Welcome to another week.

More than 1,200 parents in Minnesota, America, have launched a class action to shut down social services in the state, accusing it of gross negligence and law breaking. The parents are also calling on the US government to make lying, fabricating evidence and ignoring the law whilst carrying out social work, a punishable offence.

A local media outlet spoke with a mother who had joined the class action, and reported that:

“After taking her ten-month old son to the hospital for a cough, doctors said he was stable, though they recommended she should stay. She chose to go home because, as she told the outlet, “After waiting, I had asked to leave because I wanted to put my kids to bed and I had my three-year-old with me.”

“I asked if there was anything else that had to be done,” she said. “They said ‘No, there was no other testing or anything that needed to be done.’”

But two days later, police showed up at her home to take him back to the doctor, and there was already a foster family lined up to take him. “She checked him out, all his vitals were stable,” she said. “They already had a foster parent in the room, in the room to remove my son before they ever proved … before they ever proved there was an emergency situation.”

He has been in foster care for over a week. Weber was supposed to get [her son] back on Tuesday, but the judge postponed the case because no county attorney could make it to court.

“I need to share my story and if I need to share it a hundred times, a thousand times – I will,” she told KMSP.”

Our question this week then, is just this: should the UK government make lying and fabricating evidence whilst doing social work a crime?

Many thanks to Maggie Tuttle for sharing this news item with us.