Panorama - I want my baby back

[BeyondTheLimitsOfAcceptability]

Anyone watching?

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

BoF - yes, you are entirely correct, the witness template must be agreed at irh, and you are also right that other people can't attend court hearings. I do think more transparency is needed but thought needs to be given about how it would be policed. what do you think?

x-posted - apologies, busy expressing boob milk

Same rules as at present: contempt of court and imprisonment for any disclosure of sw or child identity. That's what parents face if they disclose any miscarriage of justice they experience currently.

Must got to bed now. Will be back tomorrow.

Journalists can attend some family court hearings although the court has the power to say 'no journos in this hearing' if it wishes to. The rules on such here

I remember reading the article of the journo who went to sit in on some hearings after the rules changed and she could be admitted. It was a great article, I'll try and find it

night BoF
thanks for that Lilka - I had no idea! you learn summit new everyday! off to bed but would deffo be interested to read that article if you find it

confuddledDOTcom wrote Half the problem with Sally's case was that it was presented as SIDS or murder, it most obviously wasn't SIDS so it must have been murder. When they went back over it years later they found a cause.

So do you think things might have happened differently if we had Inquisitorial system?

It says "An inquisitorial system is a legal system where the court or a part of the court is actively involved in investigating the facts of the case, as opposed to an adversarial system where the role of the court is primarily that of an impartial referee between the prosecution and the defense."

I meant parents should get to hear the 'evidence' against them before the court hearing. Of course they can listen to that evidence as it is presented in court but then it is too late to muster witnesses to disprove it, or gain an expert witness to refute it, or simply prepare an argument against it.

Parents get copies of all the witness statements and expert reports before hearings and have plenty of opportunity to gather evidence to refute it. If a witness were to come up with something entirely new when giving evidence in person that no-one had heard before, then the parent would be entitled to an adjournment to investigate it and look into getting counter-evidence.

like jury service, expert witnesses could have their services co-opted by the court with just expenses paid - like jurors.

Jurors simply have to turn up at court for, at most, a few weeks, then they will be released for years. Giving expert evidence in this sort of case, depending on what area of expertise is involved, may require assessing or testing the child and/or parents, going through medical notes and records in detail, conducting detailed research, writing a long report, discussing it with the legal representatives and dealing with their queries, meeting other experts, preparing for the hearing and finally spending days in the witness box. If you were thinking of going into an occupation which meant that you might be called away several times a year to do all of that without pay, would you do it?

If the case is heard in secret, the parents can't see the 'evidence', the evidence does not have to be rigorous, the parents can't speak about the case, no one can find out what happened in court.... and now quite possibly the parents won't qualify for legal aid - then miscarriages of justice are simply inevitable imho

As i have said many times before, this is simply not true.

When I act for parents I usually have at least two lever arch files of papers, containing all the evidence both for and against the LA case. I am paid by the state to represent the parents. If the LA try to refer to any evidence which is not in the bundle, I immediately apply for an adjournment so that evidence can be considered by me.

My case for Wednesday apparently has six lever arch files.

the evidence HAS to be rigourous. as the recent case of Re B-S made clear the most serious thing the State can do is take away someone's child so all decisions must be made on clear analysis of the evidence and application of relevant principles, such as Article 8 of the ECHR which puts a positive burden on states to consider family reunification.

There are very many reports of cases on the familylawweek.co.uk site, so go and have a look and see for yourself how cases are decided.

Journalists can sit in most family cases but there are restrictions on what they can report, which makes it all a bit useless. I do think we need further consideration of the extent to which journalists can be involved.

And as far as I know there have been NO changes to the rights of parents in care proceedings to get non means and non merits tested public funding.

the legal aid cuts are with reference to PRIVATE law applications, i.e. arguments between parents about contact etc.

This scaremongering simply has to stop. It is detracting attention and energy away from what we need to do to provide a child protection service that meets our children's needs.

inlovewithgarp - I think the journo Lilka mentions must be Camilla Cavendish - she was very concerned about a case in Norfolk and then she was allowed into a court hearing, heard some of the expert evidence and said something along the lines of 'maybe the parents hadn't told me everything about the case against them'.

No kidding Camilla.

this is why we urgently need more transparency, because it cuts both ways you realise. Not only will mistakes and sloppy practice from professionals be revealed, but child abusers will also not be able to hide behind allegations of corruption in the system to explain why they do not have their children living with them.

Ailee B - if you have evidence that the bonuses still exist, please could you send it to me.

I have been asking John Hemming for this evidence since 2011 and he hasn't provided it yet.

You can PM me and I will send you my details.

I don't believe there is ANY evidence but if I am wrong, I will say so.

