actually in place: it's the implementation that is the issue."

So if this is the case why do we see baby P stories all the time. I feel that the child protection and SS should be overhauled and the government needs to bring in more and they shouldnt be allowed anymore than 3 years in that field and then moved on if they wish to return they have to wait 3 years to do so. Also the work load of a SS shouldnt be anymore than 5 families and this is for full time workers not the part time.

The numbers of children taken into care rose slightly following the death of Baby P, the 17-month-old boy later named as Peter Connelly, who died in London in 2007 of injuries inflicted by his mother and her boyfriend, despite being seen repeatedly by doctors and social workers. But Narey says it was only a temporary increase.

How many of these babies, children whom parents hadnt done anything wrong really to their children and they where taken because of the mistakes of another SS office hmmmm that worries me more.

"As soon as these cases recede from the memory, everyone will get reluctant to move these children all over again. Only 4% of children adopted from care in England are under the age of one and the figure is even smaller in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

I for one hope it doesnt recede from memory as we need to be reminded of baby P and the others out there that their own parents didnt give a stuff about them. We need to address these mistakes and take stock and agree we where wrong. Not hidding behind we did nothing wrong and it wasnt our fault crap. If known abuse of any kind you amass your info and remove the kids. Not this wishy washy oh we didnt see this or that or she wouldnt let us in crap either. Also if on the "at risk registrar" they should visit more than once a week or what is the point of being on the registrar in the first place. Also no written warnings either. They should just turn up on the door. Again this would mean a full over haul of the SS departments all over the world.

"Less than 5% of the children taken into care in England last year were aged under a year old. Some 3,500 children were adopted in Britain from care, at an average age of four."

This is to do with the birth parents wanting their children back and fighting the SS over it and it takes on average a year to go to court with all the evidence they have against the other to proceed and sometimes this can be stopped if the paperwork isnt done right. Also the parents themselves could have turned their lives round and can show they have so this again hinder any proceedings. Also the SS could be dragging their heels too as one SS could be busy on other cases so it is again delayed. Not good for the child is it.

I copied and pasted this as its the article of said subject and it has angered me the silly man he is. I have added my own bits to it and wondered what you all thought.

"here itthe piece"

Quite, Riven. Where is the evidence for these very definite statements?

Not entirely sure how anyone would prove that 'trauma' in a foetus has any long-term effects, tbh, would be interested to see it done.

As for domestic violence, sadly it seems all too often SWs have very little training in this area and many punish the victim, accusing them of child abuse for failing to control the perpetrator.

Hi Maria - yes I'm sure that we are in broad agreement. As you say there are many factors that will influence a child's development and future life but I still think that the baby's early life experiences in terms of being loved and nurtured (or not) is of the most significant importance in determining what happens next. I absolutely agree that some children are more resilient than others and thus will be less adversely affected bt life events. Yes I too found the concept of brain changes rather a difficult concept to get hold of and it is also very scarey. A really good book on this issue is "Why Love Matters" by Sue Gerhardt.

I am no trying to say that all babies who have insecure attachment patterns with their parents are doomed for life. With good quality love and care and the opportunity to experience stability and permanence many of these children will do well. Going back to the original thread, this is another pointer for removing children from abusive parents sooner rather thanlater. Just to give an example of how children can be affected - insecure attachments don't always manifest themselves in destructive type behaviours. Babies who do not have parents who are attuned to their needs and do not attend to them, learn for instance not to cry - amazing I know but it can be the case. This child can then "close down" emotionally and will not "feel" as other children do and will be described by foster carers as "hollow" and later on as the child grows, he will be described as a child who "never shows love or real feelings" etc.........and this can persist to a greater or lesser degree through the life span. Foster carers and adoptors find it very difficult (unsurprisingly) to form a close bond with a child who always seems to be "holding back" and that is just one of the difficulties. As I said earlier though now that we know more about these things it is possible to help carers to understand how the child's early experiences are impacting on the present and how to change things to alter the child's "internal working model" of the world, which really means helping the child to learn to trust adults again.

I am using the word "damaged" to mean emotional harm I think rather than "brain damage" as I think that is a step too far even with new evidence about brain changes in children, described in Sue Gerhardt's book.

