Mum on the run goes to Spain

[johnhemming]

This is a story of a couple going to spain to avoid the removal of a baby at birth.

I know concern in parliament about the failures of the family courts is growing. However, there really should not be any toleration of a system whereby people have to emigrate to avoid the removal and adoption of their children.

I track a lot of cases that are not in the media. It really is that bad.

Oh more of your nonsense I see. The only thing in the report you link is the story of the parents (as is always the case) and as usual Social Services cannot comment because of confidentiality. YOU have absolutely no idea whatosever about the true circumstances of this case and this kind of ridicuclous scaremongering from a politician is disgraceful.

Anyone reading this please be aware that John Hemming has been criticised by a High Court Judge for the way he tries to intervent to "protect" parents whose children have been removed. The wonder is how he continues to get away with it. I think it says a lot about the LibDems because Nick Clegg must be aware of his activities, and does nothing about it.

MNs please please be aware that social services DO not remove children without very very good reason.

If you are helping this couple JH to "flee" to Spain then that too is disgraceful because the unborn child is highly likely to be at serious risk of harm.

If I was threatened with having my baby taken from me I would be off like a shot.

"MNs please please be aware that social services DO not remove children without very very good reason."

Every other profession can and does make monumental fuck ups and I see no reason as to why SS should be any different.

well - obviously not much info in the article and I agree with nana that in general they don't take children away without good reasons.

However - someone else has already mentioned Fran Lyon, and I personally know someone who had her DC taken away for over a year (when the youngest was just a couple of months old) .

It turned out that she'd done nothing wrong, and SS had failed to look properly at the medical reports which showed that they were totally innocent. 2 young children separated from their parents for over a year with not so much as a "sorry" when they were finally returned .

It does happen.

Nor should there be any toleration of parents who are considered to be such threats to their own fvcking children that SS feel they intervene.

Yep - there will be serious concerns around their ability to safely care for this baby. It always makes me laugh when I see the Press hawking about their lies concerns that social services just remove babies and children willy nilly.

The evidence needed is horrendous - which is why many parents get chance after chance after chance.... sometimes to the detriment of their children.

We don't know the other side of the story - just as we only ever heard Fran Lyons side of the story.

I am not intending to get into any kind of "debate" about this issue because it has been done to death on other threads and there are sadly a few people out there who have a lot invested in believing that social workers are just "baby snatchers" who want to remove children from decent parent. This is simply NOT the case but I know that willnot stop people believing this. I suspect the people who believe this will be the ones who will shout the loudest when there is a child tragedy that "why didn't sommebody do something.

I don't know the case you refer to but parents in these circumstances will almost always give their own version of the "facts" which in reality bears no resemble to the exact nature of the concerns. This is understandable but it is sad that so many people are willing to believe the account of the parents. Social workers can never give their side of the story because of confidentiality and so the parents can construct their own story and believe me over many many years in social work I have heard the most amazing and bizarre stories constructed by parents to make it look as though Social workers and the courts are acting improperly.

If you think about it, what are parents to do in these cases, admit that they were unabe to properly care for their children and they were unsafe in their care. Of course not............in their understandable anger and frustration they hit out at social services and distort the facts, and then journalists and John Hemming seize upon these so called "misacarriage of justices" and hey presto the myth is created .

We had JH telling us recently that social workers removed a child because the relatives of the child called the social worker fat! How crazy is that. Do people who believe this rubbish really believe that this could happen. It is nonsense I'm afraid.

Ok there will now be posts about social workers making mistakes and all sorts of stuff. Yes they make mistakes because to do so is part of the human condition but children are not removed from parents only as a very last resort and without very good reason. To believe otherwise is to believe that the entire range of professionals and jusges involved in these cases are all joined in some conspiracy to remove children
from innocent parents.

The article quotes the couple's MP:

"Last month in the Commons Tim Yeo, the couple?s local MP, accused council officials of "kidnapping" the child solely to boost their adoption figures.

