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"

OK John, so..

Assuming several of the 10 are born after thier elder siblings have already been removed, presumably for very good reasons, what in your opinion would be the correct course of action both before and after thier conception/birth?

I'm afraid I'm coming down in favour of a system that links benefits for non-working teenage mothers with proof that they can actually look after the baby (and sorry if it seems to be labelling teenage mothers again but read edam's justifications). If they can look after the baby they get benefits and help with housing. If they can't, the benefits stop and they and the baby are taken into sheltered housing with someone keeping an eye on them and teaching them childcare and providing further education for the mother so she can go back to work.

Otherwise we are simply paying for more chaotic families to produce future chaotic, broken families.

no, abraid, my points were about the outcomes for kids in care. An increase in the risk of teenage motherhood (and presumably fatherhood) compared to their peers was one of them. I was not saying that teenage mothers are bad or that they are linked to the other problems I described.

And Nancy, if we are going to encourage removal of children at birth or close to birth and subsequent adoption, we do have to be very careful to avoid setting up a system which takes children from the poor and gives them to the well-off. You can already see on this thread the prejudice about bad parenting or abuse being to do with income (it isn't).

The adoption system certainly used to be about taking children from 'bad' people (women who had sex outside marriage) and giving them to 'good' people (respectable, married often middle class). Forcible adoption was the punishment society meted out to women or girls who transgressed.

We really don't want to go back to anything like those days. Because not only was it wrong but it left life-long wounds for the parent and often for the child.

Also John..

Having read your blog it seems to me that many of your critisms of Martin Narey's statement are related to failings in the adoption system.

Do you think that an overhaul of the adoption system and arrangements regarding children in successful long-term foster care would perhaps be a better move towards providing a good quality of life for children than the current procedures simply continuing as they are?

I am in no way an expert on adoption but my recent limited study on it found people were suggesting options such as:

Approved adoptive parents fostering the child prior to the adoption (obviously at risk of considerable heart-ache to themselves but hopefully limiting the disruption in the child's life).

The birth parents having a greater say in who should adopt thier child - ie siblings, religion etc. prior to thier child being placed etc

More open adoption or use of suitable communication in other adoptions.

A much quicker adoption process from the point of prospective adoptive parents being approved.

A greater level of emotional support being offered to those who have had thier child removed - probably by agencies unrelated to social services.

Maybe these could be considered?

I wouldn't want us to be going back to the days where babies were stolen from unmarried mothers and sold off to couples. But I just don't think that would ever happen anyway.

I'm afraid I don't accept this notion that abuse and neglect is just as rife amongst the middle classes. Most experts will tell you that it usually goes hand in hand with poverty and lack of education.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen amongst middle class families and I accept that it's probably easier for them to be under the radar - but I would imagine the problem is miniscule by comparison.

I'm not advocating that any girl called Tayler with love bites and dirty fingernails gets her kid whipped away. I'm talking about cases where there is long term addiction or previous history of serious abuse or neglect where there is little doubt that the child will be at risk or that the parent (usually the mother - let's be honest) is capable of ever being a good parent.

I agree with him, but we need to improve the chances of children in care.
We need better, more committed, better trained, and greater numbers of social workers. It breaks my heart when I hear the stories of looked after children at school. Generally those in foster care are happier than those in homes, but not always. We need to find a way of cutting down the number of placements children go through. We need to better support parents being reunited with their children and people caring for damaged children.
I had one child at school, loved her care home, really happy, was there a few years. SS decided mum was stable enough to have her daughter back. Placement lasted a week, place at the really good care home was gone, ss had to place quickly and she went to a home for children who had behavioural issues, where she was beaten up on the first night, god knows what effect the whole thing had on her. I have scores of annecdotes about failures in the care system, I've only been teaching 5 years. Was near tears just today hearing about someones feckless parents. I get so angry, there are so many parents whose kids are neglected rather than abused who just don't stand a chance.
House prices and availability is a huge issue. I would like to foster, but can not afford a property big enough.

More money is the answer, we need to invest in these kids, give them brighter futures.

Nancy66 - I was referring to earlier posts such as MorisZapp's which suggest superior parenting by 'the rich'. Most people who look into adoption do so because they are for some reason unable to have their own biological children.

There are not enough loving foster or adoptive parents for children as things currently stand without taking more away from their parents in some modern twist to facist ethic cleansing - it pangs of the spanish children stolen from communist sympathisers and adopted by 'good' nationalist parents in the civil war. We shall take the children of the ignorant poor and give then to the privaledged rich who will make far better parents than the poor ever could!

The idea you can remove a baby from its biological mother at birth and it will never suffer any adverse effects has been proven to be false, it has also been proven that if a child can have any type of positive relationship with its biological parents, no matter how small, it will be a benefit.

and Nancy - you would imagine the problem is miniscule by comparison, I think we need to be relying on hard fact not your imagination

I'm woefully uninformed on this, which makes me slightly ashamed; I'm sure part of the problem is that we don't, quite, care as much as we should do about these children. Nobody does, and until we change that, they will continue to suffer.

