getting together information and support for EVERYONE in the child protection system

[Spero]

I am posting here, mainly because I am not sure what I am doing and I don't want to do anything against the rules or contrary to the site ethos.

In a nutshell, a lot of us have been contributing to various threads since before Christmas about the child protection system in the UK and all the controversy that has arisen since the case of Alessandra Pacchieri and the issue of 'forced adoption'.

We have perspectives from every part of the child protection system - there are birth parents, adoptive parents, social workers, lawyers etc and we think it could be a good idea to try to do something to bring us all together, to help people get access to information that is balanced and useful, particularly if they are facing care proceedings or worried they might be.

At the moment, we are thinking a blog could help, with different people providing short posts about their experiences and providing links to other sources that we know are credible and reliable. This could be very valuable for all of us - I am a lawyer for e.g. but I would love to know more about what doctors working in child protection are looking out for, and I would like to get more perspectives from birth parents about what they think is good or bad about the system.

We are also wondering if there could be a separate topic in 'Parenting' - Dealing with child Protection issues or similar, which could link to the blog, once we get if off the ground.

So sorry quite a lot of info there. Trying to précis

1. We have a lot of untapped knowledge and experience and would like to pull it altogether to provide a good source of reliable and balanced advice
2. We would like to start a blog, does anyone want to contribute or can think of snappy name?
3. We would like to use the power of mumsnet to steer people towards our information and provide another platform for discussion and debate

4.What's the best way of going about this?

Any comments, thoughts welcomed.

Fab article, brilliantly written!

The post I got deleted said that I have a friend who is a community paediatrician I could approach? and from your recent post, DD's (former) teacher is a friend too.

Does this mean all can now stop Arguing With Random Strangers On The Internet?!?!

Is it worth starting a thread in chat to do a shout out?

Think moving this thread to another more prominent topic, or starting several threads would be more noticeable?

There must be a wealth of info on here

Hi folks - and thanks to whitershadeofpale for directing me to this thread.

I am a SW and work in Child Protection. I carry out joint investigations with the police and know a lot about the subject. The only flaw is that i work in Scotland and the laws are very different although abuse is abuse anywhere.

I often reply to any CP or SW type threads to try and inform and support.

Let me know how i can be of use with this topic.

Sorry got to message and run. Out all day today.

Whiter if you could do shout out in chat that would be wonderful.

Littlewhitebag - anything you could write about your role, what you do would help. Show you are not a babysnatcher for a bonus.

I will need to take some time to read through the whole thread and see what you have already. I assume you have a site somewhere but I haven't come across the link yet?

Thanks so much littlewhitebag. the site is here www.childprotectionresource.org.uk/

I've done a shout out on chat that can be found here www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/1983894-Calling-all-wonderful-Mnetters-with-experience-of-child-protection?

Littlewite your POV could be very useful actually, as fleeing to Scotland has been discussed by certain people before as well, so some clarification on how it works up there would be good for that reason as well.

Not sure if this is at all helpful but on my phone the site looks amazing and professional. On the PC it doesn't look as good. Ive attached screenshots so someone techy can see what I mean.

The site's great but I find people tend to take it more seriously if it looks good.

Whitershadeofpale I think that is probably a problem with your browser rather than the website it should look just like it does on your phone.

Please could you tell me which browser and which version of the browser you were using?

(the someone techy here!)

Sorry it was at work (naughty I know). It's internet explorer but I'm not sure which version.

I suspected that was likely the case (we're pretty antiquated!) but thought it was best to flag up just in case.

You've done an amazing job getting it all up. On my phone it looks fantastic.

I knew it would be internet explorer. I bet if you get round to checking it will be internet explorer 6, 7 or 8. All ancient and not supported any more and yet because many work places don't ever routinely update a lot of people are still using horrifically out of date browsers.

Yep knowing the nhs I bet it is!

It looks like the phone version on the PC to me (a lot more spread out though obviously :)) - very slick and professional. I'm using Chrome.

Although, reading some of the articles, the text justification messes up a bin on some lines, especially where there is a long link on the next line, and it spreads out all of the letters and looks most odd.

I can see this on the "Myth Busting... My Social Worker is out to get me" page.

I would suggest for this either to make the links shorter (e.g. making the word "here" into the link rather than having the whole thing typed out) or putting typed-out links into a new line. Either would avoid the stretched text issue.

You could have a different colour for local and external links if that is an issue.

BertieBottsJustGotMarried thought I had fixed that days ago. must not have saved

Hmm. Well I would say perhaps it's my browser cache, but I hadn't been on the page before.

@Spero

I see that you've lot of comments already on your website! :)

it is not my website, it is OUR website. that's what makes it different and that is why I think it is going to work.

It is great that you allowing everyone to have a voice :)