A very interesting piece has surfaced on the web this morning, which details how a report (not reproduced on-line unfortunately) highlights the need for judges to not only have a much higher level of training in areas which impact on family law, but that they should also be speaking directly with children about their cases.
The report and the statements have been made by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Child Protection (you can see which MPs and Peers are members here), and they go on to say that the reforms proposed in the new Children and Families Bill do not go far enough to address these kinds of issues.
Many of the fears expressed by this APPG are identical to the ones we’ve often written about – a lack of specialist expertise amongst judges (and in fact amongst those who are supposed to be expert witnesses in the field), highly pressurised work forces who are simply not able to dedicate enough time and effort to the children in these cases and last but by no means least, the very distinct lack of the Voice of The Child in these proceedings.
We are not sure quite what the APPG mean by their view that they would like to see judges speaking with children about their cases in care. We already have guidelines in place which encourage judges to speak to children, with some rather unreasonable exceptions we feel, in place, but these guidelines only provide for judges to speak about the process and not the child’s feelings or views about the details of his or her case, which we feel is not enough. (We have tried to find these guidelines on-line but oddly they seem to have gone, perhaps to make way for new guidelines. We shall see).
The article does seem to suggest that what’s being called for is much more intervention by judges than is currently allowed in the adversarial system and we are concerned that what appears to be a way of shifting the workload on to another demographic in the system may also be a political move which sees judges acquire more power but not more expertise, in a collaborative system which looks like it’s being phased in with the increased involvement of judges in this sector.
What we would like to see are better trained professionals all round, who benefit from compassionate, intelligent leadership, with support systems in place for both families and practitioners and to allow children to genuinely be at the heart of every decision made. And that can only happen if the system is in great shape.
We’re ambivalent about this APPG’s latest statement. It would be good if they could publish the report and clarify to what extent and under which circumstances children could speak with judges and of course, on what topics within their case. We would also like these APPGs to have websites, fully transparent on line, working websites which have all their reports and their activities posted. The APPG states on the Parliament website that it’s Secretariat is the NSPCC, which affords the charity a great deal of influence, but it is not clear whether there are any financial benefits to this arrangement. APPGs are wonderful vehicles, if they remain democratic, transparent and accessible to members of the public.
So, in principle, we agree with the APPG on Child Protection, but it would be great if they could engage with the debate further.
Words,words,words from our masters in parliament…. In fact ,as anyone involved with the care system knows the judges regularly refuse parents who ask permission for their children to testify in court because they know most of them will beg to be allowed to leave “care” and to return home !What the law says should happen and what actually does happen are as usual two different things.
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Natasha, I will repeat for the billionth time, Govenments will talk and talk and talk, and come out with new ideas and then meetings and more meetings, they are aware of the problems they are aware of the abuse to the children, they know many social workers are ilegally working as so called social workers, any one can buy a diploma from a third world country, many SW are getting back handers to take kids from loving homes, passing onto the foster agencys remember NO KIDS NO BUSINESSES and the taking of children by emotional abuse the PERCENTAGE has gone up to now over 30%. I have passed the research i have on the illegal social workers in this country to a top person in the media. But i suppose when that story is published all will be hidden again. I just think the politicians are not educated as the truth is here for all to see and hear, but the Politicians only believe the big million pound charities, keep it in the family so to speak. Every kid in care when questioned are first told what to say and not to say, and boy if they say one word out of place they are in big trouble, it does not matter who a child speaks to, the judge or who ever its a NO GO. Child care is a secret society with the whole system corrupt. For those people who know nothing of the Eugenics society, it is now known as the world population, in 1933 at the third world Eugenics meeting, they said by the 21st Centry all third world countries the population has be brought down, Margaret Sanger was at that meeting and instigated the family planning, the answer to the world population is now as i see it, is control first of the children, if only people were aware of why the birth pill why hormone replacement therapy, the taking of womens overies and stitching them into the gay guys in Thailand ect to make them pregnant it is all control of births and children.
Maggie
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If family court judges are not specialists, why bother with them at all? Sure, somebody has to rubber-stamp the court order, but the doctrine of having a judge decide the outcome is farcical. In the long run, we need an undergrad/post grad/ Dr and prof set of qualifications in family studies and family law. Once they’ve achieved Dr status, make them specialist judges. They will be more learned and have higher qualifications than most judges, who have a law degree and some experience (often not much, and more often, not relevant). Let’s face it, family law should not be complex; it just appears that way because of the lack of consistency, lack of professionalism and external, non legal influences.
