31 Wednesday Oct 2018
Posted in Researching Reform, The Buzz
The latest family and child welfare items:
30 Tuesday Oct 2018
Posted in legal aid, Researching Reform
Politicians will discuss the future of legal aid, in a debate to be held at Westminster on Thursday, 1st November. The general debate was approved by the Backbench Business Committee and will be hosted by Andy Slaughter MP and Alistair Carmichael MP.
Legal aid cuts have been an ongoing source of concern for the family justice system, which saw a drastic reduction in the availability of the support service after the introduction of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO). The legislation made it increasingly difficult for families to access legal support, which led to The Public Law Project mounting a legal challenge over its restrictions to legal aid for domestic abuse survivors. The government was eventually forced to back down on several clauses within LASPO, and extend the list of documents victims of domestic violence had to produce in order to qualify for legal aid.
In 2017, the Ministry of Justice also scrapped the five year time limit for producing evidence of domestic violence, and in October of this year, a judicial review ordered the government to amend the Civil Legal Aid (Procedure) Regulations 2012, so that legal aid certificates could be backdated. The change allowed lawyers to continue representing clients while waiting for legal aid certificates to be processed.
This week’s debate will be held in the Grand Committee Room at Westminster Hall. Further details should be released within the next 48 hours, so we will update you as soon as we have them. Members of the public are able to attend this event, but for those who can’t attend, the debate can be watched live on Parliament TV. A complete transcript will also be available three hours after the debate on Commons Hansard.
30 Tuesday Oct 2018
Posted in Researching Reform, social services, social work
A new study published in the UK by Family Rights Group, suggests that cruel treatment of families by social workers is not only common but also affects the likelihood of positive outcomes in cases. The research concludes that social care can and should incorporate humane social work practices, even when the system is under pressure.
The report, “Stepping up, stepping down”, was co-authored by professors Kate Morris (University of Sheffield), Brid Featherstone (University of Huddersfield), and Katie Hill (University of Nottingham) and Dr Mike Ward (Open University).
The researchers collaborated with 20 families as part of the Your Family, Your Voice Alliance, which the report says is a national initiative seeking to “develop humane evidence-informed policies and practices”.
The report includes the views of 27 adults and 10 children. Over 80% of the families interviewed have been involved with welfare services for more than five years.
The study highlights inhumane and cruel encounters families experience inside the social work sector, and offers some heartbreaking stories shared by service users:
‘She saw me sobbing in reception and she walked past me twice and then said there were nothing wrong’ I said to the social worker I wasn’t prepared to leave because XXX was being sick, he was alone and somebody needed to be with him. But it seemed that nobody wanted to listen to what we had to say …It was horrible. All I wanted to do was hug him and I couldn’t hug him, I had to sort of hold him here because he was covered in sick; his clothes were covered in sick. It was crusted where they had not changed his clothes.”
“I don’t feel like she had any time for us at all. I didn’t feel like she wanted to listen, she had made her mind up before she had even got here. I think the thing is, because XXX’s dad has got a history of drug use and prison, she formed an opinion before she met me. I have never taken drugs and have never been in prison. What happened was she came into the meeting, a child in need meeting at school, and me and (my partner) had an argument. She sat there and said, “I was driving here today in the car and I was thinking, ‘shall I put this on child protection or shall I just kick it out? No, I think I will put it on child protection’ “. That is exactly how she said it, in front of all the other people. I thought, ‘How can you make that judgement on one…?’ She met me once. Then she has made a judgement coming to work in her car. That put me off her straight away.”
“They released her sedated after midnight without letting anyone know, she got attacked trying to get home, staggering around with the tablets and we didn’t know.”
The families who took part in the study were selected from the following services:
There were five key findings from the report:
The report also offers five key messages from these findings:
We are heartened by this latest research and thrilled to see this thinking entering the mainstream. Kudos to the authors.
Family Experiences In Photos, From Stepping Up, Stepping Down Report, October 2018.
29 Monday Oct 2018
Posted in child welfare, Researching Reform, social work
The Crown Court judge who called Barnsley’s social workers Nazis after they subjected a six year old girl to inhumane treatment shortly after her mother died, was once tipped to be Mayor Of Grimsby because of his ‘no nonsense’ approach to cases.
Judge Robert Moore, who was set to retire this year, made a surprise comeback in June. Ongoing praise by locals in Grimsby led to residents nominating him for mayor, though he never ran for the position. According to Grimsby Live, a local paper in the area, Moore is now working as a deputy circuit judge, sitting regularly at Sheffield Crown Court, which is where he likened Barnsley’s social workers to members of Hitler’s SS party.
Judge Moore’s comments about Barnsley’s social workers received nationwide support from parents going through the family justice system, who called the judge a hero on social media. The comments also sparked a reaction from Barnsley Council, who vowed to make a formal complaint about Moore’s criticisms of its social workers.