DmsbR.....I don't have research links but if you google "attachment disorder" I think you will find heaps of info. The British Agencies for Fostering & Adoption (again google) have some interesting stuff on all topics related to child care. They have a good book "An introduction to Attachment disrder" (may not be exact title) similarily if you go on Amazon or play.com there will be books on the topic. It's both a simple and complicated theory and needs to be "read around" I think to get a good understanding. I am struggling to understand why pyschologists (why are you an ex one by the way, surely you are one for life!) have difficulty with the notion that early experiences of abuse/neglect will produce difficulties for the child in his later life - and at it's very simplest this is at the heart of attachment theory. Bowlby really began the debate with his theories on "loss and separation" and this was carried on by Mary Ainsworth to develop the first theories about attachment problems.

I think the essence of attachment difficulties is that the emotional harm (lets not call it damage) is done to the baby at a crucial stage in his development and that is the reason why it has such far reaching implications.

I will think about other books I can recommend on the subject and post again later.

How do I link? There are medical papers out there, from medical journals, giving details of children whose health has suffered by misdiagnosis of medical conditions as child abuse. Such as this one:

www.la-press.com/redirect_file.php?fileId=1059&filename=CMPed-1-Wrennall&fileType=pdf

And I know there are articles about the condition I was referring to earlier, though in the meantime I'll just give you this:
www.ivanhoe.com/channels/p_channelstory.cfm?storyid=3058

Note that I am not social services bashing; this is not about social services making wrong decisions given the evidence they had.

To the contrary, social services have been making totally reasonable assumptions on the medical evidence they were given. It's just that the medical evidence was unsound and not enough time given to get a second opinion. Medical evidence can take a long time to get right.

When you have a child with a rare medical condition, the first doctor you see is unlikely to be a specialist; he may never have heard of the condition, or he may not know how to recognise it, or he may just not come to think of it because it is out his usual range of experience.

If a hasty diagnosis of child abuse is made, then noone is going to look any further. The only hope for a child in this particular position is to have a concerned person who keeps pushing for a second opinion.

In my case, we were extremely lucky because I already had an appointment with a specialist (through supportive GP) when we met the paediatrician who thought pain+nothing showing on X-ray= abuse. But what if I hadn't? He refused any further investigations, though I overheard his junior trying to persuade him.

It would have to be a brave social worker to question the doctor's diagnosis- and frankly, why would it occur to them? I was the only person in a position to do that, because I was the only person who could be reasonably sure that dd had never been abused. If I had been taken out of the equation, there would have been noone left to keep badgering for more tests.

I know this is not usually the case, probably more often than not the parents suspected of abuse are guilty. But every case matters equally. We need to get it right as often as we possibly can. And medical professionals are concerned (rightly) about the risk of failing to diagnose a genuine medical condition as signs of child abuse.

just put brackets round it this is the link

'Not entirely sure how anyone would prove that 'trauma' in a foetus has any long-term effects, tbh, would be interested to see it done.'

Edam, there's quite a bit done on this. When I was researching for a book I came across some data about babies born in parts of Europe just after the war. There were two bits of data I found particularly interesting.

The first was to do with homosexuality. Apparently, in Germany, there is a higher instance of homosexual men than you'd expect in the generation of babies born in (I think) 1945-47. It's believed that the stress of what their mothers went through at that time: carpet bombing, invasion by the Red Army, lack of food, etc, altered the hormonal balance of the mothers' wombs. I read a theory that this might be nature's way of ensuring that there are men around who are strong enough to protect a surviving population but not as aggressive as straight men, which would make sense: there'd be a benefit to the 'pack'. It's a while since I read the research though. Here's one link:
www.springerlink.com/content/m727mnv781442308/

The second related to children born to mothers who've experienced lack of food during pregnancy had altered metabolisms. They were more prone to schrizophenia. I don't have the links any more as I was working on a computer that packed up, but here's one I found:

www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Dutch_famine_of_1944.

I think Bowlby's work and all the new 'attatcment disorders' have a great deal more research to be done before they are used to claim children are damaged and remove them from parents to be honest.
And a lot more evidence to prove they actually exist. Social workers often pick up a term, read a little bit and react on it without having much of a clue of the science and studies and peer review and debates and statistics. Looks to me like 'attaetchment disorders' are the new 'munchousens' (which there was little scientific evidence for either)
Thats rather worrying to me.

interesting blog here

A lot of these issues are complex judgmental issues. Martin Narey's argument appears to be "trust the social workers - they can tell what is going to happen."

