Welcome to a sunny start to the week.
As election time draws near, we thought we would focus on what you would like from the relevant parties when it comes to child welfare. So, our question to you this week is this: what policies or proposals would you like to see the parties hoping to be elected, offer when it comes to children and family?
Researching Reform 
i can hear ian josephs now, what about returning all the children that are in care, taken from loving families with no criminal offence having been committed, as he would say, no crime,no punishment!!
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Hi Peter, thanks for your comment. I think meticulous evidence gathering and a high professional standard when it comes to social work have to be crucial to ensuring injustices are avoided. Lots more besides, but would help to remove us from this mindset of crime and punishment within the sector too.
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Hi Natasha.
Interesting question! My thoughts relate to government policy in general, which would include child issues.
It is said that only a fool expects repeated action to produce a different outcome. So many issues are addressed with a “more of the same” mindset when all the data says it won’t work. Paedophilia is a good example, but there is a seemingly endless list of others: narcotics, prostitution, tax evasion, refugees, terrorism, &c.
Root cause analysis is a good place to start.
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Hi Mick, thank you for your comment. I think people need to start thinking differently too, the sector needs to start with a shift in culture regarding how it views children as a basic jumping off point. There is a lot of talk inside the system but action is often elusive.
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Any mother who has her baby taken at birth for risk of emotional abuse and given to strangers for adoption must feel punished.Mindset or not that to her is a far worse punishment than prison.No punishment without crime? Too right !
The proof that social workers take children from parents via family courts when it is not in the best interests of the child is simple. Over 100,000 children are officially “in care” in the UK .This was not the case at all in the 1950s and 60s when children were taken en masse because they were “illegitimate” (born to unmarried mothers) .Social workers and the family courts were not yet a power in the land.Very few children were then taken for being at risk of harm or similar reasons.
When however fashions changed and it was no longer considered a disgrace for unmarried mothers to have a child a yawning gap appeared in the child snatching industry and that gap was filled by inventing reasons for taking children such as” risk ” or “putting the parent’s needs before those of children”Hence the 100,000 babies and young children now in care (and many selected for forced adoption), who were never taken before because in the old days the excuse of illegitimacy was enough to keep the “industry” flourishing and forced adoption did not need to exist.
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Hi, thanks for your thoughts. Britain is in the minority when it comes to forced adoption as far as the EU is concerned. It is considered outdated by many. I think this all goes hand in hand with the system’s mindset and why we need to start training people better and getting the sector to understand the negative consequences of current practice.
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There needs to be a public independent enquiry into the corruption of the social workes and social services, for 100s of years children have gone unheard and still do, but they do have rights all go unheard the Governments will do as they have done for 100s of years ignore the kids and family and cover up the child abuse and the paedophiles and as Governments work hand in gloves with the VERY BIG INSURANCE COMPANY and the victims of child abuse will remain the silent witnesses, And like Cameron and Cleg they promised all grandparents rights if they got into power, well well we are still waiting so you see they do as they do and will sit in the house and debate and debate and the poor little kids will continue to be abused in every way, because them in Government dont give a damb. its all talk to let the nation who are like the lambs to the slaughter think O’H LOOK GOVERNMENT ARE HELPING US. Having travelled the world yes the world is only interested in the freeby houses health care and benifits, as for the british people the world realy does class them as LAMBS TO THE SLAUGHTER who allow this to happen to their own children by the Governments.
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Thank you, Maggie. The fact that the children’s sector is viewed very much as an industry has a huge part to play in the way children are treated on the ground. It’s going to be very hard trying to shift that perspective, but we have to in order to improve the system.
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Natasha we can all live in hope but them in Governments have always been known as the BOYS CLUB and when we do have a femail MP what do they do not a lot
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Do remember dear old Mr Barnardo came along and sold our kids to Australia Canada etc he was given millions of pounds to help the poor kids from the work houses and befor that we had the baby farming http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~adoption/topics/babyfarming.html
it will go on and on.
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Bloody Governments need to hear the cries that i hear from the families who call the help line and then them in Governments may cry just hearing truth then they JUST may do some thing but i doubt it because then who would they have to sexually abuse and make their money and should any of them in Government read this then beleive me it is from what i hear from the help line and the whistle blowers that i research into you lieing corrupt crowd of nothings just look at Lord Janner another cover up amazing how the paedos in Governments are suddenly dying of cancer retired disapeared to live in another country or suddenly got dementia its known as keep it in the family ahhaha and send the lambs to the slaughter
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Hi Natasha, Something is seriously wrong with our child protection system on so many levels that is needs to cease!
