Panorama - I want my baby back

[BeyondTheLimitsOfAcceptability]

Anyone watching?

This promoting of the idea that SS want to steal babies makes me very uneasy...

So we have to account for that little episode on the basis that either you suddenly became totally incoherent and irrational, or you are lying. Which is it to be?

Pitiful. Night all x

Goodnight ladies

One final one for you which shows you how utterly useless secret courts are. Slovakia has a massive problem with our secret courts and social services and this will be another case they take massive interest in - so it's 'switch on' to Slovakian Google Translate.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25738425

You can't control foreign media and you can't control the internet!!

I'm not 'reviewing my concepts of British Justice', whatever that means. I undertand how family court works. I know full well that what people say doesn't always translate into truth and therefore whilst of course some parents are telling the truth, you can't actually take everything people say at face value (my DD1's birth parents would love to tell you how the state stole their kids, and they are victims of social services, and I'm quite sure they could manipulate most people into being completely on their idea. The only problem would be that their tale is bullshit). I believe the balance of probabilities test is the best one we have, and people who want the same standard of 'proof' as a criminal court haven't actually considered the matter in depth.

But anyway, night all x

Who cares what Slovakia thinks? Seriously

They have their own problems with their care system. I don't see British media going on about all Slovakia's problems

By going on at Britain, attention is conveniently drawn away from issues going on 'at home'. Every country and their media does it, lets face it

Spero you are quite simply amazing.

That is all.

The problem is that we have decided as a country that we ate happy to take children away on the balance of probabilities because we feel that its worth having one cod removed wrongly for every one child whose life is saved.

Out is possible to change the burden of proof to be "beyond reasonable doubt". This will lead to fewer children being removed from their families, both those with loving families and more of those with abusive families.

I do think that now the science is suggesting a vitamin d problem they should start testing that routinely with fractures, but that's new science, the legal system isn't responsible for new scientific developments.

I will be interested to see how wizard and his friends chose to deal with posters who have already been outed.

Got any pictures of my child wizard?

Going to add them to your collection?

I would be very interested to have your explanation as to why you were 'quick' to get a picture of Alessandra Pacchieri's child.

The balance of probabilities test does not mean that the chance of getting the result wrong is as high as 50% as Mines suggests. It remains the case that local authorities have to satisfy a very high standard of proof. One of the central tenets of the law relating to the burden of proof is that the more serious the allegations, the more cogent the evidence has to be - and you can't get a more serious allegation than that a parent is not fit to look after their child.

I am happy to debate the relative merits of 'balance of probabilities' versus 'beyond reasonable doubt'.

What people need to understand that if you chose the latter it is inevitable that some children will be left in households where they will continue to suffer significant harm.

As a society we have chosen to use the lower standard in order to increase the degree of protection afforded to children.

If we think that the time has come to revisit it, then lets do so. Lets investigate, research, look to see if any other jurisdiction uses such a high standard of proof in child protection and lets work to change the system.

But if anyone out there wants the higher standard of proof because you think the system is corrupt and this will safeguard against corruption, then you really, really haven't thought this through.

Although the Conspiracy Theorists tend to get a bit coy when I ask them to be clear how far this conspiracy stretches, JH at least has been brave enough to identify that 'the whole system is corrupt' and refers to it as 'evil'.

So are you sure this increased burden of proof is going to help? As it seems to be suggested by most CT-ers that 'everyone' is in it - so this will include police, lawyers and judges as well as Social Workers.

Nenny I'm a statistician not a lawyer, so I took their claims about the level of proof required at face value (I caught up on iplayer this morning). How is the higher level of proof (as opposed to more evidence either way) for such things described?

And personally I've rather live with balance of probabilities because I think that more children are left in abusive or neglectful homes than are wrongly taken into care at this level.

It's described basically as I said - the more serious the allegation, the more cogent the evidence needs to be.

I would agree that, probably, more children are left in abusive conditions with regard to physical violence. However, at anytime after that there exists the possibility to still remove the child. What safety net exists for children wrongly adopted and their real loving parents?

Plus you have this massive grey area which, remember, accounts for roughly 80% of care cases. The risk of possible future emotional harm. Parents who have not harmed their children in any way (in some cases not given the chance as their children are taken at birth).

The thresholds are going to have to rise or the courts opened up. While the courts operate secretly there is wide mistrust and too many stories of malpractice.