I'm just going to jot down an opinion, then.

I feel very uncomfortable about a sea-change vis a vis earlier adoption/taking into care in the system as it is. And it will be the system as it is, because there just isn't the money or the will, I think, to make the substantial changes that might make such a system come anywhere near working.

I completely see where the Barnardo's chief is coming from; the prolonged awfulness of serial fostering is, without doubt, harming many children. And children really do deserve to come first in all of this.

But i really worry that a sea-change would be effected by the same over-worked, over-stretched social services, without enough money to provide really excellent care for the children taken into "care". And that individual cases where it is not the right thing to do would be left fighting a very hostile legal system.

I thought the earlier poster who pointed out that many children are left in awful home situations are there because there is nothing better to transfer them into - at present, raised a really important - and chilling - issue. (Sorry, I've forgotten who it was.)

And i agree with the posters who are worried about the whole issue of poverty.

Anyway, will go away and think some more.

that should of course read - fascist ethnic cleansing...

Don't know if anybody ever saw the documentary: Hold Me Tight Let Me Go. It's one of the most powerful documentaries I've ever seen - heart breakingly sad too. I'd strongly urge people to try and see it.

It's about the Mulberry Bush school in Oxford. It's a residential school for very traumatised and vulnerable children. It's not a care home - it's intensive therapy and education in a loving home style environment with a ratio of 108 staff caring for 40 children. The results they achieve are amazing. Sadly they are the only such place in the UK

This is the statment from their website:

By improving the life chances and social inclusion of traumatised children and young people, we create a long-term benefit to society by reducing their anti-social behaviour and its impact on families, schools and communities. Our work is a cost effective early intervention to interrupt the otherwise destructive inter-generational cycles of deprivation and abuse.

Poverty is a contributing factor in cases of neglect and abuse quite a bit of the time (if you have no money, shit housing, no work and absolutely no hope then you may well abuse alcohol and drugs and not have the mental energy to be a good parent) especially when it's second or third generation poverty coupled with abuse of the adult when the adult was a child. But it's not the only cause of bad parenting, nor are the majority of poor people bad parents.
Frankly, not all problem drinkers or drug addicts are bad parents - again money is a factor here, though. Someone with an alcohol or drug habit and money can function for a lot longer than a poor person with a habit: the rich addict will have better access to both a clean and safe supply of the chosen substance and good private rehab care when s/he chooses to stop.
There are multiple factors at work here, though the main one is underfunding and undervaluing of social service workers (right now the job only appeals to the well-meaning naive, who get disillusioned, and loons with an axe to grind). The romanticising of couplehood and childbearing as women's 'destiny' is problematic as well: if you keep peddling the message that women find 'fulfilment' only in love and motherhood then some women will put up with any old crap to get/keep a man, and then have babies they don't really want because not to have a baby is not to be fulfilled.

Nancy - I don't think you'll find any reputable experts who say that child abuse is confined to the poor.

For instance, domestic violence is one form of child abuse. It is as likely to happen in a four bed detached or a manor house as it is in a housing association flat.

I don't know of any social workers that have too many cases in the stockbroker belt.

We're talking about the sort of children that should be removed at birth or before the first two years - the Baby P's of this world, the kids in Doncaster, the daughter of Kimberley Harte - children that are at risk of death and will become feral before puberty because they live in filth and squalor and have been raised like animals.

Trying to pretend this sort of abuse is as much a problem amongst the middle classes just clouds the issue and doesn't help anyone.

Don't think Nancy is saying that there are no middle class child abusers, just that they are more likely to be poor. Other posters have also mentioned the many conditions that lead to this being more likely.

For me, the number of mothers with disreputable boyfriends is clearly a problem and has been a factor in a lot of the worst, most high profile cases like Baby P. I worked temporarily in children's services and saw many files that suggested this was frequently the case, and even worse, that often it was tacitly known to professionals involved with the family (police, social workers) and even the mother but that the mother turned a blind eye, and that even when the professionals wanted to pursue the matter they couldn't get enough solid prooof to justify taking it forward - kids not willing to make a statement etc. The mothers turning a blind eye is linked in with SGB's point above: because having a man is held up as The Ultimate Goal by society, many women get and stay with really unpleasant men because in their own eyes, and to other people, this makes life better, even when it is palpably making their kids' lives and their own worse, if only they acknowledged it.

Like many other posters, I have to say I am with the Barnado's head. The system as it is doesn't seem child centred as it should be. Give babies a better chance, as soon as possible.

Here are some thoughts on all that's been discussed (very interesting thread btw).