Spero - yes, I have to say I agree. it is too easy to play the blame game when you are not in possession of the full facts. I have personally spoken to parents that have "gone public" and it's never their fault, it's always evil sw's. it takes balls to look inward and admit you may have gone wrong somewhere.
however, I have to be honest and say I did watch the sw's give evidence in my case that was the arse end of accurate and some of the statements made were laughable. should a journo be prepared to sit for 4/5 days in court and listen to all of the evidence - it is clear which way the case is going and why before judgement, whether that be non-consensual adoption or rehab home. only then would there be a balanced and accurate reporting of the whole facts - not just the bits that lend weight to whichever sides arguments.
but no journo has the time, money or inclination to sit for 4/5 days. and even if they did, they couldn't report half of it, even if it was anonymised.

what's the answer do you think?

Italiangreyhound - on a related note I saw this interview with a paediatrician who deals with ME.

.....I think it is easy to blame the social workers because when they come in what they do seems to be so cruel but I think we actually have to blame the medical profession first.........So doctors have to get it right to start with. The social workers will only get it wrong if the doctors don’t protect the child with a diagnosis. I should say, I have seen a lot of real abuse in my life, and I have been involved in protecting a lot of severely abused children. And to now being on the other side and to see innocent families being persecuted by the social workers who should be protecting other children is remarkable.......

The suspicious minds blog highlights difficulties/mistakes in
" factual determination cases, where there’s something that looks like a deliberate or non-accidental injury and the Court looks into it carefully and finds out it isn’t"

This is what the BBC programme seemed to focus on. I found the consultant whose child had had early rickets and the histopathologist who had done a small study showing different degrees of bone damage convincing. Could see how, on medical advice, it could be assumed that a parent had hurt a child when in fact a medical condition hadn't been identified. In care, that condition might improve (eg change of diet, more time outside) and if tests hadn't been done at thw right time the parents might lose their DC. Scary.

Judging from the anger, rage and misery on my twitter this morning I think we have to lance the boil.

I think we are going to have to let journalists in, as and when they wish, to report as and when they wish so long as every effort is made to keep the children's identities protected.

Otherwise people's anger is going to spill over into something terrible. I have already been accused of being 'mates' with paedophiles who murder children.

One woman has invited me to google her to see how much she loves her kids. I did. One of the reasons her six year old was taken into care was because somebody applied a hot iron to the back of his neck. And she blamed it on a sibling.

Miaow. I am sorry you have been through such a shit time.

But please do point me to the members of 'the system is infallible' brigade because I can't find them on this thread or indeed anywhere on mumsnet.

Because the system isn't infallible. Awful mistakes get made and innocent people suffer.

Lets try to do something about this - by training and supporting SW better maybe?

But conspiracy theories help no one but the men who get media prominence from their campaigning.

MiaowTheCat, I don't see "the systems infallible brigade" on here. I think there is widespread acknowledgement that the system is indeed fallible, partly because of massive underfunding. But people are rightly correcting some of the fallacies that the likes of Ian Josephs and John Hemming promote, because they really are actively dangerous.

the mother whose six year old 'somehow' got a hot iron put on the back of his neck is now saying that children are taken into care to make a profit for the LA.

You can see how dangerous this is.

People trying to bring balance to the debate are NOT arguing the system is infallible.

How can you even think so?

Setting right a few facts:

Family court experts are in general not hired guns but are jointly instructed by all parties, with their responsibility being to the court and the welfare of the child, not to any party.

Legal aid is no longer available i family cases unless there is domestic violence.

Legal aid cuts do not only affect private law cases. Legal aid fees for medical experts have been cut in half over the past two years.

Medical expertise in courts is often very vital. Of course it is important to have properly qualified and experienced experts. These very people however are stopping their work for the family court in significant numbers because the changes in legal aid make the work no longer viable.

Does anyone really believe that miscarriages of justice are rare? They are not rare and we (probably) have thousands of children wrongly forcibly adopted. Anonymity is not going to work because the parents (quite rightly) feel very aggrieved. They will post on facebook forever and their children will find them quite easily. Locking parents up for posting pictures and details of their children isnt going to work.

The biggest issue is children taken under the guise of 'risk of future emotional harm'. There are thousands. How many of these cases will have been wrong? I know of many or at least many that were borderline.

The whole adoption process is going to have to change. Remember that this pressure has been building by those building pressure on facebook. Nothing builds pressure like a parent wrongly treated I shouldn't think.

Adoption has to be reversible where it has taken place incorrectly!! Wrong on adoptive parents? Not as wrong as on those parents whose children have been illegally stolen.

I think we also need to be mindful of the educational reservoir from which social workers are generally recruited at £18k a year. I'm sure Boris Johnson wouldn't get out of bed for that!!

Just popping by again - I get that the journo's already know a lot of information that they don't report on. However with the curtain legally drawn, and let's face it JH never had a curtain and felt it fine to post children's details as and when he liked, there will be nothing to stop papers competing with juicer stories and giving full exposees.
I do agree though that this will give anyone badly advised by Josephs and Hemming et al to come forward and go public. He must have his head stuck very far up his bum not to realise that.