This though, is not the first time Judge Moore’s direct approach has been noted. Having developed a fearsome reputation for handing down long sentences in the criminal cases he sits on, Moore also once dismissed an entire jury over concerns that some of the panel members were racially prejudiced. The case involved three black defendants who were on trial for alleged affray. Concerns over jurors using racist language prompted Moore to dismiss the panel.
Moore has also criticised social workers in the past. In a previous case he presided over, the judge slammed a council for removing children from their parents, who were placed in care over smacking allegations. The step father in the case had been accused of ongoing assaults, which included hitting one child on the hand with a wooden spoon, and making another child stand in the corner. Hitting a child at home is still legal in the UK, as long as the assault does not leave a mark. Judge Moore took the view that the trial itself, and placing the children in care away from their parents was crueller to the children than the assaults which took place.
SS women camp guards Bergen-Belsen April 19 1945. Source: Wikimedia Commons
26 Friday Oct 2018
Posted in Foster Care, Researching Reform
Parents who have experienced child protection proceedings inside the family courts have reacted angrily after an investigation revealed a huge spike in profits within the foster care sector. The findings come just as new research confirms that forced adoption of newborns has more than doubled, with no clear indication as to why so many babies are being removed from their parents.
According to The Sun, the foster care industry, which is valued at £1.7billion, has seen a sharp rise in foster care companies backed by large private equity funds sweeping up taxpayers’ cash. The report also mentions the latest stats on children taken into care, which show a 34% rise in the number of removals, to more than 10,000 children being placed in care, a record number for one single year.
The article in The Sun features families who have gone through child protection proceedings and who are outraged by the findings. Some families fled abroad to avoid losing their children, and others lost their children to the care sector. The investigation also reveals details of the holding companies making enormous profits from the fostering industry, and the individuals connected to them.
Large scale profiteering by companies inside the fostering sector was documented by The Independent in 2013. This was an important story at the time because it highlighted the vast profits being made from failing children’s homes, raising serious concerns about the way in which these homes were being run, and what their ultimate purpose was. In 2016, The Guardian also wrote a piece on the financial infrastructure of the foster care sector, again questioning the motives of the companies involved. And in 2017, an expose by ITV, confirmed the worst: children were being badly neglected by care homes, while managers pocketed most of the cash.
The Education Committee’s scathing report in December 2017, on fostering in the UK, also came to a grim conclusion: an alarming number of foster placements were being made for financial reasons rather than the best interests of children in care. In short, it was all about the money.
And it is families who are experiencing the impact of corporate culture inside the child protection system first-hand.
One mum told The Sun:
“It’s totally outrageous. This is a billion-pound industry that these businessmen are making millions from. It’s disgusting. How can this be allowed to happen? I lost my two boys and social services can say parents don’t have enough money to look after their children but then pay out thousands and thousands to look after children.”
Another mum detailed her experience of the sector:
“It’s completely wrong – people wouldn’t believe this is how the system works until they have dealt with social services. It’s been horrendous for me and nobody can imagine the pain you go through as a mother.”
24 Wednesday Oct 2018
Posted in Researching Reform, The Buzz
The latest child welfare items that should be right on your radar:
23 Tuesday Oct 2018
Posted in forced adoption, Researching Reform
One of the authors of the UK’s Adoption Enquiry has told a BBC programme investigating forced adoptions, that adoption is not a suitable alternative for most children.
Anna Gupta, a professor of social work at Royal Holloway University and co-author of the Adoption Enquiry report also told BBC Sounds that while parents are able to challenge adoptions, the process is so expensive that in practice mounting a legal challenge to an adoption is not available to most families.
The programme aired on 18th October and covered a range of topics, including forced adoption.
The segment on forced adoption began with a call from a grandmother whose daughter had died, after her grandchildren were taken into care. The grandmother explained that her daughter had been a victim of domestic violence, but was aware of the need to step away from her partner and focus on rebuilding her life, which the grandmother said she did with a good deal of success.
The grandmother then told the BBC presenter that the children’s father asked the mother for contact, and when the mother refused, the father went to social services. It was at that point that the children were taken away from the family. The grandmother told the programme that her daughter had given the children to her to look after whilst she got herself back up on her feet, and that this arrangement was working well. She went on to say that the social workers were unwilling to consider her as a carer for the children. The grandmother told BBC Sounds that she believed her daughter had died as a result of the social workers’ involvement in their case. No details were given about how the mother lost her life.
Anna then came on to the programme to speak. She began by telling the presenter that forced adoption was an unhelpful term because it implied that social workers had the right to remove children from parents when they did not, and that judges were the only professionals with the power to remove children from their current families. This is unfortunately not an accurate explanation of the term forced adoption.
