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Researching Reform

Researching Reform

Daily Archives: March 25, 2015

The DWP Responds To Our Freedom Of Information Request On The Families Test

25 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by Natasha in FOI

≈ 5 Comments

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DWP Families Test

At the beginning of the month, we sent a Freedom of Information request to the Department for Work and Pensions to get an update on the Families Test – a government initiative that was designed to ensure all relevant policy and legislation was “family friendly”, and we can now publish their reply.

Whilst the DWP have very kindly taken the time to answer our questions and offer some interesting insight into the initiative, a lot still needs to be done.

Since its inception last year, only three policies have been put through the Families Test, and one of these assessments appears at the time of writing, to be incomplete. When asked who was in charge of ensuring the Test was carried out, we were told simply that the Prime Minister “expects that it will be.”

To be fair, the DWP offer to bolster this approach by working with their colleagues and Cabinet officials to provide more information on the Test and to target policy which may be eligible for testing. Something though, you would have thought the DWP would be doing as of right at this point. And when we asked whether they were aware of any departments using a template of some kind to log the details of any policy tested against the Families Test, as suggested by the Test guidelines, we received an evasive response that did not even answer our question (see below for the actual reply).

But by far the most interesting answer to our query, is the DWP’s response to policy tested which does not meet the criteria set out in the Families Test. The DWP tells us, “If a potential negative impact is identified then it is for the policy team to bring this to the attention of Ministers and consider whether they should take mitigating action. ”

So there is no onus on anyone to really do anything. And we think that says it all.

You can view the questions we put to the DWP and their reply, below:

FoI.954.REPLY-page-0

FoI.954.REPLY-page-1

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Forced Adoption: Cameron, It’s Time To Say Sorry

25 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by Natasha in forced adoption

≈ 11 Comments

Stemming from a former Australian Prime Minister’s heartfelt apology to Australian women who lost their children in the 50’s and 60’s to forced adoption (all for the crime of being unmarried), a movement in the UK to see our government does the same is now underway.

After hearing Julian Gillard’s now famous apology to the nation for taking babies away from mothers in Australia solely because they were single, Veronica Smith, a retired nurse who also lost her child to forced adoption in the 60’s in Britain decided to set up the MAA, or Movement for an Adoption Apology. There is a movement already in Australia, called the National Apology for Forced Adoptions (which celebrated its two-year anniversary last week), but none at present for women who lost their children at the hands of British forced adoption policy during that period.

For the 500,000 women in Britain who lost their children in this way during a period which spanned almost four decades, Veronica says that an apology would help to make amends for the terrible stigma and trauma these mothers endured. We happen to think it would also pave the way for a greater understanding of the flaws in Britain’s modern-day forced adoption practice, which is carried out today by only one other EU country.

Thank you to Dana for alerting us to this news story.

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