There needs to be reforms that are much more family focused. Children should not be subjected to growing up in care if it’s at all possible to keep them at home or with extended families. Forced adoption should never happen.
There needs to be regular checking on those kids who have to remain in care to insure they are truly safe.
Families should never have contact stopped unless it’s court approved and only if there is a proven risk to the child.
Government funding should be directed at helping families not separating them!
Social workers need to have a change of role and should do the job they were originally intended to do, help families! Bonuses should be made available and given only where a family has been successfully kept together. Social workers should never be rewarded for breaking families up!
Children currently in care should have contact increased with a view to returning the children to their homes or to extended families. Funding should be made available to assist with this process.
All new court cases should be evidence based not hear say or speculation! The courts should look to alternatives to the blanket care and adoption orders currently given en masse! Judges need to be more creative! Judges at lower levels need to embrace Mumbys directives.
It should be mentioned only UKIP’s manifesto mentions reforms to the system! The other parties want to continue to prop up the failing system and increase more adoptions!
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Many thanks for your thoughts, Dana. I can’t say I’m a fan of UKIP, but I agree with your thoughts on the system and how it needs to change. So much of this is about professional competence, common sense tells us that is where we should start, surely.
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Hi Natasha, having just read Maggie comments and having watched the utube Rotherham abuse scandal videos I am reminded that those who are in positions of power over these children MUST be held accountable! To date they have not been which is why the system has gone so drastically wrong.
If UKIP wasn’t around I may have voted Conservative but Cameron’s pledges cannot happen because of the £30 million black hole. Milliband would ruin the country! Lib Dems have gone into a black hole! Having heard UKIP s manifesto and how they propose to pay my vote is with them! A shake up in politics is long due!
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Todys news “All in a childs best interest”
Police ignored child sex abuse gangs to chase car theft targetswww.dailymail.co.uk
Whistleblower Tony Brookes, a former detective who tried to investigate the abuse, said money was di…
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Reblogged this on World4Justice : NOW! Lobby Forum..
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i feel that i must comment about the recent surge in interest about pas, /parental alienation and the fact that it is now considered as one aspect of child abuse, this has caused a lot of media attention on seperating parents and the effect that it has on their children; has any body thought how much worse it must be for the child that is thrown into the care of the local authority, forced into adoption; and to have absolutely no contact with either parent or wider family members any more; they have to wait until they are going on for 18 in most cases before they find out they were robbed of all contact with their birth family for mainly ficticous reasons. these things happening in the uk are atrocious; and as a nation we should be ashamed of allowing it to happen. it is continually being swept under the carpet; and all in the mantra of being in the best interests of the child. if anyone standing for election was strong enough to say they would put a stop to it; they would get a lot of votes; especially from parents robbed of their children by underhanded social workers working for local authorities; that is my opinion.
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There are a handful of psychologists/ psychiatrists around the world who are trying desperately to resuscitate PAS, (largely for their own financial benefit) but as a theory it is largely discredited for the complete absence of any scientifically-conducted research to support its existence as a medico-legal entity. Mention of PAS or its substance is banned in Australian Family Courts and only a handful of adherents (e.g. Richard Warshakh are still able to get away with it in some American Family Courts, in defiance of the Daubert Rules of evidence. I’m afraid that PAS will remain what it is, another piece of junk science, until there is some independently and scientifically conducted research which supports what is no more than mere conjecture.
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My golden rules might be useful to parents in distress !
Golden Rules summary:- IGNORE SOCIAL WORKERS!! Don’t talk to them ,never go to their meetings,never obey them,never never believe what they say,never sign any documents they give you, never allow them in your house,never let them assess you, or send you to the psychobabble charlatans !Many of them really are “the scum of the earth!”.
The “SS” have absolutely NO authority so you are not obliged to listen to them or obey them ! The ss are your enemies(NOT your friends !)Tell them very politely “I am sorry but I have been advised not to talk to you” Say nothing more !
