An article in the July-August edition of Private Eye magazine highlights a controversial loophole which could allow incompetent and unscrupulous Family Court experts to practice whilst enjoying immunity from malpractice claims.
It describes how unqualified psychologists are able to act as experts, and dodge malpractice claims by simply avoiding the use of various “protected” titles like ‘educational’, ‘clinical’ or ‘forensic’. This means that they can offer their services without the need to be registered and regulated by the UK’s watchdog, the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC).
The article goes on to express concerns about unregistered court experts who are often invited to give evidence on cases involving rape, child exploitation and child contact and care cases. The piece focuses on one particular psychologist who is not registered but uses several of the protected titles on his website and has worked on high profile and often complex child protection cases. However, as he calls himself a consultant and not a psychologist the HCPC maintains he is not misusing a protected title and therefore cannot act.
This development is particularly serious because the consultant works in the Family Court advising on child welfare matters. The new Family Justice Council Guidelines also require that psychologists working in the family courts as experts must be HCPC registered – which this psychologist is not.
Professor Jane Ireland’s 2012 report detailing serious concerns about the quality of expert evidence from Family Court psychiatrists and psychologists – it found that over 20% of psychologists in family cases were unqualified and 65% of expert reports were either of ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’ quality – is also mentioned in the Private Eye piece. Jane’s report was responsible for the new Family Justice guidelines on expert witnesses which were designed to protect the public.
It’s clear that the law and policy in this area needs urgent attention. Researching Reform is a strong advocate of regulating this area further in order to ensure that the quality of expert evidence in the Family Court, and in other courts too, conforms to best practice guidelines.
We are adding a redacted version of the Private Eye piece below:
“A gaping hole in the regulation of psychologists could put the public at risk from unscrupulous, inept or unaccountable ‘experts’.
Providing psychologists don’t use one of nine so-called ‘protected titles’ – for example, educational, clinical, or forensic – any can offer their services without the need to be registered and regulated by the U.K.’s watchdog, the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC). Even if serious concerns or complaints are raised about them, they remain immune from investigation because they’re not registered.
Nowhere is the danger of the regulatory body’s impotence more starkly illustrated than in the courts, where it seems that unregistered, unqualified and potentially unfit psychologists can operate as ‘experts’ in even the most serious cases of murder, rape or child sexual exploitation. No-one illustrates this absurd Catch-22 better than ‘consultant psychologist’ [edited], who has acted as an expert in several high-profile cases, including the [edited] child grooming case, where a gang raped and trafficked underage girls.
[Edited], a trained educational psychologist who used to work in local government, has been the subject of at least four complaints, including manipulating data and acting beyond his qualifications and expertise. Three have not been investigated because he has never been registered with the HCPC. Because of the fourth, his application for registration in 2012 was refused, when he was judged to be ‘not of good character’.
According to his website, [edited] also acts in the family courts in sensitive child contact and care cases, in what looks like a clear breach of new guidelines from the Family Justice Council (a public body which advises on family justice matters) and the industry body the British Psychological Society (BPS). The guidelines state that family courts expect all psychologists acting as experts to be HCPC-registered unless they are academics.
In fact his website offers services in several of the areas of expertise covered by protected titles (educational, forensic, practitioner, counselling), again contrary to what the BPS says in its online directory of chartered psychologists (in which [edited] is listed). It says that ‘anyone offering services within these [protected title] areas must also be registered’ with the HCPC.
[Edited] website logo even uses the word ‘educational’ – but because he simply chooses to call himself a ‘consultant’, the HCPC maintains he is not misusing a protected title and thus it can’t act. It adds that statutory regulation and corresponding regulatory titles are decided by the government, and it’s for ministers to change them. The BPS, meanwhile, says it now only ‘advises’ on standards and best practice, ‘but where we are aware of gaps in regulation, we raise these with the regulator’ – i.e. the HCPC!
The BPS says it can’t comment on individual members, but adds that it has raised concerns that the general title ‘psychologist’ is not protected. It still seems happy to promote [edited], though.
