Case should be reheard after couple has been acquitted

"A family court judge has ordered the fact-finding hearing of a case where parents had their child adopted be reheard after the couple were acquitted of criminal charges of causing injuries to their child."

"The chief of the family courts, Sir James Munby, ruled that a new fact-finding hearing was necessary for the parents of a child, referred to as X, who was born in 2012, and has been living with his adoptive parents since 2014."

"The unnamed local authority had concerns after a series of injuries on X were identified, and a judge found the case against the parents proved. The judge later refused the birth parents leave to oppose the adoption, and made an adoption order in 2015."

No case to answer

"However, at a subsequent criminal trial, “the expert evidence had expanded both in volume and, very significantly, in its ambit, but at the date of the hearing before the judge in the family court this new evidence was not to hand”."

"Prosecution against the parents was later abandoned, and they were acquitted “on the basis that there was no case to answer”."

"The birth parents then launched an appeal against the original fact-finding decision in care proceedings. The appeal was supported by the child’s guardian and the adopted parents. However, the adoptive parents said they would oppose any application to undo the adoption order..."

The rehearing will happen in October 2016.

------------------------------------

It`s always a good idea not to jump to conclusions about what may happen to a family in the future; especially before all the evidence of what happened in the past has been tested in court.

What should be the role of social workers in adoption?

 

"The British Association of Social Workers (BASW) has established a UK-wide enquiry to consider the role of social work in adoption..."

"This enquiry will examine the role of the social worker in adoption, with a particular focus on how ethical issues and human rights legislation are understood and inform practice, and how these relate to pursuing good long-term outcomes for children and their families. It will gather evidence from families and young people involved in the adoption process, social workers and managers, family justice professionals, policy makers and academics using a variety of methods."

Read more https://www.basw.co.uk/adoption-enquiry/

Council forced to issue apology for medical mix-up

"A former nursery school headteacher has told how bungling social workers put her three-year-old daughter into care for eight months after a medical record mix-up."

"Angela Milnes was distraught when council officials wrongly labelled her as mentally ill and threatened to have Sylvia adopted."

"The award-winning parenting blogger had to fight to get her daughter back before council bosses finally admitted they had made a mistake."

"Eventually, a judge ordered mother and daughter to be reunited and council chiefs were forced to issue an apology. They also agreed to pay Mrs Milnes substantial damages, which must be held in trust until Sylvia, now seven, turns 18."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3615575/Girl-care-eight-months-social-worker-error.html#ixzz4AGUYGNmT

New laws will encourage adoption

"The government is to pass new laws to encourage adoption in a bid to improve the chances of children in social care in England, David Cameron has said."

"Writing in the Sunday Times, the PM promised `zero tolerance` of state failure around social care and a new covenant for those leaving care."

"New laws will encourage the permanent adoption of children, even when it overrides family ties, he added."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-36295213?SThisFB


Researching Reform has discovered a piece of research that suggests a more cautious approach to permanence should be implemented.

https://researchingreform.net/

Let Glasow`s children flourish through adoption and fostering

I do not think it is appropriate to have these messages displayed outside primary schools.

`FOSTER AND ADOPT - grow your family tree.`

It is bad enough that young children are taught to see the Named Person  as the head gardener but these banners promoting adoption and fostering are taking the plant analogy to a whole new low.

See how children are represented as grafts on the plant. [Cutting, forcing, healing: that`s all part of the process.]

 

 

There`s a subliminal message for parents too.

Warrant issued for man whose son was placed for adoption

"A man whose son was placed for adoption could be jailed after social services bosses complained that he harassed staff and placed material on the internet identifying the youngster."

"One of Britain's most senior judges issued a warrant for the arrest of Matthew Newman after analysing complaints by lawyers representing social services officials at Gloucestershire County Council during hearings in the Family Division of the High Court in London."

"Sir James Munby, President of the Family Division of the High Court - and the most senior family court judge in England and Wales - concluded that Mr Newman breached orders and was in contempt of court."

"He made findings against Mr Newman in a ruling published on Monday - and also issued a warrant for Mr Newman's arrest on Monday."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/pa/article-3559196/Top-judge-issues-arrest-warrant-man-son-placed-adoption.html#ixzz4766A03Ly

The missing statistics

From UK Column News 22 April 2016:

Coverage about children begins about 36 minutes.

They show a graph which reveals the sharp rise in children taken into care between 1994 and 2015, from just over 45,000 to 70,000.

A supporting graph indicates a significant increase in adoptions between these two dates. An email was sent to Brian Gerrish along with these graphs, about a Sunday Times article [2009] by Daniel Foggo, in which he said `more stupid mothers were prevented from fighting adoptions.`

"He was pointing a very long finger at the official solicitor, Alastair Pitblado," says Gerrish, "who had been responsible in some 588 cases - essentially for breaking up families - but the charge was a lack of mental capacity. [That would be for the mothers.] So we can see a massive surge in the number of children being taken by the state and of course recently the British state has taken away the five day old baby of a Portuguese mother. So it does not matter your nationality if the child`s ...in the UK, David Cameron`s government thinks it has a right to take that child away."

"Well, by strange coincidence, shortly before we became live today, I received another email saying: `Brian, I thought you might like to see this`. So it`s an article saying that very same solicitor, Pitblado, had just lost a private dispute in the High Court and this was a planning issue. He took on some local councils, acting as a litigant in person. He lost the case and this is what the judge had to say:  He described the couple`s claim as `overblown and wholly unsubstantiated... and their approach to the planning application had been misconceived.` So what we`ve got is an overview of the man who`s been responsible for helping to lever children away from their families, that they`re not competent and we really have to ask `is this man fit for purpose himself?`"

Turning to address David Scott, "David, it`s really obscene the power of these officials when it comes to taking children away. We can`t deal with fraud or corruption or banking crime but if we`ve got a parent who should be getting support from the state, because maybe they do need a little bit of help, what we`re seeing is `No let`s take the child away and get them adopted as quickly as possible`."