1. Parenting classes may sound useful, but IMO they're completely useless. SolidBrassGold's description is right, they're often taught by young psychologists / sociologists. They're very short (just a few sessions, how on earth can a parent's whole psyche / mentality change like that?!). And they teach things that usually follow the newest parenting 'fashions' e.g. time-out, ignoring etc. They don't help at all in any of the underlying problems. They don't offer the support these families desperately need. They are a waste of money but sound as if the government is doing something. That same money could go for more direct support. Just plain listening & being there to help would be better!

2. When we say 'there is less abuse / neglect in middle class / upper class families' that may be true. It all depends though on our definition of what abuse is (a...much-abused word itself!) I'm not talking about the more extreme cases which we all agree our problematic & SS should intervene. There are other cases where just sheer financial help & a good home would help eradicate many of the problems. No parenting class can help when there is no good home & where parents have to work so much that they never see their kids.

3. I stand by my point that there are problematic families in all society- I think we all agree with that. I think though that the government is indeed focusing on the rundown council estate kids. What they're doing is saying: OK there are families which live in those run-down estates. They're losers & their children will be losers. What can we do? We're not going to throw money at them or try to work on the real issues. Parenting classes sound ok, they sound liberal and 'nice' (to me they sound highly patronizing & irrelevant). Parenting classes aren't aiming to actually help. They're aiming to keep the problem contained where it is, in the run-down council estates. Solve the problem early (by parenting classes, of all things!) so that it won't come back to haunt you as antisocial adolescents. Problem is, nothing is solved this way, the problems are much more structural & need wider solutions & more direct support.

(What I'm saying on point 2 is that in some cases a financial problem is presented as an abuse problem, or ends up being an abuse problem).

socio-economic deprivation,poor education,unemployment all statistically increase likeliehood of child neglect/abuse

that is not to say all those who fufill that criteria will go on to neglect children. they wont. this isnt straight cause and effect

however poverty,poor educational attainment, parental childhood experience and upbringing are compounding factors which increase likeliehood

so on any given day the majority caseloads will be allocated to the more socio-economically deprived parts of a town/city

so now perhaps govt and agencies should look at systemic poverty,families were no one has worked for years or attainment and achievement oppurtunities are not on parity with middle class families

I agree with the Barnardo's chief. There are a lot of parents who with all the support in the world will still not be able to provide an adequate upbringing for their children. Having said that I do not have the confidence or faith in Social Services or the government to follow this through correctly. Social Services would be given some meaningless target that X % of children must be taken into care and this could result in the wrong children being removed from their families.

There were a few stories in the Sunday Times at the weekend of families being threatened with having their children removed because they dared to question social services/health authorities over various matters.

Thedollshouse: You say 'there are a lot of parents who with all the support in the world will still not be able to provide an adequate upbringing for their children'. There is a vast, vast majority though of parents who with adequate support WILL be able to provide a very good upbringing to their children. If systemic poverty is indeed a huge problem that sometimes leads to neglect / abuse, should we not be focusing on that, rather than on parenting classes & pressure on SS to take more children away?

Martin Narey is a cock.

if a child is at risk of emotional/physical neglect yes we should remove it from damaging environment

pavlov is that your considered answer?a cock?

i imagine he has seen numerous cases,attended numerous case conferences, supervised staff and carried a hard caseload. his opinion is worth a lot more than a thow a way put down

Maria2007 you are right about it being systemic poverty that's causing the worst of the problems (though there have been cases or so it would seem where families with perfeclty adequate resources turn on one child and mistreat him/her dreadfully). But addressing that means actually pointing the finger at some of the rich. Not just the idiotic bankers, but the people who have made fortunes for themselves by cutting their staff's wages, removing as many rights from them as possible and compromising on health and safety. These people are enriching themselves directly by trapping others in poverty.

SGB (and Scottish Mummy) - Oh I so agree.

The whole thing reminds me of that Trotkyist premiss about focussing on the weak links of capitalist ideology and structure and applying pressure.

Structural poverty is such a huge part of this. In a way, capitalism produces these families necessarily, and thus these kids are the necessary victims.

i think that is why I really lean towards the idea of more and earlier intervention in dysfuntional families, and why I really interpret Martin Narey's words as the words of despair. Early, real, intervention would necessarily mean intervening in poverty and its effect. And when we come to structural (long-term, generational) poverty, those effects are multiple and complex. Right down to the fact that materially these families will often live in gulags of poverty, physically cut off from a more affluent society around them.

But obviously, we can't afford intervention at that level. Partly because we're talking, at some level, about actually changing the model of capitalism with which we operate. toe really intervene and help these families would mean taking on our current model of capitalism in the UK.

So family intervention is just not working enough. How could it?

I worry that Martin Narey has indeed looked at the situation as it stands and has realised that it is not going to work. Hence this statement. Which he has made prominently twice now. The implications are, I think, quite devastating.

And yes, I know, poverty isn't the whole reason for abuse/neglect. But I'll bet it's a factor in an enormous number of situations.