If a judge can come from another jurisdiction and learn the family game with a three day conversion course, then family and child experts can do far better. In the meantime, the Early Interventions Pilot Project goes a long way to at least alleviating the load on the courts in private law whilst simply obliging all parties to obey the letter of the law and Practice Directions in public law cases would prevent most of those injustices.
Lord Justice Thorpe outlined procedures for judges to speak to children and overturned a decision on the basis that the lower court judge should have consulted the children in the case before making decisions. As ever, the judicial activists in the lower courts have wiped their backsides with precedent, just as they do all the time with practice directions and statutory intent.
Perhaps the Family Division is the dumping ground for judges who cannot cut it in other jurisdictions. Whilst I agree that obliging them to speak to children may humanise some judges over time, I’m not sure that exposing children to these shamans will help kids. I remember Mr Justice Singer in 2003, who persistently removed a child from the father he ran away to due to excessive beatings by his mother. Mr Justice Singer and two social workers spoke to the boy for a whole half an hour. They bullied him, making him cry, trying to force a change of mind and get him to go home to his mother. They did it in the court corridor. Away from the microphones, of course.
The new breed of specialist judge proposed above would obviate the need for expert witnesses. They should be directly employed by the state, an active participant in their cases (and the children), trained with empirical research, under a duty to stay up to date, make their judgments available immediately and publicised and swear oath to remain politically and ideologically independent. They would work best in and out of court settings. At present, we have 727 judicial family ticket holders, with as much qualification required to hold that kind of ticket as is required for a parking ticket.
Only problem I see with the ‘specialist judge’ training track, is to firstly find a UK university that is not contaminated with feminist lecturers.
The old breed of expert witness will no doubt haunt the halls; we solve that problem by tying them in a sack with rabid dogs and throwing them in the river. (I wonder if Natascha will print that? xx)
The ‘best evidence’ criteria needs to be imported from criminal legislature. The belief that anybody can make decisions in the best interests of the children when advocates can choose what is and what is not revealed and that these advocates give a toss about their duty to the court, all need to be accepted as the idiocies that they are. With-holding evidence from the family court should be a criminal offence, and the discretion of judges to shrug off perjury, and thereby knowingly encourage and collaborate in injustice and prejudice, must be removed. An alleged petty criminal has more protection in a magistrate’s court than a child earmarked for forced adoption.
Social workers need to be relegated to tick boxers. The insurance industry is capable of separating thousands of different types of car, driver, locality, usage etc, so why cant the same be done for families? Each tick needs to be evidence based; if merely “suspected,” investigation should happen rather than inventing narrative to push things on to the next stage anyway. Tickboxes would have an accompanying flowchart and each progression down the flowchart must have the relevant degree of accompanying evidence. Tickboxes should count as sworn statements; If they move down the flowchart with no evidence, that should be a contempt of court immediately reported to the Attorney General. The last thing you want is to let these snakes, with all their rhetorical and narrative techniques, and disrespect for the court, and disrespect for children, say anything in court, or write anything in reports. Let them tick boxes; they’ve earned it.
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It would be nice to know that even Judges could be expected to keep abreast of the times and attend courses for updates, as well as giving the public the assurity that they have the finger on the pulse of the needs of children. Judges are there to be scrutinised by the public, so more input please!!!!
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.No good “bringing the ss or the judges to account” as that would actually change nothing of consequence.The solution is simply to return to the former position in the UK where child cruelty was a police matter dealt with by criminal courts (no secrecy,CHILD WITNESSES,innocent until proved guilty,juries ,etc).Social workers should be allowed
only to help people (their original purpose) physically,financially,and morally but NEVER to remove their children ,or to give orders followed by threats if they are not obeyed !
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Reblogged this on itsallaboutthekids13 and commented:
A new global law is needed and the new one for Canada is just going to make things worse, for family feud’s.
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Halleluiah ! Speaking as a former member of the all-party Lords and Commons Family and the Child Protection Group the recognition of better training for judges is long overdue (see one of our first reports, July 1998).
I do not, however, expect for one moment that the present committee’s suggestion of speaking to each child in each divorce will ever see the light of day. Divorce is an industry and is dependent on the conveyor-belt approach (where perjury is rife) to get through the backlog of cases. Imagine the bottle-necks caused by actually speaking to children to ascertain their views ?
