The Independent reported on a case yesterday where a father who got angry with social workers lost care of his five month old baby as a result. The judgment was handed down by Mr Justice Parker after she felt that the father, who had made death threats to one social worker and had assaulted another was dangerous.
This judgement raises a lot of thorny issues. As a transcript is not yet available, it is hard to know whether the judge was justified in doing what she did. It appears that she felt the mother was unable to perceive the father as a danger. To whom though, is not quite clear, as little is known about his parenting skills and whether he was aggressive towards their baby -a distinction social workers today are supposed to make.
It was also concluded that the mother in turn had a learning disability which the story infers was highlighted by the mother not perceiving her husband to be a danger and perhaps also, because she had not yet named her baby. The mother explains that the father was only ever aggressive with social workers and that in her culture there is always a ceremony first before a name is given and that this had not taken place yet (we wonder whether all the proceedings taking place played a part in the delay).
The awkwardness of this case, other than that there is little detail offered (and why Munby needs to get on with it and ensure these cases are properly reported), is that sometimes when parents fail to cooperate with social services, there is a view that a vulnerable child cannot be protected if he or she doesn’t get the support they need. And that is a fair point (which may or may not have played a part in the judge’s decision).
However, this case exposes some uncomfortable truths about the social care sector. The father felt the proceedings were invasive. These kinds of proceedings are, and more often than not, are dealt with by people who are either exhausted, poorly trained or just very bad at the job. The system asks an enormous amount from people who in the main just aren’t given the tools and training they need to deal with some of the most complex life scenarios anyone could ever face. You can’t send in a social worker with poor people skills and embarrassingly bad communication tools to deal with some of the most vulnerable people in the world. It’s like sending civilians into a war zone.
You just don’t do it.
And yet, that’s what happens. People who don’t have a passion for engagement, seeking out the truth or building trust (and a system which makes it very hard for that kind of person to either enter the sector or last in it), end up manning these stations. Things get lost in translation. Egos get bruised (on both sides), and social workers forget that they are not the vulnerable parties in the equation – because they feel so acutely vulnerable themselves.
In a case like this, it’s very easy to imagine a less than sophisticated social worker making tactless and disparaging comments, or just not having the patience or the diplomacy to engage this family and earn their trust. It’s very easy too, to blame a lack of resources and time, but if you’ve got the skills, the greater part of the battle is won. Because once you engage the family and they respect what you do, you have their attention. And that’s all you need.
It will be interesting to see what transpires as a result of this case and any published judgment which may be made available.
Researching Reform 
Reblogged this on Social Action.
LikeLike
In my opinion Mrs Justice Parker is by far the worst judge serving in the
family courts.I believe that nearly every decision she makes is cruel to children
and manifestly wrong.I also believe that readers will see for themselves the
cruelty lurking behind those steely eyes if they study carefully the Daily
Mail photograph of this lady.I believe that she is probably the only judge
in the family courts who visibly takes pleasure in humiliating and
distressing parents when taking away their children or stopping them seeing
them.If I am wrong I stand to be corrected,but until I am I truly believe
she deserves the description I have given her ……
What Mrs P does not mention in her judgement was that the reason for not naming the baby was NOT the decision of the parents.The father is a Hindu and the naming ceremony (Hindu equivalent of a christening) could not take place as it is always restricted to close family members. So the social workers ;miffed at being excluded refused to allow the ceremony on ground that the father was dangerous and could harm the baby ! So the “ss” (;yes the social workers!) stopped the baby having a name NOT the parents ;but all that was omitted by Parker;This shows that releasing judgements is not enough to dispel secrecy in the family courts.The family’s story should also be allowed to be told with names if they wish it .
LikeLike
Thank you for your thoughts, FA. Yes, the trouble with judgments are that they are sanitised versions of the truth, which omit much detail and nuance, and sometimes, the truth entirely. I do believe that, and it’s something I mention often when talking about transparency. I’d like Munby to push for more documents to be made available to the press.