,They earn their living by” taking children”so ignore their threats and refuse their instructions ESPECIALLY IF THEY TELL YOU TO SPLIT UP FROM YOUR PARTNER as that way they can attack a single parent much more easily than a united couple. ! The more you “cooperate” with them the more likely you are to lose your children later !Politely refuse or even apologise but never obey them! Remember you have a choice “ignore them ” or “cooperate” and believe me neither choice guarantees success but time has shown that you have a much much better chance of keeping your children by ignoring the ss than by doing what they tell you !If you obey them even though they want to take your children (which makes them your ENEMIES) you will probably give them the evidence they need in court to take away your children.Ignore them and they often leave you alone to seek easier targets !
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I have not read UKIP’s manifesto but if they gave a binding commitment to stop forced adoptions I would vote for them despite any other misgivings I may have. It really is one of the most important issues of our time. But I feel we, as a country, should leave the EU, so. . . .
Natasha, why not give us the opportunity, through your ‘Question It!’ column, to comment on Sir James Munby’s remarks about a parent’s job being to get kids to do things they don’t want to do? I thought it an interesting remark, and not one I would totally disagree with.
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Hi Roger, many thanks for your comment. With humility, I can’t say that I would vote for a party that deploys overtly racist mantras thinly disguised as solutions to our economic meltdown just because they might have a good handle on the way their voters think about things like forced adoption. I find them utterly vile and I’m always shocked that their obvious lack of intelligence and short sightedness is not viewed with nationwide ridicule. But then, they are targeting people’s anxieties. As for Munby’s comments, you’re very welcome to discuss them on this thread or other appropriate posts on the site if you wish, however I have no desire to air them myself on the blog.
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From history, we can see how children have been seen and used as chattels under the patriarchal system.
Its nothing new.
The first white slaves were the Irish which the British rounded up children and sold them as slaves to Barbados, etc. From 1172,the splitting up of families was normal under the British regime. But we must note that the British were only obeying their master in Vatican. Trauma and soul destruction were the order of the day then and now.
“Armstrong divided history into the “Age of Permitted Abuse”, which went on for thousands of years until the 1800’s, and the “Age of Denied Abuse”, which went on until the 1980’s. The “Age of Concealed Abuse”, from the ‘80’s to present day will be added here.
For thousands of years, during the long, dark Age of PERMITTED Abuse, children were considered chattel and men had absolute power to use and abuse them at will.
Children could be bartered, sold, battered, mutilated, starved or raped without recourse. Men were permitted sexual access to their own and to marginalized children but had to stay away from each other’s. Women had no legal right to their children and no power to protect them; they had been made completely dependent on men.
By the late 1800’s, child abuse stopped being openly permitted and the Age of DENIED Abuse began. It was at this point mental health professionals became important in helping to shift the blame away from perpetrators.
Sigmund Freud, who had discovered that sexual abuse by fathers was common, extremely damaging and the cause of serious mental illness, was pressured greatly by the Power Elite to drop this valid theory. He capitulated and his new theories shifted blame to children for the next 100 years, claiming their reports of abuse were fantasies.
This helped maintain male entitlement for another hundred years. In the 1950’s, Alfred Kinsey reinforced this position with his invalid findings that children enjoyed sex from birth and that incest (child rape) can be a positive experience for the child.”
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/07/13/1313194/-The-Power-to-Protect
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When in India I worked with some of the street children also went to just one of Mother Teresa orphanages and over the years there has been thousands and thousands of street kids with many taken into the orphanages throughout India so with so much poverty and so many street kids where did or where do the children and babies go to from the orphanages as there are not many Indian people can foster or adopt due to finances, research showed the kids from the orphanages were sold and the money sent to the Vatican, perhaps this was and still is a market for the paedophiles who know and who cares,
http://www.childrenscreamingtobeheard.com/great-britain-known-european-home-paedophilia/
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I’m not sure if forced adoption is part of many people’s concerns. It is on this site, for obvious reasons, but generally? I don’t think it is.
UKIP racist? Perhaps; as I say I haven’t read their manifesto and, actually, won’t be voting for them. But I would draw a distinction between being racist and being concerned about the impact of immigration and the strain on our resources. That concern is a real and present one. And leaving a bloated, corrupt and interfering nannying, hectoring, incompetent, wasteful, bureaucratic institution seems a good idea to me. (And that’s just our government – haha!).