We don’t need more or better trained professionals but we do need an ounce of intelligence and a hint of leadership from Whitehall (don’t hold your breath on the latter). For the last 30 years research has shown that children want to be with both parents and to have access to both. What is it about that wish and those findings that we as a society find so hard to understand ?
How much more monosyllabic can one make it ?
Or are we all just ‘pretending’ to put the child’s interests first ?
As for that “only happening if the system is in great shape” that’s true under the present clumsy winner-takes-all regime but not under share parenting – adopt that and the back log disappears. After all, we are forever being told (though IMO the statistics don’t bear it out) that only 10% of parent go via the courts for a custody order.
If 90% of parents make their own custody arrangements why all the howls and fur flying at the mere suggestion of shared parenting ?
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A very good point that is being missed and not EVER spoken about is that we have children who report by them selfs to the SS of being abused then taken into care these children who have lived in fear of parents ARE FORCED to have contact with the abusers, so there is a law for adults and a law for the children, adults who report abuse, its a crimanal offence, a kid reports abuse they are forced to have contact with the abusers, should a child who reports abuse refuse contact with the abusers these poor little brave children are forced to have weekly PSYCHIATRIC TREATMENT (more money in the system)until such time the child agrees to contact with the abusers. NO child in the system has a hope in hell. For this reason I named the charity children screaming to be heard, THE SILENT WITNESSES, not many people are aware of what happens to kids in care from the day they are taken, they are surrounded by an army of different people, day 2/3 given books to read on adoptions or fostering, I will say again every kid in the system is worth from day one over a million pounds, does any one really think that kids are going to be allowed a voice over one million plus pounds, I dont think so. I am not a feminist but there are a lot of women out there who need to grow up put the kids first, I have for god knows how many years been a help line, and some of the comments from the women are pathetic, I blame many women for what is or has happened to the children in care, again from my experience of many women they want the babies Oh because I love my partner, or many women think they can keep their man by producing a kid, women are becoming the production line for the multibillion pound industry for children who are the silent witnesses, no judge jury or who ever will ever be able to help a kid in care they are just so scared TO SPEAK OUT, many kids labelled as having ADHA Dyslexia or learning disabilities, so when women can start to get it right then less kids will be taken into care for money and jobs. As for Judges they are not from blebs back gound so they will never know or learn what real life is all about. Very shortly i will be interviewed for a film and then all will learn of the real truth. In the mean time we need to find a way to help the children who report abuse and do not want to meet the abusers. I think Philip may have a good idea, but then kids will still be to afraid to speak. Cafcass and the kids army all say.
ALL KIDS ARE LIARS AND NONE KNOW WHAT THEY WANT. Thats your answer to the system of do-gooders in a childs best interest.
Maggie.
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It would be better if a JURY SPOKE to the PARENTS without the lawyers present.
Ordinary jury members(unpaid) would then come to a fair decision and even recommend HELP for the Family.
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Why are children taken because of ‘possible future harm’ , ‘suspected neglect or emotional abuse’- unproven? This point itself could apply to every single parent making it obvious our children are a money maker for the government. Why are Family Courts closed- that is not Justice? Why can children not speak about what they want- they should be allowed to under the Human Rights Act but are refused in the closed family courts? Why are children who genuinely need to be cared for by someone other than their parents not automatically given choices to stay with other family members including Grandparents? Doesn’t a gagging order prove there is no freedom of speech? Why are there no safe houses for children who run away from being abused in the care system? Why can obvious mistakes not be excluded on reports and evidence inserted? The cycle repeats as the children from care get their babies taken away as they were abused while in care, where was the safeguarding then? Obviously a sick money making scheme.
Please listen to Bill Maloney, a man who was abused in care and Maggie Tuttle who tirelessly campaigns for the Children Screaming to be Heard.
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Grandparents are free to look after their grandchildren as we are informed constantly by the press, it is ok for grandparents to look after children whos parents are at work, but it is not ok to take in the grandchildren from the care system,to give them love and security with out pay, grandparents do it for love, think about it, foster agencys would lose millions of pounds and god knows how many jobs would be lost in the system. The government are SO VERY AWARE OF THIS ISSUE. Grandparents are like the children no rights and yet if it was not for us grandparents there would not be the birth of our grandchildren.
Maggie
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Every point Angela (above) makes is true and should be noted carefully by supporters of the present iniquitous system !
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