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.

The error in assessing outcomes for adoption is that they ignore the disrupted adoptions which are a high proportion of adoptions.

The issue of conflicts of interest is a real issue. I will at some stage be able to bring a real case into the public domain.

The rules in terms of contempt of court make that relatively difficult.

That's good. If you are able to show where things have gone wrong for the reasons you say, then that will be of benefit to all. However, extrapolating from a small number of cases in order to describe a whole area of work as 'evil' is just ridiculous. Bit like me saying all parents referred to social services are child abusing bastards beyond redemption. Of course I would never do that as it's obviously untrue, but I take it that you get my point.

It is not an "area of work". Nor is it all practitioners. The problem is the way the system works. The concentration on key performance indicators is dehumanising. The prevalance of conflicts of interest causes improper decision making. The obsession with adoption causes masses of psychological damage with the children.

These are the things that are driving people out of the profession and have been doing for some time.

It is not the practitioners fault. It is the fault of those responsible for the system.

I do hold the judges responsible for allowing this to develop.

I agree jh that performance indicators and the associated problems with these can be dehumanising.

However I'm incredulous that you blame this for practitioners leaving the profession whilst stating that the 'system is evil' and referring to social workers as baby snatchers who conspire with other professions to meet adoption targets.Have you considered that social workers may be leaving the profession in part because of the jaundiced and skewed misinformation that is expressed by people such as yourself?

?wannabe has still not ask the question as to how she makes a living.? I?m assuming that should be ?answered.?

?It is not unreasonable to ask wannabe to declare her financial interest. If she were to be publishing in a journal she would be required to.?

Firstly, I am not accountable to you, or anyone else on here. This is not a journal, it is a talk forum where members of the public are free to voice their opinions on any subject, and none of them are required to declare their interests, financial or otherwise. Some people do post here in their professional capacity, for example we have one poster who is a Speech and Language therapist, we have a poster who is a breastfeeding counsellor, and so on, and often these posters will give their professional opinions on the issues they are qualified in. If one of those posters posted something in their professional capacity then it is not unreasonable to question that, but as stated above the majority of posters (including myself) post here anonomously and are therefore not accountable for our views. You have chosen to post here as an elected member of parliament, it is therefore not unreasonable for members of the electorate who post here to question your motives and conduct.

Secondly, I am sorry to disappoint you, but I am not a barrister, or a social worker, I am not a foster carer, nor do I work for an adoption agency. Nor am I a family lawyer. In short, I have no financial interest in the ?evil system?.

Finally, out of interest, would you demand one of your constituents ?declare? their interests if they were challenging your opinions in a public meeting?

Amazing that JH has the audacity to demand to know how wannabe was making money out of the "evil system" when he was demanding £300,000 compensation in a writ he issued to Birmingham City Council. Furthermore he was demanding that this money be paid by the social workers themselves who were involved in his personal case. Needless to say no action was taken as the council had acted quite properly in his case.

And how ludicrous that he asserts that sws are leaving the profession because of performance indicators. Whilst these are not popular with sws they are leaving the profession because of impossibly high workloads, increasing stress and high vacancy rates, the castigation of them by the media and the worry of a child on their caseload being the next baby P.

Oh and I was just thinking to myself "well thank god Dittany is not here banging on about MsBp.......and here we go again. Yes yes yes OK we know that Roy Meadows and David Southall made mistakes - get over it!

Forgot to say that JH makes another ridiculous assertion that the "obsession" with adoption causes psychological damage to children. There is NO obsession with adoption as he believes. If a child cannot be cared for safely at home then he must be cared for elsewhere and all children deserve permanance and stability and in many cases for babies and young children this is best achieved by adoption. The fact that some adoptions break down is because of the psychological damage that was done to them before they were removed from abusive/neglectful parents. This damage unfortunately can cause problems throughout thelife span.

Adoptive parents struggle against all the odds sometimes to cope with these very damaged children but sadly the struggle can become too much, resulting in marriage breakdown, physical and mental ill health. In other cases adoptions are very successful and children are give the chance that all children deserve, a happy and untroubled childhood and a family for the rest of their lives.

And what of the pyschological damage caused to children living in abusive and neglectful households. Ah no he's not concerned with that because it doesn't do anything to prop up his nonsensical conspiracy theory about the child protection system.

