Welcome to another week, and our question for you this time is more of a crowd sourcing exercise, rather than a straightforward conundrum.
Researching Reform has spent almost ten years researching and producing materials for the reformation of the family justice system and there are some things which come up time and again as obvious solutions to preventing poor outcomes for children. We list below a few of them, and we’d love to hear your thoughts on them and your vision for a better child focused family justice system.
Ground Zero – Removing The Social Work Stigma
- Demanding and challenging degrees for social work – setting the bar high
- Selecting social work candidates who are vocational/ passionate about children and exhibit natural talent or strong academic qualifications
- Selecting individuals within social work practices who are exceptional and allowing them to lead the profession. And by exceptional, we mean loved and treasured by the people they care for.
- Campaigns within social work organisations to highlight the work and all its variations – no PR exercises, just honest, earthy messages about the real value of social work when done properly.
Building Better Bodies – Preparing the Work Force For Child Welfare Work
- Cutting edge seminars and frequently updated materials for all agencies in the field
- Small Management Teams whose only job is to ensure all materials are read and understood and to offer on the spot advice and facilitate fast, effective responses to service users’ queries.
- Breaking down barriers between organisations – building trust within and amongst each agency (police, social work, medical etc).
- Shifting the culture away from judgment as the driving force in decision-making, to a service oriented ethos which seeks to evaluate rather than adjudicate.
Kids and the Courts – Evolving The Justice System
- Tech: ensure each court-house is equipped with basic technology – audio recording equipment, wi-fi, digital files, projectors…
- Select judges who are compassionate, intelligent, and most importantly, understand children
- Tougher training for judges – child abuse sign spotting, child development, the latest data and research in child welfare. Mandatory reading and updating in this field every month for each family law judge.
- Judges must read every page in every file they are given. Failure to do so should result in a retrial/ fresh hearing. As final arbiters of a case, the least they should do is read the contents of every file.
Pride and Prejudice – Having The Courage To Challenge Norms
- Each agency should have a board of newly qualified team members who are able to voice and record any flaws they see in the agencies they work in, without fear of reprisal. Those reports should be given to Senior Management and published on a public government website.
- Every agency should have access to support services for team members, to ensure personal biases are not preventing teams from assessing service users fairly, and to give team members counselling as and when they need it.
- Finally, the justice system needs to start thinking about its work with pride. Protecting children and ensuring they are safe, loved and nourished is one of the most important jobs any one can do. It’s time the system thought so too, and not just a few inside the system – everyone.
So what do you think? Did we miss anything out? Do you disagree with our thoughts?
Researching Reform 
All very worthy ideals selecting compassionate judges etc but nothing practical to stop injustices .
The real solutions are much more simple and much more precise:-
1:- Abolish forced adoption (adoptions resisted in court by a parent (s) )
2:-Do not take children into care unless a parent has been charged with a crime (temporary care pending a verdict)) or convicted of a crime against children..
3:-Abolish all gagging orders (where national security is not involved) on parents appearing in the family courts and all gagging orders on children both in public and during contact sessions.
4:-Admit the public into family courts with the same constraints as criminal courts.
5:-Family courts should be governed by the same rules as criminal courts . Innocent of wrongdoing until proved guilty beyond reasonable doubt,,witnesses for parents allowed (including character witnesses),a second opinion from an expert selected by a parent allowed whenever the State calls one to testify as to a parents mental state or as to whether an injury to a child is accidental or not.
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100% agree
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I should add that
6:- A parent who has not been convicted of a crime against children should never be deprived of all contact direct or indirect with their children.Sending a birthday card ,text,or email or speaking by phone must never be forbidden unless a parent has been convicted of sexual crimes against young children.
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I agree with you
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Looked after children from the ground level, SOCIAL WORKERS, thousands of S/W come to the UK in false names and passports from India Africa Rumania as we all know any one in a third world country can buy a CV for a few pounds, they have no idea of the English culture, but most are clever sods steal the children on allegations only set up their own companies for assessments housing transport and more at the same tome work within the social services so no office rents to pay, yes all paid for by the tax payers, the corruption by the social workers is well known by the Governments but they don’t take it on board as the Governments themselves are just as corrupt and known for passing the buck because there is a big paedophile ring being going on for years, not all S/W are corrupt and we need good ones not to earn money but for the poor little kids who are abused in every way.
KIDS AND THE COURTS
No one can learn of children from books in a collage or University every man women child on this earth is different but judges and the rest treat all kids the same NO KID has a chance in the courts so it is important that from day one when a child is taken into care all is recorded and I mean every word as the judges are as thick as they come, and from the thousands of papers in the bundles in one case with the judge having to judge many cases from whose bundle do they take as gospel the S/W the court experts who knows only the judge, and as most people with intelligence know the out come of a case is well known long before the day of the final hearing, every kid should be able to speak in court and say what they want,
THIS IS NOT POSSIBLE THEY ARE IN FEAR AND ALONE.
