Jack Straw announces major changes to Family Courts

[onebatmother]

Blood and thunder, this is serious

He doesn't bitch to MN HQ to try to get other peoples posts removed, either, despite being on the receiving end of some pretty nasty personal attacks from some of those who disagree with him.

Their views would carry more weight if they could have a civilised debate instead of throwing insults around and making spiteful personal attacks.

Some of those who disagree with JH manage to say so without resorting to vitriol. So it clearly is possible.

John Hemming never engages in personal attacks and never tries to shut down debate.

"You don't happen to have a link to this Atlantis do you? "

Not without going back and pulling out individual links, sorry.

I know they had a 'campaign' going against at least two you tubers (because I was one of them) but they were laughed off the comments section. They also tried to get the tubes taken down, which didn't happen.

They were also infiltrating such sites as mothers for justice etc (again laughed off the boards).

Newpapers articles such as in the DM, Times (especially Cavendish )etc, they would post en mass.

A number of cases in court have had posts from parenting sites included in them (trolls) by the parent in question. (including my own case which highlighted posts and the tubes (the judge wanted to know who and why I was being 'cyber' stalked, which was amusing and helped my case a lot).

There 'positive' campaign just doesn't work.

Dittany,who are you talking about trolling? Do you mean me? I came on this thread because it is an interesting topic of relevance to me. I reported a post for the first time as I thought it was just horrible and designed to prevent social workers commenting, which it did me for a while until I decided to take a stand.

"designed to prevent social workers commenting"

As I wrote the post I shall answer this rubbish.

It was not 'designed' to prevent social workers posting, it was not 'designed' to prevent anyone from posting, I called her a troll because that is how she acts, she does not post on other subjects and her first post was attacking me, I had not attacked her, I had not mentioned her at that point, I was having a debate with other posters when she launched her attack, as she has done on numerous other threads with numerous other posters (funny how you don't see that or mention it, subject viewing? ).

You choose to launch an attack on me with your first post as well, but not just on this thread, you claimed on another thread I had posted 'bile' and you would have it removed, wrong thread though right?

I know the ss doesn't like freedom of speech, they hide behind a wall of secrecy thats being knocked down a brick at a time and people will continue to knock on that wall, the internet is a great place to highlight the wrongdoings of the ss because you can't close us down, we just move our stuff to another server, we can't be bullied and we can't be silenced and all you people do by trying is to show how bad things really are for the parents who have to fight this unjust system.

Atlantis, you know I meant this thread because I explained my mistake on the other. When I say 'designed' it was your comment about 'SS'. You know that Nananina doesn't work directly for CSC, however some of us do and this felt as if it was directed at those of us who do. That's how I interpreted it. Anyway, you went too far and Mumsnet agrees. Perhaps you might wish to think about your behaviour in that respect.

In my view you gave a perfect right to spew your particular brand of nastiness, just as long as you don't cross that line. Apologies if that doesn't fuel your sense of persecution...

Anyway we have taken up too much of this thread with this sort of shit and put off other contributors. That is sad, so from now on, I am going to stay on topic, if anyone else wants to.

I agree, I think mediation has the potential to be very helpful in helping parents focus on their children's needs, but it should be done by a skilled mediator. If emotional abuse is an issue, then I certainly don't think it should be forced.

" EA is so difficult to prove and unless you have very well trained Cafcass workers or mediators it will continue to slip through."

But that is the problem they are not trained. You need a psych evaluation for the accused, it's been proved in cases time and again that this is the only way to determine who is lying, while were paying for cafcass officers who then ask for a psych eval, or the soliciors ask for a psych eval we should just go striaght to psych, the amount of money saved in terms of court time and legal aid as the cases drag on would pay for this, plus the savings from axing cafcass.

What sort of psych. evaluation do you ask for,
psychiatric or psychological and who pays for it?