The evidence, however, is that the judgments that are made in recent years have been particularly unreliable.

It is, therefore, the decisionmaking process and in particular the judicial process that needs reviewing.

I am personally very critical of the Interactive Childrens System which is a government specified computer system which drives practitioners into making early decisions when what they should do is keep an open mind.

I seem to remember attachment disorder become very talked about again in the nineties, a few years after a large number of Romanian babies and toddlers (who had been utterly deprived of human contact and all but that the most basic care) were adopted into this country? All sorts of very different parents in different localities were coming together to find similar behaviour and behavioural problems in their children weren't they? Didn't this give quite some impetus to research on reactive detachment disorder?

Johnhemming, it is the INTEGRATED children's system. IMO It does not drive practitioners into making premature decisions in itself, it just underpins the timescales in the assessment framework and working together. These timescales have been around for many years. What ICS does is disallow any flexibility in the level if assessment recorded and fortunately this has been loosened up very recently.

I

In relation to attachment theory you can all rest assured. While some social workers are well versed in a lot of theoretical perspectives ( a fair few have a number of prior degrees in relevant areas such as psychology, nursing etc) they do NOT diagnose. I know there is a lot of paranoia about SWs powers, but please look at the posts from people who actually work in the field and not hang around on the fringes for the reality of day to day practice.

Attachment theory is not new or whacky and current accessible work from David Howe among others might be useful for the worried to peruse.

The issue with the romanian orphans is a good example of what is wrong with attachment theory & the way it's used (overused, I would say). The romanian orphans had huge, huge problems, some of them were deprived of even very basic human contact... the research based on those orphans though was widened & used to explain / understand completely different situations that have nothing to do with that level of deprivation.

Nana (and all the others who support the ideas on attachment)- I don't think I or anyone else is arguing against the very basic ideas. Stability, basic needs of children being met, calm & intuitive parents, a good connection to a few close figures. I take these ideas for granted! But all sorts of psychological theories on child development- psychoanalytic ones, systemic theory ones, cognitive-behavioural psychology theories- all asssume these basic things too! Attachment theory is not new in doing this. What is new with them is that they're trying to establish a brain development theory based on their findings, trying in essence to link problems in attachment to changes in the brain. That is what I have a problem with, it's a huge leap to make, a leap which can be criticized on many levels, and a leap which leads to all sorts of political decisions (e.g. parenting classes early on instead of support through the years) etc.

There are also many problems with the actual research, in general psychological research is not to be accepted without critique, often research studies are based on particular assumptions which follow from a theoretical belief. What I mean by that is that when I decide that I'm observing a mother-infant duo for signs of insecure attachment (or whatever) I'm already reading my theory into what I see, I'm creating categories & putting people in them, often ignoring the complexities of each individual situation. And to be more specific- the one thing that's systematically ignored in this type of research is the cultural element of parent-child interaction. There is a huge middle class, white, anglosaxon bias, and terms such as 'invasiveness' or 'aggressivity' are observed & recorded without taking into account the very different ways parents-children interact in different cultural settings.

Sorry to have written an essay!

By the way the researh about homosexuality in post-war Germany, or increased schizophrenia in children of mums who ate less is, in my opinion, a joke. But a very instructive one, to show how 'research' can be used in all sorts of wacko ways, to test all sorts of weird things. A correlation is not a causative relationship!!!!

Maria, there are cross cultural studies on attachment. They appear to be stable in terms of their findings. I think people have also forgotten the starting point fo attachment theory was in ethology (imprinting etc) so the link between emotional and physical development is not new.

For social workers, attachment theory is one perspective that can be used. Understanding poverty, discrimination, oppression and the interactions are vital for practice.

in all my years as a social worker i have never heard of a child being removed because they were thought to have an attachment disorder.

i have worked with countless children who have been removed because of serious abuse and neglect. attachment theory is one of a number of theories which can help to make sense of a child's behavioural and emotional problems, thus enabling those involved in their care - including foster carers - to help them overcome these problems. i repeat - it is ONE theory.

a lot of extremely negative comments have been made on this thread about social workers. i do this job, i know what i am doing to try and improve the system - i'm bloody working in it. if you really want to make a positive difference then i strongly suggest you look at the gscc website for information on training to become a social worker.

fwiw i have nothing against people questioning what social workers do. i DO have a problem with people making patronising statements and hugely ignorant generalised comments about social workers who, for the most part, are trying their utmost to do an incredibly difficult job with very limited resources.