Taken into care they are alone then allocated a lawyer from the courts, and I know 1001% of the corruption with that crowd, the kids have no voice, then they are living with strangers no love no bedtime story forced to eat what they don’t like and so on, then in comes the army of the court experts and boy do they kill a child’s mind for this reason many kids have to say what they are told to say because if they do not they are alone in fear and should they speak out I know the trouble they are in when sent back into the system and so afraid only to be abused again.
THE CHARITIES
The very well known big charities receive millions of pounds a year from Governments what better then to shut them up with money “In a child’s best interest”
some years ago Save the Children were asked if they would support a concert at the O2 to raise the funds for a safe house for the 10.000 kids running from the care system, they said no we asked why answer was it is TO POLITICAL as for Banardo’s well most are aware of them Mony Mony Mony,
Some Children are also allocated an advocate OH yes from a charity and they are not allowed to speak up for the child no one knows this better then I do, so you see no kid has a chance from being dragged away all alone put into fear in the unknown all for money and jobs and what does the Governments do well they are the ones who have set up this private ARMY to rule the British children because the bloody British Governments can no longer rule the world as the British Empire.
And what of the Paedophiles it is now via the SEX EDUCATION ACT teaching kids from aged 4/5 or is it grooming the kids for the paedophiles then we have gay rights being taught also told that not all paedophiles are bad kids taught same sex marriage what are they doing to our poor little children, for all those people I will tell you that all kids are sweet and innocent until the so called experts get their hands on them and into their minds, just as the little boy I speak to on the streets who was dressed as a girl one day and a boy another here lies the confusion.
http://www.childrenscreamingtobeheard.com THE SILENT WITNESSES HERE LIES THE TRUTH
This name for the children’ charity is so true as Christopher Booker and so many have agreed with me, the children are THE SILENT WITNESSES.
WISH I HAD A MAGIC WAND THEN ALL “IN A CHILD’S BEST INTEREST” WOULD BE SENT TO HELL.
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Thank you for your comments, they’re all very thought provoking. In relation to transparency, how would we protect or support children in court? Should we make allowances for them in that respect? Or should the process be removed from the court system entirely, and should we be looking at different forums for resolving family related dilemmas?
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Natasha
social workers say WE ARE DAMNED IF WE DO AND DAMNED IF WE DONT.
a true story but it is over the board, the kid tells the judge of their wishes and wants the judge agrees ( but here it comes) the judge says to all I agree with the child I do hope that the social services will listen to the child’s wishes and wants. its called passing the buck, now if a child speaks to a judge they have the Cafcass and their court lawyer with them, so of course many kids have to say what they are told to say and remember the kids are all alone in fear with 2 money grabbing idiots, the only way any kid in the UK has a chance is for the courts to be open to all with the media reporting then a kid can stand and speak and not be afraid, many kids lawyers are so corrupt, and I know that many parents have asked the courts for their children to have an independent lawyer with the court agreeing only for the kids lawyers to write and say that the child does not want to change lawyers as they feel secure with the one they have, its called hear say. For the kids from day one all should be recorded by an independent lawyer or organisation. So you see until times change the little kids are also
DAMNED IF THEY DO AND DAMNED IF THEY DONT.
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I hear you Maggie. I do think a lot of this is down to better training and a shift in perception of the work. Child work has been seen as secondary and unimportant for so long – it’s one of the world’s greatest fallacies.
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1. The system as it is isn’t working in the best interests of the children.
2.The court should judge upon reasonable doubt not probability.
3. Social Services need to stop being authoritarian and work with not against families.
4. Children’s wishes should be given directly to the judge(s). Be in by video (pre recorded or live). But care must be taken that they are not influenced by any party.
5. If SGO is being recommended the SGO applicant should be party to proceedings from the start.
6. Judges should not be layman but sought from family law solicitors and barristers. So they understand the area of Child Protection implicitly.
Just the first things that came to mind..
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Reblogged this on World4Justice : NOW! Lobby Forum..