Lol at dittany accusing someone else of dealing with criticism 'without anything substantial, but with plenty of attacks, bluster and sneering'.What hypocrisy.

And how do you know how anyone on this forum behaves 'behind closed doors'?

Nananina isn't the only person who is being critical of jh.I find it fascinating that he feels sure that wannabe has a financial interest in the 'evil system' just because she has the audacity to query his assertions and underlying motives.

jh is critcised because he has consistently been unable to substantiate or evidence his opinions which unfortunately he dresses up as facts.Made worse because he is in a position of power and responsibility.

Of course the article doesn't really tell us enough about these people.

Otoh I am deeply uncomfortable with the factitious illness diagnosis, when it is used, as appears to be the case here, simply because a mother claims her child is ill and the doctor cannot find a diagnosis. It is a totally different matter when a mother is found actually causing the symptoms, as does happen. But there is no hint of suggestion that this has happened here. So the only reason for assuming factititious disorder (the alleged reason for removing the child) is that the doctor has not found a diagnosis.

Now I have been in this position: as parents we were basically blamed for the doctor's incompetence and suspected of causing her psychosomatic problems: our dd now has a diagnosis of a perfectly well known physical condition and will be permanently disabled. Not a pleasant position to be in.

The thing that frightened me most at the time was the thought that some of the children who had been mistakenly removed in the 1980s scandals had actually been abused in the foster families they were placed in. It is not always the case that a child is safer in care. Abuse has happened, and does still happen, in care. Whereas we knew that we were not abusing dd.

Otoh I am absolutely disgusted with John Hemming's attack on WannaBe. Why shouldn't she have a right to an opinion without having to declare who she is or what she does? You are totally undermining your credibility and doing a massive disservice to the people you claim to want to help.

Interesting thread and no doubt there are merits to both views.

Personally, however, I rather dislike people using what is an open discussion forum as a place for which to lobby for their own personal campaigns. There are plenty of online and offline sites in which they can do this. It's a little like an unpleasant viral marketing campaign.

I do also rather dislike people making personal accusations about posters about whom they know little or nothing in order to substantiate their own case. It seems somewhat petty and defensive rather than informed or thoughtful.

I'd never really come across John Hemmings until this thread but I'm afraid he comes across less than well on both these points.

on previous threads I have always felt JH came across rather better than the other camp (who have been strong on ad hominem attacks in the past), but not on this one

and I agree with the viral marketing thing

nananina is wrong to assume that all damage done to children where adoptions fail is prior to the chidlren being taken into care.

There is good evidence that each change of placement including that of putting a child into care causes psychological damage.

What is most important about Michael Rutter's recent research is that it demonstrates the greater importance of care between 6 and 18 months in comparison to that prior to 6 months.

Given our great tendency in the UK to remove very young babies it is now clear that the adoptions that fail in a number of these cases are not caused by the birth parents.

It's interesting that NanaNina refers to 'birth parents' when talking about a case... it seems she is already thinking about a new set of parents!

Birth parents are entitled to free legal representation and it is the duty of the social work to ensure that they understand this and advise them to instruct a solictor to handle their case.

15/12 20.22

It's a joke to think this women might actually have a unbiased opinion.

johnhemming Wed 16-Dec-09 09:53:32
"nananina is wrong to assume that all damage done to children where adoptions fail is prior to the chidlren being taken into care."

That is actually a good point.

I am reluctant to dig up the Orkney and Rochdale scandals again, it's not to score cheap points against SWs- but one thing that did come across from them was that many of the children who had been taken into care had suffered emotional damage either from the mere traumatic experience of being removed from their families or from things that happened to them in care; as many scandals have shown, being in care is not always the safest place to be.

I have seen how much emotional damage my own dd has suffered from her own far less traumatic experience and I think I can truthfully say that that damage was not inflicted by us.

Of course, this is part of the horrendous responsibility SWs have, and I don't envy them, but neither do I think that making blanket assumptions- such as that adoption breakdown is always due to damage caused by the birth parents- is really helpful.

Loathe as I am to engage with you Dittany and I will ignore all your personal insults - they matter not to me. Yes of course it was horrendous that Meadows and Southall made such ghastly mistakes and yes lives were torn apart and people willhave to live with those consequence for the rest of their lives. My comment "get over it" was NOT addressed to any of the people caught up in this debacle it was addressed to YOU, and I admit to assuming here that you were not personally affected.