Do you seriously suggest that where a parent has already harmed one child then any subsequent children they may have should be left with them until that child is harmed in their turn?

And can you please explain your activities in downloading pictures from strangers' Facebook pages?

So youre saying jill mccartan should lose her second child? Go tell her that. And your reply doesn't tackle the issue I raised of adequately making the system more robust.

Facebook is quite simple. Even children can master it. It has privacy settings. You choose, as an individual, proactively, which parts of your profile are 100% public. No different to copying a picture from the bbc website.

Obviously where the safety and wellbeing of children is concerned the balance of probability must be taken as the standard used. In my working life I have made many referrals to SS on the balance of probabilities as children's condition/injuries present. If there had been clear evidence the police are involved immediately. This has only occurred once.

Staying with the panorama program's personal stories relating to children with missed fractures which could have been caused by a recognised but under researched medical problem (Vit D deficiency). Surely this is an area which can be easily overhauled and possibly clear parents wrongly accused? It would probably be a small number but any child wrongly removed is one too many. The small pool of expert witnesses sound complacent and over confident.

No doctor in this position should ever make sweeping statements like its impossible for a white breastfed baby to be vitamin D deficient when clearly they can.

Or fractures in babies can only be caused by physical abuse.

Parents faced with accusations they know are untrue need legal representation which looks at the medical aspect because relying on blinkered expert witnesses for the prosecution serves them very poorly.

So youre saying jill mccartan should lose her second child? Go tell her that. And your reply doesn't tackle the issue I raised of adequately making the system more robust.

Facebook is quite simple. Even children can master it. It has privacy settings. You choose, as an individual, proactively, which parts of your profile are 100% public. No different to copying a picture from the bbc website.

@sneezecakesmum that sounds very sensible. How would you tackle retrospective cases? What would you propose for alysha mccartan?

Physical abuse is probably easier to tackle more robustly. It is a very small part of forced adoption cases however

Doctors sometimes make worse mistakes than being too confident in their expertise. Sometimes they make mistakes that kill people.

Is it time for doctors in this country to have insurance against mistakes like this?

Parents who are wrongly convicted due to incorrect expert advice might then sue the experts.

My DF was an expert witness (nothing at all to do with family law - he is an engineer) and the whole experience was a massive strain, stress and pressure for him. He hated it and would never do it again. I suspect the kind of people who don't find it a strain are exactly the kind of people that shouldn't be doing it...ie. the ones that think their opinions are law and bullet proof.

Where do you get this statistic that 80% of cases rely on 'future emotional harm' ?

That is not my experience. Most of my cases involve either long term neglect or concerns about non accidental injury.

The only cases I have had dealing with future risk alone involved a mother who threatened to kill her children and a convicted paedophile who claimed he would not reoffend.

What is this strange obsession of wizard's with getting me to pronounce judgment on Jill McCartan's case? As I keep saying, we can't sensibly do so because we haven't seen the case put forward by social services.

sneeze I certainly agree with you in the case of bone breaks that testing for vit D deficiency as standard should happen, though I understand for doctors that this is standard. Would be interesting to know why it wasn't done in this case (I assume it wasn't at the time of it would have immediately rebutted the parents claims) or perhaps the standard reponse has changed since these cases.

certainly when DS broke his hand his vitamin D wasn't tested but then there was a clear explanation for his break and he was old enough to tell the story for himself what had happened.

But I don;t think expert witnesses act "for the prosecution" but report to the court as a whole don't they? The quality of the witnesses is another matter and frankly not one I'm qualified to pronounce on.

Retrospective cases would be for the judgement of Soloman.

Ultimately it would have to be the child's best interests which are the deciding factor. Adoptive parents are, I believe encouraged to be honest with the children and say they have birth parents.

In cases where the child has been forcibly removed there should be communication between the adoptive parents and the birth parents if they dispute the removal but the adoptive parents would have residency to give them and the child security. The birth parents (if proved innocent) would have contact if the child is happy with this, in the way of an extended family. Each case would be decided on an individual basis with the child's interest being paramount.

It wouldn't be perfect from anyone's point of view but would try to address the issues for everyone concerned. The only alternative is to leave a child in the limbo of fostering.

This is why when there is disputed medical evidence there needs to be better research and application before adoption is considered.

It's never going to be simple but if you can take out the cases where medical mistakes are made it would help a terrible situation.