LikeLike
Better than that Natasha would be for all Family Court proceedings to be video-recorded and each of the parties to be provided with an unabridged copy DVD within 24 hours. [Very simple with today’s technology]. Current methods of recordings of Court proceedings are archaic.This would also remove the need for transcripts needed for appeal piurposes and future hearings, and which cost exhorbitant amounts of money and can take up to six months to be provided.
LikeLike
Yes, I have mentioned that before, I think it’s a good idea. The excuse so far has been cost, and the need to keep vulnerable parties anonymous. It’s a tricky one.
LikeLike
FROM THE INDEPENDENT:-
But the mother criticised the judge, telling the Press Association: “We haven’t had a fair hearing and we’re going to appeal.
“I don’t think I have learning disability and the judge hasn’t given me a change to prove that.
“And my partner only gets angry with social workers – no one else. The judge hasn’t taken account of that. Anyone would be angry. We love our children and we’re only human. And he has apologised.”
She said there was a reason why the baby had not been given a name.
“Our religion means that we have to have a naming ceremony,” she said.
“They took the baby from us before we could do that. If the baby had been left with us he would have been given a name.”
I suggest that the mother; far from having learning difficulties shows herself as more logical and more balanced in her account thah judge mrs Parker !
LikeLike
The accusation of a learning disability is problematic. We see that too often inside the system being used as a way to discredit a parent’s point of view.
LikeLike
That is easy to explain as the training of judges is to see all mothers as feeble minded.
I got such a shock on learning this from a trainee judge.
It was same in olden days when mothers were locked away and their babies sold for adoption.
It explains female victims of DV being labelled mentally ill when it is really PTSD from abuse.
Now bring in a social worker with the “god” complex and you have the same old nuns and priests treating parents as minions.
I actually know how social workers operate after experience and dealing with cases in the past.
The Rhetoric Case Research is a must read for anyone dealing with social workers.
Most parents go “how do you know the tactics? How can you know?
Because there is a pattern dating back to the men and women of God and all the psychological abuse etc they used back then.
When you read the research you will see what I mean.
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/persecution_stratergies_in_child_33
The Persecutions Strategies are listed below for your
convenience.
PERSECUTION STRATEGIES
1 Rhetorical strategy
2 Insinuating strategy
3 Positive-negative argumentation strategy
4 Negative reinforcement strategy
5 Negative synonym strategy
6 Repetition strategy
7 Hammer strategy
8 Multi-minus strategy
9 Contrast strategy
10 Strategy of selective use of words indicating
uncertainty
11 Generalisation strategy
12 Strategy of making trivial statements in a negative
context
13 Strategy of making the client seem pathological
14 Strategy of implying that the client’s criticism stems
from the client’s pathological condition
15 Therapy strategy
16 Strategy of making the client seem peculiar
17 Strategy of making the client’s behaviour seem too
intense
18 Strategy of persecution by use of the fundamental
attribution error
19 Scapegoat strategy
20 Strategy of calling attention to non-existent “facts”
21 Suppression strategy
22 Strategy of ignoring the client’s perspective
23 Strategy of vagueness
24 Strategy of gradually suppressing details
25 Strategy of using the impersonal form
26 Exaggeration strategy
27 Quantitative strategy
28 Fabulation strategy
29 Strategy of gradual intensification
30 Lying strategy
31 Strategy of presenting irrelevant information
32 Implicit theory strategy
33 Strategy of exploiting and exaggerating events
34 Strategy of collecting negative historical events of
little or no relevance
35 Strategy of referring to unspecified others
36 Presumptive strategy
37 Control and power strategy
38 Provocative strategy
39 Strategy of trying to accuse the client of lying
40 Anti-democratic strategy
41 Strategy of presenting insulting values and comments
42 Strategy of restricting the credibility of others’
opinions
43 The social authorities know best
44 Strategy of emphasising social authorities’ resources
45 Strategy of exceeding the limits of your competence
46 Moralising strategy
47 Strategy of justifying yourself and your actions
48 Strategy of stressing one’s own experience
49 Strategy of making vague references to experiences
50 Strategy of ascribing an experience to the client
51 Strategy of ascribing a negative attitude to the client
52 Interpretational strategy
53 Strategy of using strategic interpretation
54 Strategy of using signs as evidence
55 Strategy of interpreting everything negatively
56 Negative prognosis strategy
LikeLike
Thank you for your thoughts, Catherine. So much of it seems to me, at least, to be a case of applying the right methodology at the right time and to the right people. The system does not seem very good at that.