"Yes and, `I`m from the government; I`m here to help` is still the scariest phrase anyone is likely to hear," says Scott.

"What we`re seeing here though is something almost darker. It`s very reminiscent of the eugenics campaign in.. America and Nazi Germany in the early part of the 20th century, and with one noticeable change. The eugenics idea was that you received your intelligence wholly from your parents by descent and therefore if you have a problem you have to tackle that by such means as forcible sterilisation.  And there`s a book written about that called War Against the Weak. It`s an excellent but very horrific story of how this was rolled out, principally in the United States."

"Now the change here is that it is no longer descent that is the issue; it`s early years. It`s your early experience; it`s how your brain forms when you`re very young. So if your parents are substandard then it`s not that they`re going to be sterilised; no, what they`re going to do is to remove [the child] from you and give the child to approved people.  So it`s a variation on eugenics."

"It`s a variation, but deeply sinister," say Gerrish. "We`ll continue the theme but I`ll just follow up from those statistics which was for me to go and have a little look at where there were more statistics on adoption and childcare issues."

"So this is a report from the Department of Education dated 1st October 2015 and we`ve got statistics here for children who were looked after in England. In fact, in that document there is quite a lot of information and I would encourage people to get hold of it and have a look through themselves..."

"But then I thought, let`s go looking for statistics on child abuse. And if you go on the government`s very own website; this is the Home Office; we can find stuff on childcare but we find no child abuse statistics. We`ve emailed them to say well `where are these statistics?`"

"If we have a look at this one - Home Office [Statistical series] - we`ve got crime statistics, all categorised."

"When you spoke to them they implied that the Home Office was the place to go for these statistics," Mike Robinson interjects.

"Yes, originally we spoke to the Department of Education because they produced that first statistical analysis. That`s the one we`re encouraging people to download. We called them and they said `No No we don`t have any child abuse statistics; you need to speak to the Home Office` but when you go and have a look at the Home Office`s statistical base there`s a lot of categories for crime but they don`t appear to like to talk about child abuse. So we`ve sent them an email and said `Do you hold the statistics?` But I`ve got a feeling they don`t hold ...central statistics on the number of children abused in the care system. So these are the very people who are going to run the Named Person scheme, north of the border..."

[To be continued...]

http://www.ukcolumn.org/ukcolumn-news/uk-column-news-22nd-april-2016

Britain is implicated in the eugenics movement too.

 

Not for children or anybody with a `sensitive` disposition.

Early permanence: the partner policy of GIRFEC

We`ve had warnings in the Scottish Daily Mail that parents who reject Named Persons could face a visit from a social worker but dig back through the documents and the early warnings were there that social workers were going to get more involved.

For instance, from the Education and Culture Committee, November 2013, we have How could decision-making processes be improved?

The committee`s view is that GIRFEC principles make the difference to outcomes - whatever that means to real families in practice - but do admit that this can lead to earlier and more frequent interventions that result in more children coming into care. In other words, they are well aware of the implications.

As a way to address these issues the committee believes that  GIRFEC should have a partner policy: early permanence.

`Permanence` is a term that covers legal orders which fix children firmly in a `forever family` with no way back. That could be `reunification with the family` of concern, kinship care or adoption which is the preferred arrangement since once that is done no judge in the land will undo it. Another way to look at this is to see that procedures have to be managed `early` because adopters for older children are thin on the ground.

If you want early interventions such as these, joining pieces of low level wellbeing concerns together in a report, that has the result of amplifying potential problems, in theory at least, is one of the best ways to go about it. So is parallel planning.

Parallel planning

"We want to promote parallel planning, where local authorities start to plan for potential permanence at the same time as working with families towards reunification. This does not prejudge the outcome but it does mean that if reunification is not possible a plan is already in place to help ensure the child has a permanent home as quickly as possible."

 Parallel planning originated in America as many of these schemes do. What happens is that a potential adopter becomes the foster carer of the baby/child  while the team that wraps around the birth family decides whether or not the child should be returned to their care. Parents in this situation haven`t a hope of that happening. The bottom line is to say: the child has settled well with the foster carer; it would not be in the child`s best interest to return it to what may be a precarious situation. It`s a rigged system. 

The committee also say:

"Both early intervention and early permanence are needed to meet our aims of reducing the number of children on long term supervision requirements and increasing the numbers finding secure legal permanence. Focusing on these two areas in the years ahead, and through the shared actions set out in this response, will lead to a system of intervention and substitute care that wraps around the child and is effective, affordable and swift."

Since more children are going to be taken into care, processing the cases faster, looks like the answer. It is understandable that cash strapped local authorities want to reduce the amount of time they spend working with families, that is, the amount of time they spend with children on long term supervision requirements. But that thinking looks more like an attempt to improve the situation for the system [reducing costs] rather than improving it for families. Given that many cases will begin with low level wellbeing concerns the amount of false positives are bound to increase. Rushing these cases through the system, with no way back, will be an injustice for many families. That does not worry Aileen Campbell.

 "In oral evidence, the Minister described ‘tangible progress’ in terms of adoptions from care doubling; and large increases in the proportion of younger children becoming looked after." [That is, on supervision requirements which must be processed swiftly.]

What does Promoting adoption positively actually mean in these circumstances?

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/S4_EducationandCultureCommittee/Inquiries/Scot_Govt_inquiry_response.pdf