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Hi Roger, thanks for your thoughts. I think the immigration debate is flawed for lots of reasons, not least of all because our immigrant population is responsible for a significant portion of our revenue. That’s why I object to the mantra that immigrants are a strain on our resources. In reality, they are no more of a strain than our ‘non immigrant’ population, whatever that is today. Things aren’t black and white to my mind – and they never were. Leaving behind a system is only a good idea if we can and if we enter something better. But unless we change the way democracy works here, all parties just inherit the system, they will never change it.
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Very briefly – I think we should leave the EU and MAKE something better.
I wasn’t just talking about the financial impact of immigration; it’s the overcrowding of our part of Britain (in particular), the roads, the traffic, the infrastructure, the impression I get is that the south-east is in danger of becoming a huge urbanised blob. That won’t do anyone any good – immigrant or ‘native’. We are only a small island. And most of us are packed into this corner. I don’t like the way that people are so scared of being branded ‘racist’ that they daren’t mention the abuse of young people in ‘care’ by (mainly) ethnic minorities. Those from those minorities who abuse children and young people are just as guilty of being ‘racist’ as those who dared to speak out about it. There are no easy answers, I know, but we must not, I feel, become so ‘tolerant’ that any divergence of opinion is regarded as ‘racist’.
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We’re getting off track here so this will be my final thought in this context, Roger. Having chaired a debate recently where I spoke about religious minorities and their part to play in child abuse, I don’t think anyone could take the view that I would suggest divergence in this context was racist, and I suppose that’s the implication you’re making. These debates are about the facts and how we choose to translate them.
With humility, you are not correct in assuming that most abuse is carried out by ethnic minorities. You must read the salient research on this area. The vast majority of sexual abuse in the UK, whether of children in care or not, is carried out by white males. All the research in this area confirms this. It’s that kind of knee jerk reaction which is an obstacle to the truth, and the kind of knee jerk reaction awful parties like UKIP prey on to impart their brand of politics.
For what it’s worth, my view is that it is foolish to suggest that one culture is more ‘violent’ or abusive than another. We only have to look at our bloody Colonial past to know what we’re capable of. And in that last debate I organised on abuse within religious communities, I made two central points when I spoke. The first was that we must have a safe space for talking about issues which involve race and religion. The second was that we must always remember that abusive behaviour is part of the human condition, and does not discriminate by colour or creed.
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It’s offensive to me that you can be called racist or zenophobic for pointing out the problems that come with a multicultral society. The definition of a multicultural society may mean coexisting with others of diverse cultures and religions but having lived in a multicultural area I can honesty say those cultures generally coexist independantly with a few solo forays into the others lives from time to time before retreating back to their own. Multiculturalism is a myth.
As regards the EU, if all countries were equal, which they are not, there would not be the rush to get to England and get what work is available and to settle here. I don’t blame them individually or collectively but I do blame our government for not having the foresight to make necessary preparations for the inroad of so many diverse nationalities at one time. The infrastructure is failing under its weight. Since the momentum to come to England has been driven by financial necessity it’s the other EU countries that should be keeping it’s young workers to build up their own countries.
The influx of recent immigrants has had a damaging effect on this country in many ways and I’m sure there are some positives but those are harder to see at the moment.
Euroskeptic that I am, does not make me a racist, I want out of the EU and only one party will do that – UKIP! Cameron promised a referendum but renaged. He’s promised again but I get the impression he wants to remain PM at any and all costs so would promise the earth! The EU has failed but since I was never asked if I wanted to join or was offered a vote to be in it, I won’t cry over it’s demise!
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I agree we’ve gone somewhat off-track from the original subject, but that’s the way of conversations! Natasha, I was not assuming that most child abuse is carried out by ethnic minorities; as you say, all groups are capable. I was not aware, though, that in the UK white males are by far the greatest culprit – but is that because there are still more white males than any other group living here? At present, it looks like it’s politicians (white, wealthy) who are the greatest sub-group!
What I was trying to say in my clumsy way was that when it was a group of ethnic minority men systematically abusing (white) kids, it seems that the police and social services shunned away from recognising it for fear of being branded ‘racist’. In the same way that guilty M.P.s felt they were untouchable, so did those minority groups. It’s all wrong.
