Mother 'not clever enough to raise child' has baby snatched by social workers

[Heated]

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What do we think?

Yes, but might there not be some sort of correlation between the speed of assessments and the number of children who manage to die in the meantime? Asking merely as an outsider with little understanding of these thing.

No probs, NaNi,
It's your profession and you clearly care about it, so you're bound to react.

I get this kind of thing in my profession, where lay people, single issue campaigners etc give us a bashing for things. It is often justified, but often not. Sometimes there is huge prejudice based on admittedly awful but not necessarily representative experiences.

The only way you move forward or gain insight is by getting into the nitty gritty of getting people to say what they think needs changing and why. People often find that it may be easy to fix one specific type of situation, but it's horrendously difficult to find changes that give acceptable solutions across the board (being aware, all the time, of the law of unintended consequences). But anyone not prepared to try loses credibility, in my eyes.

Yes, but might there not be some sort of correlation between the speed of assessments
and the number of children who manage to die in the meantime?
Possibly a negative one. If you rush to complete an assessment without adequate information then the assessment is often wrong.

Many of these cases are not ones that happen within minutes. cf Khyra Ishaq.

will the rest of the story be published in the papers ? if ben is adopted or if kerry gets him back?.
does anyone remember he family that had their kids removed because of a query about the health of one of the kids? there was a program on tv, the family may have had a condition that caused stress fractures in the bones/joints?.dont remember if it was proven to be the case , but the kids were all adopted out and they couldnt get them back.
SW thought they were right in suspecting abuse.

Is this some kind of wind up?

Although tbh I wouldn't expect an MP to either know how to punctuate a sentence or which form of practic(s)e to use.

Mr Hemming practise is a verb, practice is a noun. I'd hate you to get this wrong on something formal

"I have just come in from the Pub. I am not going to try to find all the questions people have asked to answer them."

leoniedelt's point is a crucial one. That is where Alan Rushton's research is so important.

The government not only have done no research as to the number of adoptions that fail, but are not even proposing to do any - as yet.

Are the Lib Dems proposing that research?
Are they proposing changing the criteria by which children are taken into care?

Our policy is to review the threshold criteria to get some more detailed and published guidance.

Personally I would like the Strasbourg jurisprudence to have the legal force that it is supposed to have.

That, however, involves getting the Court of Appeal to behave. Hopefully the slow trickle of cases going to Europe combined with the PACE inquiry should achieve that.

I would expect Lib Dems or Conservatives to get the research done into disrupted adoptions - although neither party has formal policy on this.

Leoniedelt -you make a very fair point about children in the care system.
They have the worst outcomes of all children in this country vis a vis education, teen pregnancy, appearance in the justice system, drug addiction etc etc.

What happens to these children once the state is looking after them must be improved drastically.

However, acknowledging that, doesn't mean we should leave children in homes where they are at risk imho. We need to look instead about making our care of them better.

litchick is right that if a child is really at risk (ECHR jurisprudence) then the child does need to be removed.

If we took fewer children into care we could do a better job in looking after them.

Note that the increase in children being taken into care since late 2008 has been accompanied by a growth in significant incident reports to Ofsted following a child's death.

What do you mean JH, the number of incidents involving children in care has gone? Is this as a proportion, or are there significantly more?

By significant incidents, do you mean those reported to the SPOC as they are a relatively new requirement which might need a little time to standardise appropriately? The reporting is to do with sudden death eg road accidents, even terminally ill children and SIDs.

I also need to qualify your assertion about increase in care proceedings. From my perspective the proceedings increased as a result of serious concerns coming to our attention, mostly from other professionals. As I chair legal planning meetings I am in a position to comment on my experience and it is that Baby Peter made no difference to our thresholds, but did to the other professionals who suddenly began to notice how children were living and didn't want to be treated as badly as social workers (and possibly were a bit concerned too ). However, this is just my LA.

I also need to comment about senior managers and performance indicators, ime they were not just worried about these, they wanted children to be safe (and for them not to be Sharon Shoesmith I'm sure).

CSCI used to get the serious incident reports. This transferred to Ofsted in April 2007.