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First well done and few if anyone will disagree with the sentiments expressed. Because of the need to concentre on submssions to the Goddard Inquiry it will be several weeks before I can do justice to what you have stated and try and explained the problem which politician are finding out that the system put in place between 1998 and 2007 has failed as badly as the systems put in place in 1948 1971 and 1989
If you have not done so I would remind of what Sir William Utting who had been in charge of the monitoring of the child care and protection services as Chief social services Officer and the Chief Inspector over the deace until 1991, followed by Lord Lamming 1991-1998 said in his report after review the need for better child care protection services in his report 1997 People Like Us
“The Government established this Review as a result of continuing revelations of the widespread sexual physical and emotional abuse of children in children’s homes over the preceding 20 years
Repetition of abuse on that scale in children’s homes is unlikely) . Far fewer children live there: 8000 in 1985 compared with 40000 in 1975. Homes are much smaller with a capacity of 10 children. The exposure of abuse had attracted public attention and led to improvements in the recruitment and management of staff (my highlighting)
There are no grounds for complacency about either Children’s homes or the other settings in which children live away from home. Abuse is documented in them all. People who wish to exploit children seek occupations or voluntary work where they have access to children. They will find the weak points in our defences. Institutions may be corrupted by evil people or decay internally through neglecting their primary purpose of serving the interests of children
What will emerge through the Goddard Inquiry will shock those who have not been part of the system as for the past fifty years Government and Parliament has known the system was failing, in 1998 the leading Minister admitted that if it was possible to prosecute governments for failure to protect then they should and the government then spend an £450 million over three years tying to make things better.
For around the past decade the policy has been to for as many children as possible to be adopted with local authorities financially bribed to encouraged the courts to enforced adoptions without parental consent. A leading adviser to govermemt recently argued that there were several hundred thousand children in the community who ought to be adopted or placed in residential schools with “normal” children.
You also have look at government policy in terms of what is happened to children world wide where they are killed, sometimes raped and tortured in civil, often religious or tribal rooted wars and where the UK as other civilised countries use unarmed aircraft ( drones) to target enemies with rockets knowing that a number of civilians including children will be killed or maimed for life.
,
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Agree with the points made by Natasha and Forced Adoption.
In addition Abolishment of Adoption Targets and Permanence Grants seems critical. The ‘feeding frenzy’ created by the cash slushing around the system makes children prized ‘commodities’. I know a (dubious – report of ‘child-on-child sex’) foster family with three children in ‘long time care’ – that is 3 * £20k per annum tax free. As soon as the Council got wind of possible criminal investigation and preparation for an ‘Application for Permission to Appeal’ process suddenly someone (I wonder who?) applied for ‘permanent adoption’.
Authority officials abdicated all responsibility for investigation (as usual), persecutions frightened mother into hiding, child snatch succeeded, Council file closed.
Within the ‘Family Court’ system all values seem to be inverted. Complaints are deferred until the judicial case has concluded. Compromise allegations are ignored. Court Appointed Experts serve completely one-sided reports. HCPC shields the experts from external scrutiny and gangs up with the wrongdoers against the advocates and whistle-blowers. Gagging orders protect inadequate judiciary and law ‘professionals’.
Infiltrators and commercial interests seem to have the upper hand at present – plain to see for those outside the UK e.g. lots of countries complaint – rightly so.
The facts about the abuse regimes of Jimmy Saville, Ian Watkins, Colin Batley, Albert & Carole Hickman.etc. continue to be ignored where as the unsustainable ‘Discourse of Disbelief’ is still tolerated by vested interests in government and authority institutions – for how much longer???
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From my most excellent friend Erin Pizzey
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Erin Pizzey – Just remember there are good social workers. The trouble is most of them leave because they get burnt out. The whole nature of social workers needs to rethought because it is based on a middle class idea of how we should live. When families are in trouble what they need or people who are willing to roll up their sleeves and work alongside with them particularly from mothers on the room with children. They need men to men to the girls and boys they need synthetic support from other women who brought up children and probably now have grandchildren. What they need most are people around them who understand what has happened to them and why. Before we even start talking about revolutionising social work we need to begin a conversation but the whole concept behind puritan middle-class thinking is that people can be punished better. It has failed miserably at jails are full of people who need not be there. Children have been removed from parents rather than teaching parents how to Parent when they have come from generations of dysfunctional violent families. Edmond I know there are very delinquent social workers I have come across them and I have done battle with them. Nothing is going to change for any of us working in the field of family violence until we change the thinking behind all the agencies that work with vulnerable families. First and foremost the courts should be there only to rubber stamp the results of mediation.
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1. I put forward that there are so few good social workers that it is very reasonable to say there are non.
1.1. The overall nastiness of social services is the development of an ideology that says the population must be bullied to make them better. This power mongering attracts and promotes powermongers – low empathy, low moral decency types. The mindset of the organisation is to bully, to manipulate, to control to destroy all opposition. It’s little different to Hitler or Stalin or the others. It is Machiavellian in the worst sense, and the people at the top know they have to govern like Richard Nixon – tell lies to the public, falsify how they go about things; skulduggery in abundance.
1.2. Any person who would have been a ‘good’ social worker is totally alien to this organisation and will live in hell and achieve next nothing if they stay.
I admire and feel sorry for such people. There good intentions are consumed and burned and buried.