"This council actively seeks opportunities to remove babies from their mothers. Its social work staff do so in a manner which in my view is sometimes tantamount to child kidnapping,? he told MPs. "

So do social services never, ever make mistakes? That sounds completely implausible.

actually Nana - I have (and still do) have SS intervention in my family - yes from CP. So I have a very real expericence, and know that they don't just taken children away willy nilly...........however I also know for a fact that the couple who had their children removed for over a year were totally innocent. Their children were given back to them, and there was no contact with SS after that - as SS knew they'd made a mistake and there was no risk at all from them, and there never had been.

Mistakes DO happen, all too frequently.

It should be said that while I have never felt any threat of my childre being taken away the amount of information which has been inaccurately recorded in just the space of just 2 months is terrifying.

Just the other day the FSW came to see us for the first time........thinking that my DH had come out of hospital 2 or 3 weeks ago, and having totally the wrong information about how/why CP got involved in the first place.

I sat there when I read the assessment report they'd done for DS1 - it was full of errors (not to mention having an email stapled to the back of it containing names and DOB's of 2 children that are not mine.......) - and when I pointed them out she admitted they were mistakes "but she's only human"

Well yes - but it would be nice if they got some of the basic details correct.

Thank you for bringing this up, jh.

Nina, in my experience - both personal and professional - the children of our society are uner threat of abuse and neglect due to the incompetence and inadequacy of Children Schools and Families as well as the emotional torture of unnecessary and unfounded, poorly evidenced justification of removal from their families.

The reality is, this Government department is underfunded, under resourced and underskilled not to mention worfully lacking in the necessary skills for considered, empathetic and multi-dimensional, solution driven support.

They are also hyper defensive and clandestine in their approach - at least on a par with the most deviously abusive families - with a poor grasp of the Data Protection Act to boot.

Oh Jollypirate - thank god there is someone out there with some sense. As I suspected (the posts crossed) posters are coming on about mistakes that social workers make and no one would ever disagree with this. I think FWIW the main mistake is to leave children too long with parents/step parents who are clearly unable to keep a child safe, in the hope that matters will improve with support (as in the baby Peter case)but for some reason there are still people wanting to believe the "snatching" theory. If they only knew the truth, which is that most social workers would rather walk over broken glass than remove a child as it is so stressful for everyone concerned and dare I say creates so much work in terms of assessments, court reports etc etc and if the sw does not have an experienced manager to guide them through care proceedings it can be hugely stressful.

You clearly know what happens in reality rather than in the minds of those who criticise but do not in fact know what really happens in these cases. I must try to stay away from these threads as it only frustrates me more and more.

OK - goodbye all - I know only too well what is coming and I have no wish to be involved. I still think it disgraceful that an MP can behave in such an irresponsible way. Oh and incidentally if anyone is interested in what a High Court Judge said about John Hemming in his judgement, do let me know and I will post it for you.

I am.

Nana - you'll also see that I said that I have/had no fears about them taking my children away from me.

However, when a SW sits there and LAUGHS about the fact that she handed me an assessment of my own child (to keep) and as I flipped through (didn't have to - I could have done that later) I found an email contain the FULL names and dates of birth of 2 children that were NOT mine - and this is from the Child Protection people!

She thought it was funny (she should be glad that I found it while she was still there and handed it straight back........of course I could have kept it and used it to get her into quite some trouble.....

Mistakes DO happen, not always no, but frequently enough to give some people legitimate cause for concern - especially as we're talking about the welfare of children. Yes you get the cases where they SHOULD have been taken away from their parents, but also the cases where children are taken away with no real reason.

We've been "handed over" to the FSW's now - but I was astounded how much incorrect information she had about us/our situation when she came to see us for the first time on Friday. Information that she'd been given by the SW who saw us prior to that.

I'm not talking about things that could easily have got mistaken/mixed up, I'm talking about bare facts about our "case". Things which make our case what it is.

