Welcome to another week.
A recent article in the New Zealand Herald calls out a practice in the country’s Family Court called ‘uplifting’. (WARNING: article features highly distressing video footage).
The practice can involve physically removing a child from persons or premises in order to return them to a parent whose custodial rights have been breached.
There may be no warning that the uplift is going to take place, and police are often called in to remove children.
Uplifts occur after an aggrieved parent applies for a warrant to have their child returned. The use of ‘reasonable force’ is allowed where considered appropriate. The element of force and a sharp rise in the use of uplifts, are causing concern.
Video footage showing children in acute distress during the removal process has sparked outrage in New Zealand. New Zealand Labour Party leader Jacinda Ardern called the recordings “horrific” and observed that being forcibly removed from the home was clearly traumatic for children.
Professor Mark Henaghan, who is Dean of the faculty of Law at the University of Otago, said the Family Court had lost sight of their duty to place children’s welfare first and that the uplifts were ‘terrorising the children involved.’ He goes on to say:
“It’s become a battle of enforcement between the parents, courts, saying we’ve made an order, therefore it has to be enforced otherwise the court’s not carrying out its job…But the primary job of the [Family] Court is the welfare of the child. And I think if they saw some of the consequences of some of these warrants they may look at it differently.”
Speaking about the role of the police in uplifts, Police Association president Chris Cahill said the measure was also hard on police as officers were effectively “pawns” in the “wider games by parents”. He goes on to say:
“Often the police doing [uplifts] are the younger ones and they are only five or six years older than the children they are removing and that is tough on them.”
Cahill suggests that social workers should be tasked with carrying out uplifts.
The Labour party in New Zealand has continuously called for a review of the country’s Family Court, and more informed decision making before judges grant warrants to remove children.
Our question this week then, is just this: do you think the use of reasonable force to remove a child is ever ok?
Reblogged this on Musings of a Penpusher and commented:
It would appear that children and young people are still the victims and losers in this ongoing battle.
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Yes it is justified if the parent or carer in charge has been CONVICTED of physical abuse involving broken bones or extensive and repeated bruising or sexual assault; Otherwise NEVER !
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We should not imagine it doesn’t happen here. One case was very well publicised some years ago in which an 11-year-old boy refused to comply with an order to stay with his mother and barricaded himself in his bedroom. The court tipstaff, accompanied by a number of police officers, spent 15 minutes breaking down his bedroom door, seized him and took the screaming and struggling child back to the court.
On YouTube there are – if they haven’t been removed – some very distressing videos of children being “taken into care”, which often involves numerous police officers and considerable force.
While I accept that sometimes a little suffering now can avert a great deal of suffering later, and that the courts can only act on the information given to them, which may well be false, the idea that a child’s best interests can be served by subjecting the child to considerable violence by adults is difficult to swallow.
If a child is so determined to remain with a particular parent or not to visit another parent that physical violence has to be used on him, it may well be appropriate for the court to reconsider what is actually going on in the case.
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Reblogged this on World4Justice : NOW! Lobby Forum..
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very true injuria !
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Ian do you know about another similar site this one. Marilyn Stowe.?
dont think ive seen you comment on that one.
http://www.marilynstowe.co.uk/2017/08/14/couples-midlands-longest-adoption-wait/#comment-1106065
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Marilyn stopped publishing my comments years ago !
ian
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they just stopped me making comparisons between the UK SS and the Nazi Germany death camp Auschwitz as they felt it was OTT and the firm is Jewish.
not shure why that should be OTT to them but there you go.
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Pretty much agree with Ian,
children are being subjected to severe trauma when taken from their parents and this is unacceptable especially when there is no evidence of harm to the child/children and the parents have a clean background with no previous involvement with the SS.
Social workers are acting like terrorists and their managers are no better.
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I agree with Dr Manhattan except to say that usually the managers are even worse !
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Yes i would say so too. they are the ones orchestrating what the social workers are doing.
what we need is a kind of Nuremberg trials for Local authority staff with lengthy jail sentences. only then would the SS become a true children’s services in that very Sense.
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