As the HCPC admits, [edited] is not the only one dancing rings around registration. Prof. Jane Ireland – author of a damning 2012 study which triggered the recent family court reform, having found that one in five psychologists in family cases was working beyond their expertise and 65% of expert reports were either of ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’ quality – tells the Eye: ‘All practising psychologists who act as expert witnesses should be regulated so that the public are protected’.
[Edited] was refused registration because of ‘concerns about his character’ after staff at [edited] Young offenders Institution asked in 2012 for proof of identity and, er, HCPC registration. It triggered lengthy and ‘inappropriate’ correspondence between [edited] and the jail. An HCPC regulatory panel threw out his appeal in 2013, saying he was completely unable to accept that his written outbursts had been unacceptable, that he had demonstrated no insight into the potential consequences and that he had shown no remorse. The panel said that he had displayed a similar attitude in communication with the HCPC itself, that it could not rule out a repetition of similar behaviour and that his conduct would ‘damage public confidence in the regulatory process’.
[Edited] response to the three complaints made by fellow psychologists has been to fire off counter-allegations, the irony being that those properly registered and regulated complainants then find themselves under HCPC investigation, while he escapes.
Thus, in the [edited] grooming case, [edited], a registered chartered psychologist, was so alarmed to find an unregistered educational psychologist, whom she considered neither qualified to reach his conclusions about an adult sex attacker nor completely open about those conclusions, that she complained to both the HCPC and the BPS. She was told neither could do anything. Instead she herself was investigated when [edited] fired off a counterblast. ‘It was very irritating, but of course there was no merit in his complaints and they were all swiftly dismissed,’ she told the Eye. [Edited] boasts on his website about the [edited] case: ‘Of the seven men convicted, five were given life sentences. The man I assessed was given a sentence substantially below that of his co-defendants, and without a tariff’.
Another victim of [edited]’s revenge salvos was [edited], an academic and leading clinical and forensic psychologist. After taking advice, he complained to the then regulator, the BPS, that [edited] had manipulated IQ test scores in the trial of a man accused in 2008 of converting replica weapons into firearms used in a series of murders. It made the man appear less intelligent, and therefore less culpable. [The academic] told the Court at the time he had ‘never encountered such extraordinary conduct before’. In the event it seems [edited] evidence held little or no sway: the defendant was convicted and sentenced to life.
When [edited] duly counter-complained, however, the BPS decided to investigate [edited] complaint first. It swiftly exonerated [the academic]; but it never got round to investigating [edited] because, in the meantime, fitness to practise and regulatory issues had been passed to the HCPC. [The academic] told the Eye: ‘Guidelines indicate that the need to protect clients from unsafe practice from psychological experts and professional witnesses is paramount. But there is absolutely no protection if a psychologist is not registered’.
In a third case involving [edited], while he again escaped investigation of complaints about his expertise and findings, it took almost two years before his unfounded counter-allegations against a registered psychologist were dismissed – this time with an HCPC apology.
No-one can say whether the complaints about [edited] would have been upheld. The scandal is that because he can so easily act outside the regulatory system, no-one even bothers to consider them.”
What changes would you like to see in the regulation of Family Court experts? We’d love to hear your thoughts.
A very big thank you to Roger Crawford, who alerted us to this article.
Since 2011 I have been involved with [edited] a court expert who wrote I was a drug and alcoholic user never in my life have I taken any, I have been through the HCPC complaints and more and recently my Barrister wrote to her asking for her to redact what she had accused me of, and 2 months later no reply, court experts have the security of HCPC so apart from taking out a civil case no families or children will EVER have justice in the family courts, one thing to remember is that with the gagging orders it also states that the so called experts cannot be named, and I for one was told if I named any one in the case including [edited] I will go to prison for 7 years all in A CHILD’S BEST INTEREST. Natasha the corruption of the experts it will never be stopped until the family courts open their doors and evidence can be produced,
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Thank you for your comment, Maggie, and apologies for editing it, we have to do this for legal reasons.Yes, the Family Court process is still far too sloppy.
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2609838/Custody-battle-fathers-86-000-payout-social-worker-falsely-accused-abusing-daughter.html
we need a few more cases coming to court such as in the link of the frauds against families.