I think Dana is quite courageous to state that multiculturalism doesn’t, in practice, work – what a politically-incorrect thing to say! In fact, unfortunately, I believe she’s right. I say ‘unfortunately’ because it’s a brilliant idea, isn’t it – like Communism – but it doesn’t work – like Communism. What I find truly obnoxious is that Messrs. Blair & Co. apparently welcomed ‘unfettered immigration’ because they thought the peoples who came here would swell the Labour vote. It is quite understandable that people are concerned and upset about huge changes to the areas where they live over a very short space of time. No-one consulted them about it, no-one even asked them their opinion about it, these enormous changes were simply imposed on them, no questions asked. It was bound to cause resentment and hostility. If anyone is to ‘blame’ for the rise in UKIP’s support, it is successive governments who have ignored the people they were elected to serve in all sorts of ways, including membership of the EU and immigration.
And. . . .I believe you wish we leave the EU as well, Natasha. I’d be interested to one day know your reasons why.
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Hi Roger, yes, I am not a fan of the EU – which is primarily an economic construct. I don’t think it works. However, my view is not related to culture.
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It seems to me that all of the political parties have declared war on the poor and vulnerable and are quite happy that their StormTroopers, the child protection social workers, are carrying out their dirty work for them. How many of them have commented about the importance of maintaining family unity?. Or of rehabilitating and re-unifying families if breakdown occurs?. How many have commented on the disgracefully corrupt system of social engineering termed adoption?. The pretensions of the political parties to being `Family-Friendly’ only extends to comfortable middle-class families, yet some of those have even suffered at the hands of the StormTroopers.
Change must begin with political will and action and the political parties must begin with introducing Family Preservation policies and practices. This was spelt out very clearly in 1995 following the DHSS `Messages From Research – Child Protection’ publication and the government immediately ordered a “Re-Focussing of Services’ from child protection to Family Preservation. Unfortunately that government fell shortly afterwards and the Blair government immediately introduced its Family Destruction policies underpinned by the social engineering theories.
Britain has seriously lost its way in child welfare and is rightly coming under intense criticism from other EU countries who view its Child Removal and Family Destruction policies as cruel, barbaric, and seriously outdated. as do other professionals throughout the world who are engaged in child protection services.
Children in the State Care system are treated even worse than children were in the mid-19th Century, when they were deported around the world, again largely for the financial gain of `Child Welfare’ agencies, much the same as the adoption agencies are doing today. It is child-trafficking under a new guise.
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Children are nothing but a commodity to this and previous governments. Look at all the money generating spin offs which involve children. If one was to do a mind map of all businesses connected with child protection alone it would be vast. It must be worth it for the government to sanction the removal of children from their homes as then it would be able to generate more income from different sources in the form of taxes. If child protection didn’t make more money than what it paid out it frankly wouldn’t exist.
So the government give tax payers money for child protection and can take the high ground stating they are protecting children. It’s a win win situation for the government, vast numbers of people are employed, they save on benefits, get taxes back at both the lower and higher personal tax rate and let us not forget business rates, insurance, property rising in value to name a few wins. That would more than cover the “child protection costs!” After all you have to speculate to accumulate!
Foster and adoption agencies were advertised as being the fastest growing investment! Not surprising when you consider that the number of kids going into care, staggering figures that now top 100,000! In 2011 figures jumped 9% from 2007 to 65,520. The cited reason was the death of Baby P but other children have died before and since at the hands of their parents or those close to them and yet despite the figures for these tragedies being relatively low, the scale of taking children into care “just in case” has risen rapidly and out of proportion so something else is driving this child industry and that is money! I wish someone brighter than me would do a analysis of the child protection market to show just how much money is generated at a cost to the children and the families involved.
Never mind that the government has failed to protect a growing number of kids in care, that’s just collateral damage! Most of the time no one complains and if they do they will sweep it under the carpet. That’s why we have secret courts and D notices and gagging orders and abuse inquiries that go on for ever and go nowwhere for Gods sake!
Munby’s motions to make changes to how lower court judges operate have not filtered through to them but since he will soon retire it’s of no consequence, he can say he tried but now it’s someone else’s problem! The fact is, there has been no halt to the rise of kids being taken into care or put up for adoption. Munby’s motions are really constipated s**t! A lot of farting around but no follow through! Truth is, there is no incentive for the Family Courts to stop! They know if they stopped taking kids into care there would be no need for the Family Courts. (Parents accused of criminal acts to their children would go to Criminal Courts, as they currently do). To paraphrase Nigel Farages (UKIP) comment, they are not going to be the turkeys that vote for Christmas!
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