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"

I agree with the chief.

My foster daughters very young siblings (one only a few months old) have been allowed to stay with their birth parents.

I think it's because they have special needs and are very difficult to place

and because they are saving money.

As far as I'm concerned if they're not fit enough to look after the older 4 they are not fit to look after the younger 2.

I have seen mum with the youngest at meetings and she is very disconnected and dismissive. She doesn't look at the baby at all or engage in any way. It is either over her shoulder or in a car seat.

I read this article this morning and thought it was about time someone came out and said this.

totally agree with him.only problem is when speaking to our ss she said it has been estimated there would be about 250,000 that should be taken away. the problem is where do they go?
most of these childrfen are from families who are now in the second generation of drug users.tackle the drug users and there might be a chance to eventually turn this sorry situation around.

totally agree. Just heard him on five live. Victoria Derbyshire was trying to trip him up with her provocative questions but he responded in a very level reasoned way. I absolutley couldn't agree with him more.
It's all right for us to sit here and discuss on an internet forum, we are not the poor child having to live in neglect, fear who has no voice.

i would love to be able to foster babies but i need a spare room (even though the babies will sleep in my room)

It doesn't seem fair that there are so many families willing to support other babies and children but can't because of space.

So why can my children share a room but a foster child can't?

I too agree that some families are too broken and if they have ruined the life of a child in their care, they shouldn't get the chance to do it to any more children.

this isn't a new problem, even back when more kids were taken away (cos the mums were single).
My dad grew up in London in the 20's and 30's and some parts of it had violent kids, violent feckless adults, men who beat the children and spent all the money on drink. Its not new.

And how would you judhe which children should be removed. If a child has an injury that cant be explained, or multiple injuries then yes, obvious (unless its undiagnosed brittle bone. Remember that poor woman who lost 3 of her kids?) but dirty? Maybe the mum is depressed or tired or sick?
Just seeing the different views on MN where some posters are outraged if a 9 year old is allowed to play out or a 7 yo play computer games makes me wonder what the criteria will be? And how many times it will be got wrong, like in the Orkneys or Cleveland.

A foster child needs their own room to comply with safe caring practices.

And because they need their own space, sharing with a child who was already there just leads to a birth child feeling encroached upon and the foster child feeling that they are going into someone else's space. Their own room is part of the valuing process.

Riven - There are safegurds in the law, in that SS do not get to just choose which children to remove, they must put the matter beofre the court.
The court must decide on a balance of probability. My experience is that it tests the SS rigourously. Parents and children are entitled to free legal representation.
Court cases take days, it is not just a rubber stamp. SS lose and don't get the order they want if they don't prpare their case properly.
Yes, there will occasionally be an incorrect decision but that is the nature of any court system.
From time to time there are miscarriages of justice in the criminal system but that should not deter us from trying to catch criminals and bring them to justice. The same must be true for children who need protection - we can't fail to protect for fear of an error.

I really admire him for speaking out. The system as it stands doesn't work. There's too much emphasis on trying to keep children with parents or a mother that is clearly incapable of looking after them - parenthood is simply beyond the ability of some people.

Yet we have thousands of wonderful people that would love to adopt and give them a good life.

I agree that the own room is sensible but surely then council/ha tenants should be given an extra room? and perhaps some in of grant for owner occupiers?

wouldnt it save on costs long term?

The only thing that worries me is how often it's actually poor parents rather then 'bad' parents on the receiving end. We should be putting more resources into helping people parent not just taking the children away to homes which are seen as more advantageous. In the absence of that though perhaps more adoptions is the best option for the children. But what happens to the parents - seperated from their children, officially told they are neglectful and abusive - what happens next? How on earth do you make something of your life after that - and who helps you?

there's no stock left, littleducks. and no council is building new housing.

As foster parents we see the damage caused when children are returned home, it got to a point with Dh and I some years ago that we changed our status from fostering sibling groups to fostering newborns simply because I felt we couldn't go on, and retain our sanity, trying to help the children, getting them to a more "normal" level of behaviour for yet another ss team to say lets give the parents another chance now.