LikeLike
Reblogged this on World4Justice : NOW! Lobby Forum..
LikeLike
… and who can be surprised at Mr Patel’s hostility towards social workers, given that his baby was taken from him and his wife by 20 police officers only hours after birth at Watford General Hospital! Incidentally, not the “couple of days later” as inferred in the judgement which refers to the Interim Care Order. Given that parents in hospital are in a supportive and monitored environment there can be no justification whatsoever for snatching new-born babies; the practice is abhorrent and inhumane!
LikeLike
Thank you, Michael. I would really like to know why that happened. SS had to be involved prior to the birth – what I want to know is, why?
LikeLike
Very well put. I was accused of being aggressive to Social workers at the start of my case, it was a ploy to influence a judge, at the final hearing every party involved said the same, I was neither aggressive nor intimidating or rude to them in any way. The problem is that as it was said at the beginning it was enough for the judge to be sympathetic to the Social Worker and remove my son for fear of abuse when none existed.
These accusations should be tested and proven regardless of time restrictions at the outset.
LikeLike
Thank you, Garry. I agree with you, everything should be tested, to the highest standards, and evidence should be just that, evidence. Not hearsay.
LikeLike
The most probable explanation was “learning difficulty” came upon the Intergrated Children’s System checked by the midwives for pregnant women and this automatically triggered a Child Protection investigation.
This is where these grab the child at birth cases come from.
Also it was Elizabeth Butler-Schloss who insisted hearsay evidence be introduced when American-style Family Courts were introduced in1992.
LikeLike
Thank you, D.
LikeLike
In another case, there was a comment by the judge that “the grandparents will be unlikely to work with the social workers!”. This was prompted by the grandparents statement outlining that the social workers had lied! It would appear that even criticism of a social worker is enough to cause comment in the Judgement as to why the grandparents could not look after the grandchildren and thus prevent the children being taken into care! The irony was that this social worker had been exposed as a liar when she tried to ruin the fathers reputation but was not backed up by a local authority witness over something he was alleged to have done whilst waiting for the start of a contact!
Trying to get to the root of what goes on in the court room, Judgements mean nothing! They are not even a sanitised version but great swaths are fabricated to flesh out the Judgement to give it some weight.
Until the Family Courts are open, held in front of a jury, the machinations of all the professionals will not be exposed and injustices will continue! Its obvious as very few care applications are rejected. That speaks volumes!
LikeLike
I’d also really like to see journalists being given the opportunity to read materials in the bundle other than a final judgment. That would make the thing much more transparent. I might blog on that…..
LikeLike
And that professionals of the same relevant professional community are allowed to read reports submitted by expert witnesses ( a greater use of Forensic Appraisal Review) for whether the most up-to-date research has been used and that the views expressed by the experts reflect the current position of the profession in regard to theories of child abuse. Parental Alienation Syndrome and Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy are classic examples of where theories lacked any semblance of scientifically- conducted research and were subject to very considerable dispute in the relevant professional community, yet both have been widely used and accepted in the Family Courts without legal challenge as to their authenticity, merit, or credibility..
LikeLike
Natasha – you have perfectly nailed the major problem in social care services in the UK where you say,
“…this case exposes some uncomfortable truths about the social care sector. The father felt the proceedings were invasive. These kinds of proceedings are, and more often than not, are dealt with by people who are either exhausted, poorly trained or just very bad at the job. The system asks an enormous amount from people who in the main just aren’t given the tools and training they need to deal with some of the most complex life scenarios anyone could ever face. You can’t send in a social worker with poor people skills and embarrassingly bad communication tools to deal with some of the most vulnerable people in the world. It’s like sending civilians into a war zone.
