These are the latest child welfare items that should be right on your radar:

• Jail for sex offender Daryll Sturgess who was given access to child’s data by law firm’s error
• Concerns over violence and threatening behaviour sees robing pilot introduced for judges in Central Family Court
• Government launches new offence for deepfake production and sharing

This post is a reproduction of the press release from the Education Committee’s web page:

MPs on the Education Committee want to hear from people with lived experience of social services as part of their investigation into how the Government could improve children’s social care. 

• Find the survey online here 
• Education Committee

The cross-party Committee today (11 April) launches a survey that asks care leavers of all ages about the help they received whilst in care and the types of accommodation they lived in, such as foster care, kinship, residential or adoption. 

There are also questions that will help the MPs learn about the types of support young people receive, including for their mental wellbeing, a disability, with their finances or help to find work or education. The Committee wants to hear whether that support was helpful or how it could be improved. 

The survey will form part of the Committee’s ongoing inquiry into children’s social care. Survey responses will be anonymised to ensure participants’ safety and their peace of mind. 

Chair comment

Education Committee Chair Robin Walker MP said: 

“My colleagues and I have been receiving detailed evidence from experts and professionals in children’s social care, but our inquiry wouldn’t be complete without hearing from people who have been through the system themselves. Whether their first-hand experiences were good or bad, hearing their reflections and their ideas about how to improve the system will be a huge help to us. At the end of our inquiry we will make detailed recommendations to the Government on how to do just that. So it’s vital that we can be properly informed by the people who really matter – young people the system is designed to help.” 

Further information

• About Parliament: Select committees
• Visiting Parliament: Watch committees

An online conference hosted by Moses Farrow this weekend and open to the public, is inviting all those affected by or interested in care experiences, to take part in a conversation about how to protect fostered and adopted children from being maltreated and killed by their carers.

While the number of children affected by this kind of violence remains unclear, largely due to a lack of research in this area, cases where children have been abused and killed by their adoptive parents and foster carers are increasingly reported on by media outlets around the world.

A deeply concerning number of fostered children in the UK have reported maltreatment by their foster carers. The latest government figures say that the overall number of child abuse complaints against foster carers rose to 3,010 allegations during 2021 and 2022, an increase of 16% from the year before (2,600 allegations). Of those, 1,965 complaints were made by the children themselves. These numbers are likely to be conservative as we know children are often afraid to speak out for fear of being placed back inside the care system, or angering their carers.

Maltreatment experienced by adoptees is not recorded by governments as a matter of practice, which makes this form of violence much harder to quantify.

The introduction on the EventBrite page says:

“The adoption community is under attack. Today, children are fostered and adopted with the promise of a better life, a second chance at life. Instead they are abused and tortured to death. It’s time we collectively call a state of emergency and come together around this common threat.

First nations around the world have been targeted and removed from their lands. Mass graves of their children have been unearthed. The adoption industry has created a culture in which children are traded as commodities. They are victimized and dehumanized. They are being abused, tortured, and killed.

More and more adopted people are speaking up about these crimes. Yet, this remains a silent killer, the truth is being suppressed. It’s time we come together to protect our children, prevent the murders, and save their lives. Show and speak up at this virtual global town hall.”

The online conference takes place on Saturday, April 13 at at 9am Pacific Time, which is 12pm Eastern Daylight Time, and 5pm British Summer Time.

Anyone wishing to join the conference can do so here.

You can follow Moses’ work on his website here, or connect with Moses on X at @MosesFarrow.

These are the latest child welfare items that should be right on your radar:

• Inquest into death of mum after baby put into foster care
• ‘Disabled’ children cropped out, banned and airbrushed from school photos
• Family lawyers join forces to support neurodivergent community

Hat tip to Social Researcher and PhD student “Aleaiactaest102” on X for the first item.

These are the latest child welfare items that should be right on your radar:

• Over 100,000 children trapped in family courts
• Belgium’s forced adoption scandal: Victims on lifelong quest for truth
• One in six school-aged children experiences cyberbullying, finds new WHO study

These are the latest child welfare items that should be right on your radar:

• Parental alienation expert sanctioned in UK now advising family courts
• Parents create support group to help others facing child contact cases (This service has not been vetted by Researching Reform)
• Family Court Fees to Rise

Our image of the month is by RR’s Artist in Residence, Paul Brian Tovey.

Paul is an adult adoptee whose adoptive parents physically, psychologically and sexually abused him in childhood. His work describes the impact of his maltreatment on his mental and physical health, as a child and as an adult.

Paul also campaigns for adoptees to have the legal right to revert back to their birth identities, which many adoptees say is essential to their ability to heal from the impact of their adoption.

This process is currently unavailable to most adoptees in the UK because of the costs involved, and a high legal bar which makes granting a reversion almost impossible. 

This month’s painting is titled, “Blue Moon In The Mom Questionmark Valley.”

The poem below, also by Paul, is meant to be read alongside his art:

Birth mom’s question-mark ghost came in dreams and visions
All across Adoptee ages of life in millions of questing missions
Past her death too when I achieved photographic evidence
That we were together in life and a camera gave quick sense
I am beyond that now and just walking inside my comic life
Past even: “it’s all gone” and all the waste of Adoption’s knife.

What a strange gift it is to be a child of encyclopedic Time
Entering with my free spirit any type of life and history rhyme
A common crown of nature to children of our sparkling play
Where like young animals the stars and winds our nature prays

Miracles we humans are, that can transcend what society crazed
Miracles to rediscover through social anesthetics we were raised
Miracles restoring how snowflakes can feel themselves through us
Miracles to know all creation and us come from pure magic dust

What a journey you brought me on my astral love and mother
Through the rocks of birth and the dark channels of smother
To conflicts where my life was given thorns and a morphine cup
I am your born child and in me your fire nature, never gave up

Adoption applications rose by 15 percent from October to December 2023, while the number of adoption orders granted dropped 2 percent, according to Ministry of Justice figures published on 28th March, 2024.

However, the overall number of adoption applications and orders increased for the year, with 4,279 applications and 4,166 orders for adoption in 2023, an increase of 8% and 4% respectively from 2022.

Care orders were, by a huge margin, the largest number of family court orders granted while orders for contact and special guardianship were almost nonexistent.

The report also found that in cases where parties had lawyers representing them, the cases took longer to complete.

The Nuffield Family Justice Observatory also updated its “Children in the family justice system infographic” which gathers all the information on family court cases currently being provided by government and pops it into one place.

At the moment that doesn’t amount to much data, but the tool will become more useful if and when these data sets evolve.

You can access the MOJ’s latest family court statistics here.

These are the latest child welfare items that should be right on your radar:

• Scottish women who were forced to give their babies up for adoption have made an urgent plea for help finding out what happened to their children.
• Victims of forced adoption seek redress
• Judge Louise McCabe Appointed Designated Family Judge for Northampton
• Legal, psychological, and academic experts unite to support mental health in family law
• MP seeks ban on domestic abusers seeing their children