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Reblogged this on BertieS.
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The case of “psychologist” and author Ronald Conway, in Australia, may be of interest:
http://www.brokenrites.org.au/drupal/node/136
These guys can go on a long time: in Ronald Conway’s case, the truth only emerged in full after his death.
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I would stand by my own experiences of a Dorset based psychologist whose practices were shoddy, shady and downright sinister and he was a very active Common Purpose member as well as well versed in dealing with his brethren in one of Britain’s most corrupt Freemasonry chapters, the Dorsetmen.
He was paid 10,000 pounds for a very long, continually self contradictory report that were hotly disputed by a senior consultant psychiatrist and a very prominent consultant psychologist and both dismissed the report as rubbish but social services refused to allow either to become party to the proceedings.
I did discuss this report with Prof Ireland who is a lovely person to talk to and really knows her stuff too, she highlights a lot about “mission creep” which this psychologist and the social workers involved were all highly guilty about, making assertations of legal cause in areas not within their legal remit or purview and this is something that goes on far too much, that social workers, many of whom are STILL running about with the equivalent of an O level grade qualification, make expert claims and statements on law, health, psychology, psychiatry, paediatrics when they are patently NOT qualified in the remotest to do so.
Unless the psychologist is a clinical psychologist at least a contemporary of a consultant level of expertise, they too are limited into what they can do or say and neither social worker nor psychologist in the court expert stage seem capable of highlighting what is pure opinion, pure guesswork and place a lot of gravitas on what is really bunkum and what they think the judge wants to hear to get a win.
As for me, I still remain unfulfilled in trying to ascertain the known coaching session the psychologist arranged with the social workers that I was told off record took three hours and involved people not involved in the case whatsoever and it also included the foster carer who was not party to the proceedings and not so long after, an injury was found on my grandson which I believe was a deliberate act to implicate me not realising I would spot it and report it with a childrens centre staff witnessing all the way.
The foster carer admitted the injury which was a 14 inch long deep scratch around his waist saying she must have “caught her nail” which I think was rubbish. The council basically refused to admit this expert had attended the social workers before he assessed the home, the expert claimed he visited social services to view their records but the records they had were supposed to be the same as the records at the court, at this time too, my second grandson was under attack by E Sussex social services and Dorset started without court approval or party notification sharing information of the case to E Sussex and then buried its occurrence in the bundle held by the social services so by the time we knew, the damage was irrepairable and my second grandson was stolen into adoption.
In the other case too, E Sussex told the court implicitly that I was a danger to children, of course I was not there to hear this nor challenge it or see evidence, this quickly unravelled that they were telling the court that this was what Dorset had told them hence how I found out Dorset were sharing illegally files with another agency without the judges implicit permission, of course what happened then is Dorset went into complete denial as I was gearing up for a slander and libel action and the social worker I believe said this resigned and not so long after after being sent anonymously emails sent by the director and his deputy, which were highly criminal in my mind, they too resigned.
Since reading the actual Nuremberg principles on Generalplan Ost, I now believe that some of these people, court experts etc could be implicated in war crimes, forced adoption is a defined genocide under Nuremberg due to Nazi Germany forcing adoptions on Eastern European families and was considered a terrible crime indeed and the methodology used not that different from used today in the family courts either, I think perhaps we need someone to look at this from a legal standpoint, couple that with the EU and UN treaties we signed regarding secret courts, guarantees of freedom of state oppression by the government for man, woman or child and bring it to the fore, I would imagine any experts suddenly faced with a terrible slur to their record and possible long prison sentence might want to recant somewhat on their previous actions.
Finally and to my utter chagrin, the expert stole from the state and this is provable without a doubt but the police, the court refused to act, he billed the court and legal aid for attendances he never made and for services provable he never did, I reported this too to the BPS and they just whitewashed it.
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I hope the article in Private Eye will bring to light so many cases such as this, it will force change. The litigious law firm Carter-Ruck have sent Private Eye a warning letter threatening legal action if the magazine continues to report the psychologist they major on in the article. In some ways I hope they do, for the case will be heard in open court with no reporting restrictions. Bring that on, I say!