You just don’t do it.
And yet, that’s what happens. People who don’t have a passion for engagement, seeking out the truth or building trust (and a system which makes it very hard for that kind of person to either enter the sector or last in it), end up manning these stations. Things get lost in translation. Egos get bruised (on both sides), and social workers forget that they are not the vulnerable parties in the equation – because they feel so acutely vulnerable themselves.
In a case like this, it’s very easy to imagine a less than sophisticated social worker making tactless and disparaging comments, or just not having the patience or the diplomacy to engage this family and earn their trust. It’s very easy too, to blame a lack of resources and time, but if you’ve got the skills, the greater part of the battle is won. Because once you engage the family and they respect what you do, you have their attention. And that’s all you need.”
If the UK government have any intention of improving Social Care services, then this is where they must start. The workforce are poorly and inappropriately trained for the job they are, they are very poorly led from the Dept of Education downwards and most particularly by their immediate managers, and consequently their morale is at rock bottom, It requires a massive change of attitudes by those involved but that is unlikely to happen so it will need a Heraclean effort to clean out these parrticular Augean stables.
LikeLike
Thank you, R. Yes, I think training needs to be much more rigorous. Even the ‘best’ social work schools don’t teach to a best practice standard. The excuse is that the area is ambiguous and there are many ways to approach a problem. That’s true, but you can still teach the best responses – social work engages psychiatry, medicine, knowledge of cultures, communication and diplomacy. These are all sciences, and as such are easily taught.
LikeLike
Hi Natasha,
Psychiatry is not a science.
Knowledge of culture is not a science.
Communication and diplomacy is not a science.
Medicine is part science – lots of medical stuff is ”hope for the best”
So, the vagaries of teaching “Social science” (which is not a science – because it is not testable) is due to it’s extremely vague notions.
Regards
Tom – Consultant Physicist.
LikeLike
Thanks Tom. Psychiatry is a relatively new field, which I think is still pretty basic in terms of understanding the human mind and therefore as a result, some of the things being taught seem rather silly. It wasn’t that long ago that people believed everything that Sigmund Freud wrote – including his theories about spiders….! That’s why, I think, this field requires more than just robust learning (although I think high level training is a must). It requires people who are not only excellent at understanding others, but have a good support system to keep them focused.
LikeLike
The problem lies deep in the entrenched mentality of social workers. This entire system has three dreadful flaws upon which it is built –
1. People are psychologically drawn to particular careers and work. Social workers are mainly people who have been disturbed by things in the world and wish to put them right. In many cases, it is a revenge motivation.
2. Give people power over others – watch the abuses spring up !!
See Prof Zimbardo (psychology) on TED TALKS – The Lucifer Effect
3. Give them secrecy.
Add 1+2+3 and you have created a nightmare.
To give a social care organisation, you have to rid it of the above set of problems.
As it is already entrenched in the social services organisation. you need to disassemble it and create an entirely new organisation – and don’t re employ the existing people.
LikeLike
Thank you for your comment, Tom. Yes, I think a lot of people go into the profession for the wrong reasons and it’s the kind of job that requires a very special person to do. They are there, but they are few and far between.
LikeLike
The whole system doesn’t work! I’m pleased that finally charities are speaking out about it being”not fit for purpose!” This includes the NSPCC, Barnardo’s, Save the Children as well as Kids Company as reported before. Google “not fit for purpose” its surprising what comes up! Even social workers are saying they are buckling under their loads! Ofsted are critical of how children are being cared for and exposure of the abuses perpertrated by a whole raft of people and profits made by Agencies and kids going missing or the subject of serious reviews has brought the system into disrepute and shown there is a different agenda than what child welfare was designed for. All the worse for the fact that the children have not fared any better, as proved by the governments own statistics. Unless they change what they are doing, things will remain the same! The government has no excuse, they have been doing this long enough to have got it right but they failed!