1.3. The net effect of social services is NEGATIVE. What that means is that if you close social services down right now this minute and do nothing – the population is better off.
Now, I hear the cries of “what about the baby P type cases they are working on ? ”
The number of children killed and abused dreadfully, is still happening with or without social services. Look at the reports; that’s why there is so much outcry.
What you gain by closing them down is the rescue of hundreds of thousands of children and adults put into long term mental health issues and distress being reduced enormously. The government is ultra protective about quantifying the effect of having social services. Simple calculations to quantify all of this show there is a new Holocaust going on right now – carried out and executed by ss and the family courts.
There is NO valid excuse not to close down ss today – this minute.
2. We need some kind of Ideology to work within. The adherence to such a framework could be evolutionary. Political science is too unscientific, and it’s best shot should come from as global a consideration as possible of all knowledge, in particular fundamental observations of how we really behave.
The pragmatic and evolutionary tested approach of Liedloff in the continuum concept I cannot emphasise with enough force.
…..
[ The Continuum Concept introduces the idea that in order to achieve optimal physical, mental and emotional development, human beings – especially babies – require the kind of instinctive nurturing as practiced by our ancient relatives. It is a true ‘back to basics’ approach to parenting.
Author Jean Liedloff spent two and-a-half years in the jungle deep in the heart of South America living with indigenous tribes and was astounded at how differently children are raised outside the Western world. She came to the realisation that essential child-rearing techniques such as touch, trust and community have been undermined in modern times, and in this book suggests practical ways to regain our natural well-being, for our children and ourselves. ]
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While human kind prostrates itself to money and has no justified moral framework, then there can only be a bleak outcome; I cannot be more certain of this from all data and all analytical thinking.
In the meantime, we have individuals in power who foolishly imagine they are in control of the raft of humanity in the rapids of our environment.
What can we do ?
As individuals, everything.
As a species , nothing. We do not hold the reigns……
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Just in case there is confusion.
The part inside the dotted lines is a reply from Erin to one of my postings.
The bulleted number writing is Edmond Dantes
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Thank you for more thought provoking comments. Yes, there are good social workers, I know a few, they are friends and colleagues. When social work is done well, it is invaluable. When it is done badly, it destroys entire families and damages children irreparably. Should we be focusing on having an internal and external revolution? Better education and a conscious effort at changing the way social work is carried out generally? Will the Inquiry offer a fantastic opportunity to really look at social work practice and change it for the better, and if so, will that opportunity be taken, or missed? We can have blue prints and promises, but how do we implement them? Tougher laws, or a quite renovation which starts with selection and substance? Or both? There are so many potential solutions.
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Having just heard the news a man was sentenced to 14 years in prison for fixing bank lending rates
well well that is amazing when paedophiles and child sex abusers go to prison for a lot less serve a 1/3 of their sentence and then allowed to come back to continue to abuse children, so you see no justice for the kids or victims,
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May I suggest when you have time to read from the link
Belgium’s silent heart of darkness | World news | The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com › World › Marc Dutroux
To read what happened in Belgium you will be reading the same as what has and continues to have happened in the UK with the cover up of the paedophiles even to the point of the Politicians involved the victims who are not believed witnesses found dead nothing could be further from the truth between Belgium and the UK with the child abuse, apart from the fact that in Belgium children were kidnapped from the streets for the paedophiles where as in the UK it is the children in the care system who are the silent witnesses, with no contact with their families and the kids living in fear, there have been many reports of British kids taken from the care system and flown by private planes to Belgium, the boarder control is very aware of this and know of the private airport kids are flown from but nothing happens. Over 300.000 people in Belgium came onto the streets in protest it would be wonderful for the kids in care did the same.
All can now read of Ted Heath another well known from years ago paedophile but dead so how many more dead SIR’S LORD’S MP’S, I suggest you read the link then know the truth of the silent witnesses and here lies the truth in the UK.
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sorry to all this is the correct link to what I wrote this morning
Belgium’s silent heart of darkness | World news | The Guardian
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I read up on the Dutroux article – in the end only Marc Dutroux and his wife got sentenced:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/may/05/dutroux.featuresreview
Everything else got covered up – including mainstream media ‘disinformation’ campaign.
On this site you can find further information on how these extreme abuse rings work:
http://endritualabuse.org/
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In the end only Marc Dutroux and his wife were sentenced:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/may/05/dutroux.featuresreview
Find out more how extreme abuse rings work on:
http://endritualabuse.org/
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APRIL IS CHILD ABUSE PREVENTION MONTH?? Seriously??? And the other eleven months?? There’s another 337 days of each and every year when child abuse prevention should be paramount as well!!
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Yes, I think the idea is to get people to focus a little more, it doesn’t mean that we should only think about child protection one month in the year.
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