Ceres, I hear you.

I accept that it is the integrated childrens system. I am pleased that you have seen a losening up.

I will wait, however, to feed back from the social workers that I work with to find out their view.

I will always see a preponderance of cases where the system is acting wrongly. In fact I blame the lawyers more than the social workers. It is the legal system that fails to bring in the judgmental quality control. (Although we have got one sensible decision from the Court of Appeal recently.)

Maria - I think if you read the book I mentioned "Why Love Matters" by Sue Gerhardt you might find it interesting. Sue G is a physcoanalytical pyschotherapist in private practice. She was the co founder of the Oxford Parent Infant Project, a charity that provides help for parents and their babies.

The book explains why love is essential to brain development in the early years of life and how early interactions between babies and their parents have lasting and serious consequences. She explores how the earliest relationships shapes the baby's nervous system and how the development of the brain can affect future emotional well being. It is an accessible interpretation of the latest findings in neuro-science, psychology, psychoanalysis and bio chemistry.

I will just quote one para:

"Well intentioned governments have recognised the need to support family life. They have put measures in place to do so, from tax credits to parenting classes. Politicians are only too aware of the cost to society of dysfunctional families, with their links to crime, violence and drug abuse. Although these supports are vital to tthose that receive them, it is like pouring money into the maintenance of a badly built house. Problems inthe house may be temporarily alleviated but nothing can change the fact that the house is not well built. Likewise with human beings whose foundations have not been well built. For prevention to be effective it must be targetted at the point when it can make the most difference. These foundations are liad in pregnancy and inthe first 2 years of life. This is when the "social brain" is shaped and when an individual's emotional style and emotional resources are established. When these early experiences for the infant are not positive the groundwork is laid for a variety of later social and emotional difficulties."

You may not agree with Sue G's findings (which are evidence based but I think you might find the book interesting. I appreciate however there are opposing viewpoints to this entire issue.

Dittany - I'm sorry but I think you are misunderstanding the issue of attachment difficulties and the way social workers intervene with families where there is a concern over child abuse/neglect. Where a child is being abused or neglected then consideration has to be given to whether the parents can be helped to improve their parenting or whether a child must be removed. An enormous amount of work goes into each of these cases. An in depth assessment has to be carried out by a sw and a decision as to what to do is made at a multi disciplinary case conference. Every effort has to be made to prevent removing a child from parents and it is only when these efforts have been made a failed is the case taken to court for the Judge to make a decision about the child's future. Contrary tto popular belief in over 30 years of social work practice I have yet to see a sw who wants to remove a child from it's parents and I struggle to understand why this myth prevails.

children who are abused/neglected by definition do not have a secure attachment pattern with their parents because their needs are not being met. If they are removed it is because they are at serious risk of harm. The insecure attachment is the consequence of the abuse/neglect if you see what I mean. In any event it is only as the child grows and problems emerge in his behaviour and socialisation that it can be seen that he most probably suffered an insecure attachment with his parents. As Wahwah says social workers do not make such diagnoses. And of course Baby P was insecurely attached - if being tortured by mother's boyfriend with a mother who fails to protect does not make a child insecure
then I don't know what does!

You ask about my status as an independent social worker. I retired from my post as a social work manager in 2006 after 25 years working in child protection, fostering & adoption. I now work part time on an independent basis. some of the work I do is for an agency (though I am self employed) and I am paid by the agency. Some of the work I do comes directly from solicitors acting in child care cases, usually care proceedings/contact cases etc, but it has to be agreed by the court and all parties concerned with the case. In those cases I am paid by the Legal Aid Commission. I also work for local authorities in assessing prospective foster carers and adoptors and they pay me. I am also involved in training ssocial workers and would you believe one of my specialist areas for training is attachment disorder!!

I still think I have every right to make the comment that I did tyo JH. He now has got something else muddled and this was pointed out to him by WahWah. He talks of the "Interactive Childrens System which drives s.w.s into making early decisions" As wahwah has pointed out it is in fact the "Integrated Childrens System" and it certainly does not drive sws into making early decisions. He only knows about this because it was raised by sws at a conference he attended and he seems to have got it "round his neck" - I will reiterate that I think it is irresponsible for a politician to be throwing himself into this debate when he demonstrates a complete misunderstanding fof the issues under discussion.