LikeLike
The system used to work very well before there were “social workers”(1948).Child cruelty was a matter for the police and criminal courts.Also there were no forced adoptions or gagging orders !
LikeLike
Yes, it was also before a shed load of money was being made from all the professionals and let us not forget that while the government funds local authorities to do ” child protection” they do have the added bonus/return of 40% taxes returned to them!
LikeLike
The family courts and the court of protection are the most secretive courts in the country, I beleive that the highest judge in the land was trying to get these to be open courts. Other sensitive trials will involve the judge making a direction of anonymity but the press are still free to report on the session/s. I say open up the family court and the court of protection to the press and public. With certain conditions for anonymity,
LikeLike
Thank you, Gerald. I think Munby is trying, but it will be a slow process.
LikeLike
It’s one that has been going on for over5 years since the time of Mark Potter.
Given James Munby ratting on his direction to send foreign children home it’s not likely.
LikeLike
Re grandparents rights I am not allowed to name the person but the grandmother I write of who has worked for justice for 40 years and is a very out spoken person has been put through hell and back to include a gagging order and much more she has been in and out of the courts for many years to get back the contact that the social worker kept taking away by his own laws and saying that the lady was campaigning and untill she stops then some of the contact will be stopped, so back to court and the judge gave her back the full contact and her Barrister at the same time applied for defined contact and it was agreed in court that the cafcass officer would go with the child to the grandmothers home and then write a report for the next hearing, the cafcass person arrived to the house alone, but this time all allegations of campaigning has been changed to Mrs ????? if you want defined contact you must CHANGE when asked many times by Mrs ??? what do you mean change the cafcass said you know what I mean, so the word campaigning is no longer as the word is now CHANGE. do they mean that the grandmother must sit in a rocking chair watch TV do nothing at all and shut up.
LikeLike
Over the decades, there seem to have been far too many cases coming to light whereby SS intervention has torn apart a family, based on a whim – who are later reunited on the basis that it should never have happened. Isn’t this the exact opposite of SS intended purpose? Perhaps the power has just gone to their heads. Its a wonder that this debacle has so far gone almost unnoticed by successive Governments.
LikeLike
Thank you, K. I do think that there is a problem with a God Complex inside the system, whether it’s social workers, managers, lawyers and judges etc. For me at least, one of the fundamental problems is training. The other, is ensuring that the right kind of people do this work, rather than just any people, which is what seems to be happening.
LikeLike
That is because the primary requirement for social work qualifying training is academic ability (and often the only requirement) and there is no assessment of Emotional Intelligence Quotient. Even so, many of them should have been failed, but Course Tutors don’t allow that to happen if they can possibly prevent it. ( I was an Extternal Assessor to several social work courses for a great many years so I know from personal experiences). There was a well-known adage in social work that “You’ve got to work really hard to fail a social work course!”
.Similarly many social worker employers are bedazzled by academic qualifications and don’t consider the degree of empathy and compassion required for competent social work practice
.
LikeLike
A God complex can only survive in the system if those who have the complex are given the power to exercise it .
I suggest,Abolish forced adoption,gagging orders, punishment without crime(taking children from parents who have not committed crimes against children or forbidding such parents from contacting their children),then open both family courts and the Court of Protection to the public.
A short,sharp,programme that would consign all power complexes to the dustbin of history…………..
LikeLike
Thanks, FA. I do think at the heart of all this the problem is down to things like that.
LikeLike
But thats not going to happen, at least not in this millenium. Even the deaths of children while under social work care and supervision and the subsequent Judicial Inquiries, have only led to more draconian powers and vast additional resources and no significant reforms in the Child-Snatching juggernauts and regimes. No lessons have been learnt from those deaths nor from the social work disasters in Cleveland, Orknets, Nottingham, Rochdate etc etc except greater secrecy regarding their activities and destructive actions.