I see little point in keep on bringing up this topic on these threads. Yes mistakes have been made in cp cases,largely by the medical profession, with disastorous consequences, but to continue to use that as a way of supporting this conspiracy theory peddled by JH is flawed thinking in my mind. You say it was horrendous that social workers and the family courts supported them all the way..............it wasn't a case of "supporting" them it was a case of believing their medical evidence because they were medical experts. Why do you find this surprising - if you don't have medical qualifications (as most people involved in care proceedings don't have)on what basis are you going to challenge expert medical opinion. Even a judge will not challenge medical evidence because he doesn't have any medical knowledge/qualifications. The vast majority of medical experts giving evidence in these cases are wholly reliable and possess the necessary knowledge and integrity to be of assistance to the judge. Unfortunately this was not the case with Meadows and Southall.

We have all I think been brought up to respect the medical profession and believe in their integrity. It is therefore profoundly shocking when their evidence is flawed as in the MbP cases and the cot death cases where innocent mothers were imprisoned - difficult to think of anything more horrendous, after the death of their babies. The Cleveland/Rochdale/Orkneys debacles were also largely as a result of flawed medical evidence. Cory also has her own experiences in this respect.

Medics are just as capable as anyone else as making mistakes and we know only too well of diagnoses made too late or health concerns not being taken seriously enough but that cannot be avoided. It is partof the human condition to make mistakes. Shipman killed his patients but this doesn't mean that GPs are routinely engaged in such dreadful crimes.

The point I am trying to make is that none of these past cases in my view can be used to prop up the issue under discussion i.e. that social workers and the courts are all involved in a conspiracy to snatch children from innocent parents to get them adopted to meet targets.

Nana, please believe me: I was absolutely NOT using them for that purpose.

My only reason for bringing them up was to point out that secondary harm can be done by taking children into care, either through the sheer trauma of separation or because not all foster homes have been proved to be suitable. At least one of the children in the Orkney case suffered sexual abuse in the foster home.

Now if there already was primary harm, you might argue that the risk of continued primary harm outweighed the risk of secondary harm. Like a doctor prescribing a medicine with possible side effects. But if the primary harm had actually not happened, then all the harm would be secondary harm. This is what I was afraid of in our case.

Factitious disorders are a minefield and I would hope that any judge who deals with them these days would look for any actual evidence of harm beyond a worried parent.

I accept your explanation of "get over it", but it was still an unfortunate turn of phrase. I don't want other people to "get over" what sufferers with dd's condition still have to face on an everyday basis any more than I can get over it myself; I want them to be aware of it so that things can change. I want doctors to be forced to do adopt better practices.

To me, "get over it" is like saying "babies die from lack of proper hospital procedures- get over it". Why should we get over it? Perhaps medical mistakes are inevitable, but "get over it" sounds suspiciously like "accept it, don't complain about it, don't expect any change". If medical practitioners had proper training in disorders frequently masquerade as MSBP, then we wouldn't need to get over it.

I am clear as to my criticism of the system. It is dehumanising. The key driver is performance indicators and the court procedures are systematically stacked against families. (Children and Parents).

I am told JFF won another case today, but that does not mean that there are not hundreds of other cases that go wrong because no one tries to challenge the system.

Although I am particularly critical of the solicitors who undemine their own cases, the main problems are systematic rather than individual.

For those that claim that it is my criticism of social workers that drives the vacancy rate. I have been campaigning on this substantially since 2007 there were vacancy problems well before that.

I think NanaNina was suggesting you get over it dittany as you appear to be stuck in your thinking.

Noone can defend the injustices done by Southall and Meadows and the damage they have caused. Maybe you should be criticising the medical profession as vociferously as social services but you don't.

I've made the point to you in previous threads about the reliance on medical opinion and evidence by social services as they don't tend to be medically qualified. I'm sure you won't take any notice though.

I also find it surprising that the system tolerates a doctor experimenting on babies by making them breathe 0.3% CO (Carbon Monoxide) - as David Southall did. (one of the high priests of MSbP)

I accept entirely that they didn't breath it for a lethal period, but I find it hard to believe that any of the parents knew this.

In any event some of the children he experimented on such as Ben Hollisey McLean were in care at the time of the research.

Who acted to protect their interests.