OK - I now know what a troll is - and I please "not guilty" - I do hold definite views and know that I am a little direct in my posts (sometimes too much so) BUT it is because I feel passionately about the issue NOT because I want to be inflammatory or close down debate. And thanks SGMum - yes I do post on all sorts of threads, mostly Relationships, step parents, Mental Health, Fostering, Adoption and ocasional AIBU, oh and MIL stuff as I'm one of those too! SO once again Atlantis your accusations against me are without foundation. I cannot believe how you accuse others of making personal attacks etc..........kettles and pots come to mind. But I will say no more, as you are clearly very angry to the point of being totally irrational about social workers and I have better things to do than engage in a slanging match with you.

Anyway back to the issue.........I didn't want to give the impression that I thought mediation was always going to be "all things to all men/women" - and of course I am willing to believe that people have had negative experiences when co-erced in some way into engaging in this process.

I suppose for me I am comparing and contrasting mediation with the notion of each party being legally represented and "slogging it out" in court and quite often one of the parties feeling that they have "lost" to the other parent. I know there are difficulties with CAFCASS as they are really struggling at the moment with being worryingly under staffed, and care proceeding since Baby P have increased by almost 50% and guardians need to be appointed in each case, and these of course are CAFCASS social workers.

I sometimes get involved with these cases after CAFCASS have been involved and one of the parents is willing to pay for an independent assessment. I have to say that sometimes I can see that the CAFCASS reports are somewhat scant and haven't always addressed all of the issues or spent enough time with the children, but then again this is because of time constraints - not right I know, but that is the reality. I have the luxury (because I work part time and only take 2/3 cases at a time) of conducting an in depth investigation/assessment and interviewing all relevant parties and spending a lot of time with the children. I always make any recommendation based on the best interests of the children, regardless of which parent has commissioned an independent worker.

I know that CAFCASS social workers are leaving in significant numbers at present because of the overwhelming volume of work and the stress that this creates, and this of course compounds the problem. It is very worrying really because what is more important than children's lives.

I think the best thing is for parents to be able to agree between them after separation/divorce but of course this often is not possible. I just think that sitting down with a 3rd party to try to discuss things rationally is a better way forward, but I do accept that some women may feel intimidated by this especially when DV has been an issue. But if blokes do "kick off" in mediation at least this can be made known to the Judge and this will give some indication of their true character and might be a positive thing for the woman.

The other thing of course is that once the court case is over and the Contact Order made (or not) then the parents are on their own and have to work it out, and then of course the conflict continues, with the children in the middle. Sadly many parents have a lot invested in continuing the conflict and "point scoring" and fail to realise that it is the children who are getting hurt.

Not sure what the answer is really - maybe better trained and qualified mediators.

"
What sort of psych. evaluation do you ask for,
psychiatric or psychological and who pays for it? "

It depends on what you want to find out as to whom you would enlist, a child and adult psycologist if the children are claimed to be afraid of/ abused by a parent would be helpful in determining the any damage/ abuse to the child.

For alledged abusers a nice psychiatric evaluation would do the trick.

In general terms legal aid usually pays for it, if no one is legally funded then the cost is split between the parties, but as I have said if we did away with cafcass the funds would be there already.

"and these of course are CAFCASS social workers. "

Not all are 'trained' in social work, when cafcass started they took over a lot of people from the probation services, these had no formal qualifications or training.

I do have mixed feelings about Cafcass and I think it started when they did away with the way they paid Guardians and they all left in droves to be replaced in some casesby some quite green SWs. The old ones could be a bit intimidating because they were so experienced, but ime they didn't take sides, they did quality work and focussed squarely on the children.

I feel a bit sorry for Cafcass now, but pissed off when they can't take a case or invent some spurious reason for my front line CP team to have to take it and then WE get snowed under even further and find it even harder to do our job. Having said that it is good e perience for SWs to get involved in these s.7s because they are so tricky and focussing on the best outcome for the child and not being distracted by mud slinging ( not real abuse I hasten to add) is a real skill.

I wish we could all have some realistic caseloads- I recall the social work taskforce neatly sidestepped this issue.