Do you mean serious case reviews? If so, then the numbers should not lead you astray, safeguarding boards are doing more of them, but children are not being injured or killed in any greater numbers than when fewer ScR were undertaken.

I mean "serious incident notifications"

oh, ok. I know what you're talking about now, but when you say:

'Note that the increase in children being taken into care since late 2008 has been accompanied by a growth in significant incident reports to Ofsted following a child's death'

What exactly are you trying to say? I mean I'm sure it's really negative and designed to make us all think the state is an evil child snatcher, but perhaps you could be a bit more specific?

These notifications
www.ofsted.gov.uk/Ofsted-home/Forms-and-guidance/Browse-all-by/Other/General/Notification-of-serious -childcare-incident

In essence it indicates that sadly more children died as a result of child abuse and neglect in 2009 than 2008. That was notwithstanding taking more children into care.

Hasnt this been done to death now over this lass as she was in the papers already.

I feel for her but what do they actually mean Learning Disabilities as in not being able to care for the baby at all. Does the dad have anything wrong with him at all as this is weird. If you are helping this lass JH I hope you have the full case in front of you and can help the baby have a good outcome from this I applaud you but if its just for the parents no as the child must come first. So that baby is safe away from harm or potentional harm.

I can see the SW stepping when a mum doesnt do one thing as in the breastfeeding thing as if its demand and she has a baby that likes its sleep so it wont thrive as it should just my take on that. It happens but usually after a lot of support has been put in place first.

SW dont snatch babies or children for that matter. It has to go to a court or here in front of a panel of three poeple to decide the fate of the baby or children. SW can put their point across and they usually win but not all of them.

Yes you do get the overzealous SW but there is still good ones out there usually bogged down witb paperwork and a crap line manager that keeps changing things on them.

Every proffession does make mistakes but I have to say this they dont promote them they should sack them.

I can see no reform here for SSD as that needs a public changing its view of SW and that isnt going to happen overnight is it. We scream at the SW for doing their jobs from one end of the spectrum to the other.

This damn if they do and dont is a cop out by the way.

Most SSD are failing why? Is this the broken Britain we speak of perhaps. Will it change no it wont cos we as a nation dont want to see the bigger picture we want results and we want them now.

Take the 2 boys that nearly killed another 2 boys we (mostly) want to throw away the key and they never see the light of day. Now they have been put away do we even care now. You'd be surprised by what we do say really.

Then the babies that are killed by their parents. Parents put away and we get to vilify them on here and on facebook to make us feel better about ourselves.

We are not proactive these days we turn a blind eye or if we do report things it isnt taken seriously till it blows up in someones face then we do our usual.

Blame someone else thats what.

So JH, surely you're no suggesting that more children should be taken into care to protect them from harm.

Also Ofsted seem to contradict your assertion about more children being killed or harmed, so it seems that perhaps we are looking at different information.

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...... and yet there is apparently no money to do any overhauling of the current system with according to JH. So Mr Hemming - if there is no extra cash can you tell me exactly how we CAN improve upon the current system for protecting children and ensuring their safety.

Anyone who believes that the baby in this case has been removed simply because the mother has LD is living in cloud cuckoo land. She has a partner - the baby's father who should be a protective factor and yet the recommendation is that the baby be removed. Ask yourselves why that might be and the answer should be obvious - he is not the protective factor that he should be for reasons not known to us and which neither he nor Mr Hemming are going to come forward and disclose. Why? Maybe because many of us might say "Ah - now I understand"

I currently care for a mother with severe LD, her partner (the child's father) who wants residency in the UK is around for no other reason than he wants a British passport and IMO not a protective factor. Yet no SW is recommending a care order. Why? This girl lives with her mother who IS a protective factor. The grandmother cares for the child - and nobody has suggested otherwise. Yes checks were carried out and she is the one person who can ensure this child's safety. So I am afraid I have to laugh when I read the DM and JH banging on about how another baby was removed due to the mother's LD. Forgive my language but - bullsh*t! The child has been removed until it has been established that SOMEONE in his family is able to protect him from potential harm. That may be Dad but given that they have ploughed ahead with removing the child I doubt that. And tbh - in helping them flee Mr Hemming may well have damaged any chance they might have had of proving themselves willing to work with the people who could assess and support them.

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