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Since yesterday after discussing this with my daughter, she reminded me too of the so called child psychologist working at Dorchester childrens centre who called herself Doctor and when investigating her qualifications we found she had no qualification that was recognised whatsoever to give that term doctor credence.
Now my view is that a) this woman was foisted upon my child for three years without any medical oversight, the social worker decided that my child “needed” to see this woman and made no referral whatsoever to CAMHS, our GP and that at every turn in child protection conferences I was likened to be a child abuser by merely questioning this social workers “decision”. b) This “doctor” turned out to be a nightmare, her official remit was to assess and help alleviate the serious physical and sexual abuse meted upon my daughter by her natural mother who is a paranoid schizophrenic, she not once according to what little paperwork we ever saw attended to this prime remit but turned each visit into fishing trips and there were instances of false memory attempts going on, auto suggestion, in the end my daughter point blank refused to go and this became an issue when she at the age of eight or nine if memory serves me right vowed in the most distressing way she would kill herself if she continued to be forced to see this “doctor”.
During this time, she developed Encopresis which is a condition where children when exposed to stress, especially emotional distress soil themselves, this was immediately blamed on myself yet my daughter never did this whenever she was with me, she only did this when exposed to certain social workers and this strange woman.
Things came to a head when a steering meeting at her junior school ended up with the headmistress being assaulted by this joke of a professional, this self aggrandised child psychologist told my daughters headmistress that in her opinion, my daughters intelligence was faked and that she accused the school of assisting in some weird fantasy she started to spell out, the headmistress, a very well known private girls school head went nuts and the social worker and myself were asked to leave and we could hear this violent row heating up from the car park outside, when I next spoke to the headmistress she was furious at the accusations that were levelled at her and she wrote to the Judge and told him everything that had been said, accused etc and we told the Judge that my daughter would not be returning to see this pseudo-doctor. It also transpired that this strange “doctor” also struck the headmistress in the chest and the headmistress had to call for help and had the woman evicted from the school forcibly. In my daughters case this is just run of the mill as so many bizarre and strange things happened and not the first time so called professionals have come to blows in my experience either.
My concerns then are the same now, what damage has been done here? This woman may have caused undetected and untold psychological damage to my now grown up daughter who incidentally has just been accepted on a very prestigious honours degree course, from what I understand she is still there, still practising her mumbo jumbo psychology and paid a LOT of money at consultant level when she has less qualification than a HCA. Also I know I am not the only one to have concerns, a lot of others I used to talk to whispered in hushed tones they were not happy with things, how many other children has this pseudo professional damaged?
Also Natasha, have you ever heard of one of the NSPCC’s trauma managers who is a very well known South African former ANC convicted terrorist? There is an expose out there by someone who pulled into the light the fact that this man is registered as a social worker yet has never completed one day of social work training and was given registration under duress by pressure by the NSPCC to grant this man social worker status? I think this person who has maimed and injured women and children with his explosives is a serious danger to all children but no one seems to want to follow it up.
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ANY PERSON CAN CALL THEMSELVES A PSYCHOLOGIST ! There is no obligation to have any qualifications at all or even to be able to read and write !
Complete “fruitcakes” can call themselves psychologists and open dubious consultation facilities for exhorbitant fees ,Most of them do fall into that category !
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it is only hear say, but I have been told more then once that some social workers from third world countries who get for a few pounds a CV to say they are a social worker get a job in the UK a child’s best interest, then they tell and teach their friends back home how to become a foster carer or to adopt so over comes more illegal people to earn a fortune from the British tax payers, if I am told of this then Governments must also know, same as them coming here as registered Psychologist and others, NO KIDS VICTIMS OR FAMILIES HAVE ONE CHANCE IN HELL.
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Reblogged this on World4Justice : NOW! Lobby Forum..
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Children are being removed from loving, safe mothers to live with fathers, on the basis of psychological reports prepared by an unqualified, unregulated ‘expert’ claiming the children have been alienated and are being emotionally harmed. Extensive, long term therapy is then recommended for all with the ‘expert’s’ business associates.
This has to be stopped.
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