Atlantis, I agree about the evaluations, however most often we see abusers being resistant o this sort of intervntion: I think Nananina's point is a good one, when these men ( and ime it's usually men) fuck about in court, everyone gets to se it, not just the xp, so
ultmately it can be really helpful as long as they're not at physical risk,

"Having said that it is good e perience for SWs to get involved in these s.7s because they are so tricky and focussing on the best outcome for the child and not being distracted by mud slinging ( not real abuse I hasten to add) is a real skill."

The trouble is sw's follow the lead from cafcass so they also follow the logic and cafcass logic is a presumption of contact, even when the child was conceived in rape, even when the child or parent has been abused (yes, you still get a few good cafcass officers who will be in the best interests of the child, but more often than not they start from the presumption of contact no matter what) they tell the (usually) mother that the court will 'frown on her' if she doesn't allow some contact, that they 'have seen the court award custody to the father' because she wont allow contact etc, they are playing hardball with children's lives because they have been told, a quick turnover, get the cases in and out.

I have hours to go through cases where I can link behaviour and cross refernece the he said she said and find the dots that do not add up, cafcass can't and don't, but whats worse is they treat 99% of mothers who mention abuse as liars, spiteful women and not my favourite word 'vindictive'. So by definition what they are doing is punishing the victim, punishing the protector.

"however most often we see abusers being resistant o this sort of intervntion"

Yes, but if mediation is to be made mandatory then why can't a psych evaluation be made mandatory? You refuse, the case ends there. I'm not saying the swings and roundabouts can be sorted out by having a psych evaluation but it will certainly shed more light on a persons 'true purpose' or on a persons 'basic nature' than a cafcass officer writing ' the birth of the child was by forceps' (like that has anything to do with the nuts of the case).

"fuck about in court, everyone gets to se it,"

and it's generally ignored. I spent a long time on mother for justice ( and I don't know how it is now but when I moderated the site spiteful women were bounced off with a lot of distain because the abused women who posted knew it was partly down to these idiots that everyone was look on as a liar) and trust me when I say the amount of cases where men didn't turn up to court or contact or they kept asking for s47 orders etc just to spite the ex wives or for control was totally ignored, a new date was ordered, but if the woman didn't turn up, or refused something she was immediately given an order with a contempt clause.

It's not fair to say that these fathers will be picked up on, they aren't, a mandatory psych evaluation for the fathers would be extremely helpful.

Do you know how many times I have heard or read from a cafcass report or s7 report, that they could not 'reconcile the description of the father with what the mother had told them' and do you know how many psych evaluations have said 'of course the father would act differently in a different situation' and then the reports say ' i have been doing this job for a number of years if mr x were trying to pull the wool over my eyes i would know it' and the psych reports say 'this man has a narcassistic personality and is able to play many roles and persona's convincingly'. Answer, too many.

I sometimes think the judgement of Solomon is called for and I understand what you mean by joining the dots, I expect my SWs to go through every bit of recording with a fine toothcomb and note if there are any patterns. However, we are all human and that's where supervisors come in to challenge assumptions and unevidenced pro-parent positions. I have one SW who could be excellent, but needs work on their pro father perspective and they'll get it. Their work will also be viewed from this perspective. This work is labour intensive and sadly, overall as SWs we're not resourced well to do this as there is so much serious abuse being brought to our attention that seems to have been ignored for years...

Despite this, I acknowledge that it's not always clear cut and I think my team have got much better at not being forced to give an answer to soon, but to put in their recommendations 'if this, then this..' They also make sure they they talk to the child and observe any contact and interaction.

I would be aghast at abused women being further abused by contact, when it's clearly not in the best interests of the child as it's purely about control. I'm not saying it doesn't happen as it clearly does, but my team are very much alert to it. However, I'm sure it still happens in some cases.

"This work is labour intensive and sadly, overall as SWs we're not resourced well to do this as there is so much serious abuse being brought to our attention that seems to have been ignored for years..."