The best that can be hoped for is that there may be some future government which is genuinely interested in preserving families as the cornerstone of our society, rather than destroying them, and disengaging from destructive social engineering programmes. Hopefully such future government may introduce policies of Family Preservation and divert the necessary resources from child removal as a matter of utmost priority.
LikeLike
Don’t hold your breath waiting for unilateral government action!
Family Preservation/Restoration should, of course, be the cornerstone policy of any sane system of child protection rather than the present socially destructive, and individually tragic, forced adoption policies which have failed generations of children.
The problem is that those families affected are overwhelmingly educationally and financially disadvantaged and are therefore powerless in the face of authority and no-one else cares. Reform is only going to happen if the conscience of a latter-day William Wilberforce or Elizabeth Fry is pricked by the increasing number of unjust and inhumane cases being publicised via social media or if those directly affected band together and mount effective direct action and resistance!
LikeLike
Thank you Michael.
LikeLike
see this;-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/10866289/The-real-story-of-the-baby-with-no-name.html
The Dread Christopher Booker strikes again.
it puts a completely different version of the story.
Clearly there are 2 different Narratives once again of a case, the family’s and the SS’s.
And the judge just accepting the SS’s version.
LikeLike
Social worker decision-making – where it very often goes wrong
Stewart & Thompson (2004) summarise some of the literature on human decision-making relating to practitioners’ prediction of risk. Four biases have been identified:
•practitioner’s tendency to under use base rates when predicting events that are uncommon(which leads to a tendency to overestimate the occurrence of an event)
•confirmatory biases often prevent practitioners from considering evidence impartially (which leads to a tendency to search for evidence consistent with the conclusion they believe to be correct)
•illusory correlations have been found to influence clinical predictions (which leads to a tendency to see two events as being related when they are not, or are related to a lesser extent)
•practitioners tend to place too much importance on the unique characteristics of a case(which leads to a tendency to believe that similar cases are quite different and that unique characteristics are better predictors than those that are more common).
The literature on human reasoning and decision-making indicates that personal judgement is often influenced by contextual factors such as the representativeness of the case, the availability or vividness of information and the presumed relevance of the available information to the decision being made (Cicchinelli 1995). Munro (1999: 754) found that most determinations of risk were based on a limited range of data, often with the most memorable cases (those that aroused emotion or were most recent)factoring into the assessment of risk more than the ‘dull, abstract material in research studies, case records, letters and reports’. Subsequently, even with evidence contrary to the workers initial case disposition, revision of judgement about cases was slow or non-existent.
Decisions were also often faulty due to biased reporting or errors in communication. A critical attitude to evidence was found to correlate with whether or not the new information supported the existing view of the family. A major problem was that professionals were slow to revise their judgements despite amounting body of evidence against them (Munro 1999).
Munro (1999) concluded that errors in professional reasoning in child protection work are not random but predictable on the basis of research on how people intuitively simplify reasoning processes in making complex judgements. As a result, “analytical tools are needed to supplement intuitive skills and shift practice reasoning along the continuum towards the analytical end” (Munro, 1999: 754).
Aids to reasoning need to be developed that recognise the central role of intuitive reasoning but offer methods for checking intuitive judgements more rigorously and systematically. Hence, risk assessment instruments have the potential to improve practitioner reasoning and decision-making.
Click to access research_riskassessment.pdf
LikeLike
Thank you for your post, R.
LikeLike
I am a very experienced consultant physicist and find the requirement to hide behind analytical misgivings to be a dreadful distortion of what the blatant truth is –
” Social services try to destroy anybody who criticises or argues with them”
end of story.
They have a code of ethics that is just a smokescreen and broken beyond all sensibility.
As I have been brave and foolish to stick my neck out in public, I get contacted by hundreds of people who have hard evidence of social workers setting out to destroy them –
– THEN they hide behind the convenient excuses of supposedly difficult decision making.
LikeLike
I have first hand experience of how dreadful the system is. My children were taken off of me because I criticised repeatedly the social workers. Whenever I asked for transparency, decency and honesty in meetings with them, they simply stopped the meeting and recorded that I was uncooperative
They then set about smearing me – and I have a lengthy list of documentary evidence.