I've sat in a meeting while a mum turned her 10 month old and smacked his backside over and over to be told by the social worker that she was "rough handling" her child not smacking it and that she was offering "adequate care" not good care but "adequate"

We had one sibling group twice in the same year because of drugs. Their faces when they were told they would be returning home again broke our hearts. I have no idea what became of them

Another family stayed with us for two years before returning home back to step-dads violence, the younger child walked into social services some years later as a 10 year old and said "put me back there and I'll top myself"

While caring for a drug dependent baby is no picnic we know that there is so much less chance of that baby going home that it at least makes what we're doing seem worthwhile.

NL - I agree that anyone who looks like they could improve their parenting should be helped to do so...but not ad infinitum. There has to be a cut off when you say enough is enough.
I can't tell you how many conversations I've had with drug addicts in which I tell them that they can keep their child if they just give up the drugs and get tested regularly. Ditto alcoholics, gamblers, persistent offenders, people with long term mental health problems, women with abusive partners...the list is endless.
If they would just grasp the help on offer and bloody well keep it up they could keep their kids.
But they don't...
Perhaps part of it is that they are given chance after chance.
If you knew you had to get clean by x date or your child would be adopted maybe that would galvanise you into doing something.

But NL that would happen anyway surely? If we're talking about children who will eventually end up in care in any event, we're not talking about increasing the number of them. And that rather than languishing in foster care or being shuttled back and forth between carers and parents (and some of the foster care stories on here are breaking my heart), decisions are made much more quickly about whether the parents are able to turn their lives around and if the court feels that is unlikely then the children are given a much better chance at a happy life. Right now, the current system favours parental rights over those of the child and that surely isn't right

I'm another who thinks he's right - and that children in damaging homes should be adopted as soon as possible. Fostered in the emergency, but the sooner they have a stable life where they are wanted and loved permanently, the better. I know several peolple who have adopted children aged 3 or older, who have been in foster homes for all thier lives while ss shillyshallied around trying to get the (drug addicted) mothers to be 'adequate'. The endless shunting about, and /or removal from a stable loved foster mum was damaging in itself.

But how do you define a "bad" parent?

Well currently if the Local Authority want to remove a child or even let it remain at home but take parental responsibility for it them they have to prove that the child is suffering or is likely to suffer significant harm. Then they have to show that they have prepared a reasonable care plan for the child.

At the moment what happens is that SS assess that child may well fall within the significant harm paramters either due to previous parenting problems, or current evidence. Then often they just continue assessing for a long time. They might call a case conference, they might even apply to put the child on the register. But except in severe cases they don't bring proceedings straight away. They try to help the family. Eventually if they feel the family are not engaging or cannot improve they start proceedings.

Its a tough one - no one wants to break up families unnecessarily, and some families do just need some extra help and support to function.

Child protection does seem to swing from child-focussed to family-focussed, and I think at the moment maybe their is too much emphasis on keeping birth families together and not enough on the rights of a child to be safe and loved. There has to be a balance struck, and it's a very tough one to get right.

It shocks me to say that I agree with the Barnado's chief, but I personally feel that far more harm is being done to society by families where the parents are simply incapable of adequately looking after a single child, let alone 3/4/5 of them.

I also think perhaps we should be doing more to encourage pregnant women to consider termination where their circumstances suggest they may not be able to parent adequately. There's evidence in the US that increasing terminations among this group in society has done a lot for crime rates.

Plus, isn't it the case that adoptions are far less likely to break down when the child was adopted at a very early age?

Yes daisy, it is. The longer a child is in care (or being shunted between various forms of care) the greater likelihood there is that they will develop attachment disorder which is one of the primary causes of adoption failure. This is when a child is simply unable to form attachments to others because they have been ruptured too many times for them to ever trust anyone again.

I totally agree with him.

There was an appalling case in Edinburgh where a baby boy was sent home with his parents who had already demonstrated that they could not adequately care for him.

He was killed by his father.

There is of course a taboo about removing babies from their parents, but we need to tackle this difficult issue head-on, and admit that just because somebody can conceive, that does not mean they can provide the care and protection a baby needs.

The baby's needs has to come before the adult's wants.

I am very uneasy with this debate because I just can't see how much of this debate is about 'bad' parenting and how much is due to poverty. Dealing with the outcome by taking away the children and not dealing with the cause just seems wrong - but neither do I want childrem to suffer.

Daisy - am chilled by what you say about ncouraging termination of pregnancy in those who are judged to be unlikely to parent adequately - that seems like a very slippery slope to me.