I don't believe that social services should be bought in on private cases at the whim of cafcass, this I have argued for years, unless the court feels that a s47 order is likely then the ss should continue to be there only for public law cases.

The truth behind the matter is that cafcass either a) want to strong arm the parent b) want to pass their caseload because it has become entrenched or c) both.

If cafcass can not do the job they are there for ie; sort out the he said she said/ best interests of the child then they should be disbanded, sherking their responsibilities off onto another department only causes a backlog of cases for children who are at risk of abuse now.

Atlantis - you are incorrect to say that when CAFCASS was created that "they took over a lot of people from probation who were not trained" - prior to CAFCASS, some private law cases were undertaken by Probation Officers who were known as "Divorce Court Welfare Officers" and they were fully trained Probation Officers. It was the custom that Probation Officers used to have to do this "civil" work alongside their usual probation work, or workers could opt to spend the majority of their time as "DCVOs" . CAFCASS brought together guardians who were previously freelance and Divorce Court Welfare Officers.

I think that therein lay the problem because Probation Officers acting as DCWOs were primarily used to dealing with adult criminals and were insufficiently child centred enough to be able to ascertain the child's true wishes and feelings in the matter and were ill equipped to deal with the complexities of contact issues. I think the children's guardians (who were usually social workers prior to being guardians) were better able to deal with these matters.

CAFCASS is now struggling, under resourced in all aspects but to keep on insisting that it should be disbanded is not the answer. i agree there are many problems and reform is needed but something has to be put in it's place to safeguard children before it can simply be disbanded. It isn't a case of "shirking their responsibilities off to another dept" (and I wasn't aware this was happening until wah wah made the point) the simple fact is that it is overwhelmed because of the volume of work and CAFCASS social workers are part of humankind (though you clearly don't think so from some of your comments) and cannot take on work without limit - indeed it would be irresponsible of them to do so.

Firstly you have elaborated my point;

" they took over a lot of people from probation who were not trained"

When you said;

"I think that therein lay the problem because Probation Officers acting as DCWOs were primarily used to dealing with adult criminals and were insufficiently child centred enough to be able to ascertain the child's true wishes and feelings in the matter and were ill equipped to deal with the complexities of contact issues."

"and cannot take on work without limit - indeed it would be irresponsible of them to do so. "

It is irresponsible to pass work onto ss that does not need to be done, (as I said before the ss do not need to be involved in private law unless a s47 is considered.) ss departments are understaffed, underfunded and overworked without having to deal with petty issue that a cafcass office throws their way because they don't have the time, or patience to deal with clients who are entrenched or need a little arm twisting.

No matter how unpalatable it is for a child to not have sustained contact with a good parent (not abusive) it is more unpallatable that a baby Peter goes undetected because ss don't have the time to deal with it.

To be fair and I think it was frustration speaking, the criteria for passing to the LA are clear, but not always applied evenly. I know from lawyers who have never worked for a LA that there's a feeling that if Cafcass can't do it, then CSC will.

Atlantis, we always try to make it clear if there is more work that needs to be done and what it is, but this approach is sometimes more difficult as it leaves us open to addendum reports (obviously more work again) and sometimes we suggest them.

I think we can all agree that there's just too much work around, but sadly, I still think mistakes would continue to get made even if there weren't - this is very complex and risky work, but perhaps they might be fewer and less serious.

Overall though, I do welcome the expectation of mediation and the message that it gives about trying to work things out rather than fighting.

I'm not going to read the whole thread as most of it just posters quoting other posters and it's rather confusing.

Just to be clear:-

• At the moment if you are on LEgal Aid, you have to attend mediation first.

• If there are DV issues, you do NOT have ot attend mediation.

• An agreement drawn up in mediation is not legally binding. your Solicitor has to "ok" it then teh Judge has to "Ok" it. If someone feels they were bullied in mediation, they can tell their solicitor and they will take it from there.

Mediation is USUALLY a good tihng, cuts out a lot of time, expense, stress etc. Kendal mediation service, for example, is run by NCH ans is very family focused,.