It seems that for some unexplained reason our little nation has turned into a sess pool of mothers who suffer from factitious disorder... or should that be MSBP, oh no that was discredited, so FII, oh no wait that name change was discredited too, so back to factitious disorder then, that little chestnut that the ss drag out so regually when they can find nothing wrong with the parents or the parenting.

And yes we may have only heard Fran's side of the story but a full and thorough investigation was done in her new country and guess what.. there's nothing wrong with her, her child is thrieving and she was told by these ss there she should sue the ss here... hmmm, but as the ss here are never wrong (pmsl) then I guess that investigation doesn't count.

MN's please be aware that the ss DO remove children without good reason and if they come into your life you need to pack up and leave the country before they start any proceedings against you.

Maybe we should all emigrate and leave them turn on each other like a rabid pack of wolves.

"MN's please be aware that the ss DO remove children without good reason and if they come into your life you need to pack up and leave the country before they start any proceedings against you."

• nah I can't be arsed packing up - 2moves in the space of 6 months earlier this year was quite enough for me thanks

I heard New Zealand was nice and then I found out that all of our bloomin social workers are moving over there so that's one to cross off the list.

Bucharest - I am not computer literate enough to do links. However if you go to "snatched" by social workers on this R/ship topic, on P.8 there is a link to this judgement posted on 4th Dec by Spero.

Awa - please believe me I am not saying that mistakes aren't made - of course they are, and details of other children shouldn't have been handed to you - but it was a human error wasn't it - someone inadvertently stapled two things together that shouldn't have been BUT surely you can see that this was a simple error. Maybe the sw laughed to cover her embarrassment I don't know, or maybe she was insensitive - I've met plenty of those kinds of sws believe me.

Not sure what the FSWs are ? but yes I can well imagine that information was not properly passed on and assimilated like it should have been. This is incompetence and again I have seen this on other occasions. Sws are horrendously overloaded with huge caseloads and this of course increases the risk of mistakes but that isn't really an excuse and it isn't acceptable.

PLEASE accept that I am not saying that mistakes aren't made - I am simply saying that children are not "snatched" from decent innocent parents. That's all I am saying - why do people assume by this I mean that mistakes are never made. You say you know that children have been removed without good cause. Can I ask how you know this - do you know all the facts of the case, and if so whose account have you heard because it won't be from social services as they are bound by strict confidentiality as you know.

I think John Hemming deserves a medal for uncovering some of the dreadful stuff that goes on in the family courts and sticking up for the rights of parents.

Nana - you come across as verging on the hysterical and with a big vendetta against JH, not to mention your own agenda in trying to make us all think SS are perfect. Personally if I got so much of a sniff that SS were interested in me and my family I'd run as far and as fast as I could. SS are not to be trusted.

fsw are family support workers

Atlantis and Callisto, your comments are deeply unpleasant. Is it being anonymous that allows you to behave in this way, or is it a real life thing too?

Yes exactly human errors - so you acknowledge that errors are made then?

Family Support Workers - you don't know what they are - yet you come on here talking as if you know so much about the social service?

So twice in 2 paragraphs you admit that mistakes happen.

Yes I know the children, she showed me the reports she had, she went to our local MP about it, thankfully his intervention meant that eventually SS's did look at the medical reports that said that the injuries her child sustained were absolutely not her fault at all. And her children were given back to her, the assessments done stated such. Can't really give many details, as any more could identify them to anyone that could know them as they were pretty specific.

And I'm sorry but I must laugh at "strict confidentiality".........yes that's why someone made a "human error" and gave me a sheet with the details of 2 other children which are evidently under CP right now .

Mistakes do happen - both with children being taken away that shouldn't be, as well as children NOT being taken away that should have.

I'd quite happily tell Nana to her face too. There isn't a personal insult there - just giving my opinion. Whenever JH posts Nana is right there after him giving him a kicking. Just pointing it out.