DMshouldbeR - I would be interested to know where your evidence comes from that "social workers pick up a term and act on it etc etc." This is simply not the case and I don't think it is helpful to be so critical of social workers from a perspective of lack of knowledge and experience in this field. The vast majority of social workers do their absolute utmost to deal with complex and distressing situations within very limited resources. It is an extremely stressful though interesting job. I often wonder why so many people seem to think the worst of these workers.

Sorry for the length of this post!

What would you do Nana in this senario the house is a mess and the kids are running around with not a care in the world their clothes are not washed and they smell. then their mum makes the tea and its a microwave meal for them all as cant cook and admits this but still the littelys are fed. SS leave to do their report what would be yours.

Very interested.

Oh and the link is the one I found as I couldnt actually tell you or have concrete proof its rubbish to a certain degree.

Nananina, be fair. Johnhemming is at least trying to find his way through the complexities of the work, even if he has some way to go!

As he suggested to me, I did google him some a few weeks back and now realise that perhaps his personal experience of one of his children's mothers brush with the system has had a negative impact on him. This has made me far more sympathetic to him as a person (although trying to sue his own council for merely carring out their statutory responsibilities goes a bit far), but as an MP making these sorts or irresponsible pronouncements, I do accept that he is (and should be) accountable for his actions.

Johnhemming, if the above is incorrect I apologise, but he source was a broadsheet article, so I assume it has been fact checked and libel proofed.

I thought I would try to change tack a little on this thread as it seems to be all about attachment now. I am fascinated by the topic and could post about it all night but I thought I would post my viewpoints on the reasons why parents neglect/abuse their children in the first place and would be interested to hear others points of view.

I think that by and large in parenting we repeat the experiences that we had ourselves as children. If we were lucky enough to recieve love and care from our parents then the chances are that we will repeat this style of parenting with our own children. Conversely if a child is abused/neglected/subjected to inconsistent parenting etc etc then they are more than likley to repeat that experience when they in turn become parents.....the cycle of deprivation if you like. I know there are excptions to this but in the main I believe that this is what happens. I have worked with many abusing parents over the years and I have yet to meet one who was not abused themselves as a child. It can be either parent though I think men are more often the perpetrators of violence to children (and in particular step parents) and in many cases women "fail to protect" which was the case with baby P. So the victim turns perpetrator and this is true in cases of physical harm, emotional abuse and sexual abuse. So the wheel keeps turning and I don't think anyone knows how to break into that cycle.

Politicians of various hues have tried and failed to effect any change in this cyle of deprivation. Efforts have been made to alleviate poverty (to some extent) and parenting classes etc but these in my view do not even begin to effect any meaningful change. I firmly believe that we can only give what we have received, and if we have not been properly cared for ourselves then
the odds are stacked against us when it is our turn to parent. I have seen this situation again and again and yes I know it's an argument in favour of the dangers of insecure attachments but that is what I believe, rightly or wrongly.

I realise of course that many new parents are intent upon not repeating the mistakes made by their parents, and that is a positive thing of course. I am talking here of children who were neglected/abused as children. It matters not whether those children remained with their birth family or were removed and entered the care system, because the emotional harm perpetrated upon them at an early age will effect them throughout their lifetime to a greater or lesser extent. I actually didn't mean this to be about attachment but it isn't really possible to enter into this debate and divorce attachment difficulties from the causes of child abus/neglect.

I actually find it all very depressing because I cannot see any way to break into the cycle and prevent harm being passed from generation to generation.

Would be really interested in other's views on this.

Good question. I have been fortunate in knowing a fair number of people who have 'broken the cycle'. Most of them felt that the abuse was connected to their parents' difficulties and that they were not deserving. They had got this sense from somewhere (a parent / neighbour /grandparent) and this had enabled them not to identify with the abuser. I wonder if it's something to do with this process building resilience.

It is the job of MPs to hold the authorities to account. And to look into the complaints of constituents. And to be the voice of the powerless - helping to redress the balance a tiny bit in disputes with, for example, housing associations.

John Hemming is doing his job to the best of his ability. Wish I could say the same for all MPs - or all social workers.

It is extremely worrying when you have a bunch of people with power - and the powers of a social worker are particularly frightening - who resist any examination of their behaviour or practice.