Then they perjured the secret family court repeatedly.
e.g. They said no sexual abuses of my daughter had ever taken place in her mother’s house. We have a police report saying she was. The judge dismissed the police report !!!!!
e.g. They reported that my little boy had written in a wishes and feelings report that ” I am sad when my daddy hits me” . They did not produce evidence. When repeatedly asked for evidence, 3 months later we got the document which clearly had written in the box ” I am sad when I do not get to see my dad” .
Perjury is supposedly a serious crime. Why are social workers allowed to cover up assaults and sexual abuses of my children and perjure the court ?
My task is to expose these criminal acts by the social workers and the family court judge – but the police refuse to listen to the evidence.
Social workers stopped a judicial finding of facts about my children’s abuses.
Social workers stopped using the prof of psychology when he reported that it was essential to determine the range and severity of the children’s abuses.
Social workers stopped police from interviewing the children in 2011 onwards after the [edited] police had reported the sexual abuse of my daughter.
THESE ARE ALL CRIMINAL ACTS AGAINST CHILDREN and AGAINST THE LAW.
Why are [edited] social workers getting away with it ?
Why are [edited] police doing nothing about it ?
THE SYSTEM IS PERPETRATING SEXUAL AND PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL ABUSES OF CHILDREN.
LikeLike
Hi, thank you for your post and I’m sorry to hear this has happened to you and your son. For legal reasons I’ve had to edit your post, but I understand what you’re saying and you won’t be surprised to hear that this scenario is something a lot of people report.
LikeLike
Hi Natasha, thank you for your reply.
It’s my daughter and son.
Here is the bottom line – why are a lot of people reporting this, but nothing is being done ?
What is being done is criminal. Why is the justice system letting children and adults be criminally abused ?
Are we just to accept this is lawless England ?
LikeLike
I think the answers to all of those things lies in the priorities government has. It’s really all about the economy, money and the profit line, so everything else follows. If that means justice is delayed, denied or just divorced entirely from the scenario (pardon the pun), then that’s what happens. There are other issue at play too, I think but it would take an eternity to write them all down. Bottom line? Nothing will change until the system reforms itself, or is reborn.
LikeLike
The system will never reform itself. It will only put on new clothes. Change will only come by external influence – ie. TRUTH about what is happening.
In many ways, the system runs ‘open loop’ – that is without proper checks. Munby has created a checking system by allowing public disclosure of process details and the people bodging them. Now it needs people to take action. However, most of the VICTIMS of the system do not have enough ability to properly use Munby’s rules properly. So, we need champions……….
LikeLike
The whole system self protects itself! It is also dependent on taking children into care for its own survival! Its nothing to do with what is in the best interests of the child but about what is in the best interests of those who work in the so called child protective industry!
To remove a child from home is extremly damaging to the child. If its considered, by Penolope Leach, to be damaging for under 4s to have overnight stays with their own dad after the parents seperate, think what it does to a child taken from its parents, siblings, extended family and its home to be thrust in a new environment with strangers they have never met before!! Cruel, despotic social workers then stop all contact with the families after the courts have deemed the families unfit to look after their children and the child is in care!!
All those who support what is happening either has a vested interest or they are truly ignorant! That’s the truth!
LikeLike
I think the whole system is outdated, and frankly, so much more could be done to ensure these kids are loved and feel secure. The majority could be supported at home with their parents. As for the minority who really can’t go home, they should be placed with just one family, who are willing to love and heal that child, unconditionally. It’s a tall order, but that’s what I’d be pushing for.
LikeLike
Natasha, this is a good forum. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to comment.
I am willing to debate in public, or in front of judges, —
that overall, our English social services child care system and family courts are a NET force of bad in our society.
Please get people to challenge me.
LikeLike
Hi Tom, I’m glad you like the forum and feel comfortable here. That’s what I hope for, for everyone. People can see you comment now, so no doubt they will interact with you.
LikeLike