Forced adoption refers to a policy which allows the state to remove a child from his or her parents with a view to putting that child up for adoption, without parental consent. As the term focuses on state powers, we can include the roles both social workers and judges have to play, in implementing the policy.
While Anna is right to suggest that only a judge can make an adoption order, legal powers are given to both social workers and judges to forcibly remove a child from his or her parents where a child is considered to be at risk of immediate, or future harm. If parents are considered to be unable to look after their children, long term arrangements to place children in other homes are then discussed by child protection teams.
This order of events, which is set out in our law and policy on child protection, means that the initial call for a child to be adopted is usually always made by a social worker.
The forced element of child removal is a key feature at almost every stage of the process. As social workers are often tasked with the initial removal, which can involve a child going to a care home or to stay with foster carers, removal in the early stages and the end result of that removal, which is often adoption, are interlinked.
Judges rely heavily on social workers’ reports in court, reports which judges expect will contain advice on what should happen to a child. Most of the time, if a social worker suggests that a child should be adopted, a judge will endorse and enforce that recommendation. This is partly because a judge has no other way of assessing the needs of a child in the case. That reliance places social workers in a position of considerable power, with the ability to not only suggest adoption as an option, but to influence the likelihood of an adoption as well. Without social workers’ reports, and expert evidence when it’s used, a judge is almost completely blind. In this way, the deeply integrated nature of the UK’s forced adoption model makes an attempt at separating social workers’ and judges’ roles within forced adoption, pointless.
Anna then goes on to say that whilst some European countries have the ability to use forced adoptions, none of these countries use that power to the same extent as the UK. She also talks about the need to look at the current adoption model in the UK, and the struggle parents face when trying to access support. She blames budget cuts alone for this difficulty, however the truth is more complicated. A defensive attitude towards child protection in the wake of high profile legal cases leading to substantial payouts, as well as a workforce which hasn’t been given robust enough training, all contribute to a tendency to remove children from parents rather than offer support.
Anna then discusses the issue of post adoption contact. She tells BBC Sounds that post adoption contact for original, or biological families, is not the norm and that the system in relation to that kind of contact is closed. Contact for these families after adoption is rare, but the idea that the system is closed in this context is not right and misrepresents the legal position around post adoption contact. Active legislation offers provisions which not only enable contact, but make it compulsory for the court to consider it.
The Adoption and Children Act 2002, tells us that:
“Pursuant to s.46(6), before making an adoption order, the court must consider whether there should be arrangements for allowing any person contact with the child; and for that purpose the court must consider any existing or proposed arrangements and obtain any views of the parties to the proceedings.”
Added to this, sections 51A and 51B, which were inserted into the Adoption and Children Act 2002, by s.9 of the Children and Families Act 2014, give family judges the power to order contact, both before and after an adoption order is made.
What is also noteworthy, is that there is debate about whether or not the current law makes it harder for parents to apply for that contact. One of the issues with the legislation, is that the right to ask for contact is limited by virtue of who can apply. The law as it stands at the moment means that adopted parents and the children in question have an automatic right to make an application, but everyone else needs permission from the court to do so. The implications of that, when we look at legal costs and court bias, are enormous. Although Anna was not referring to this complication when she spoke, and of course holds different views to our own about the sector, we are grateful to her, and BBC Sounds for offering our campaign exposure and further opening up debate on forced adoption.
You can listen to the segment on forced adoption, on BBC Sounds’ webpage. The conversation runs for seven minutes and starts at 1:35:00.
If you’d like to sign our petition calling on the government to end forced adoption, you can do so here.
Many thanks to Kellie Cottam for sharing this programme with us.
22 Monday Oct 2018
Posted in Researching Reform, social services, social work
Parents inside the family justice system have come out in support of a Crown Court judge who compared Barnsley council’s social workers to Nazis after their handling of an investigation left a vulnerable child traumatised. The council forced the young girl to strip naked and undergo an invasive medical examination, weeks after her mother had committed suicide. Barnsley council also wrongly accused the girl’s father of sexually abusing her.
Judge Robert Moore told the court that the council’s “social services were like the SS of Nazi Germany.” Moore went on to say, “they’re literally the SS in their name, and their manner of working is somewhat draconian.” The father was being sentenced for harassing a teacher at his daughter’s school.
Families took to Facebook to voice their support for Judge Moore, in response to Barnsley council’s decision to raise a formal complaint with Sheffield Crown Court, where the judge was sitting at the time he made the comments about the local authority’s social workers.
One father wrote:
“He got it bang on, that’s exactly what social workers are… parents agree on this once they’ve been through the system. The Nazi regime means that no matter what you do, if they want your kids you lose… it’s how the Nazis were, so the comparison is real and there for all to see. It’s nice to see that a judge has finally seen it for that. He shouldn’t be persecuted, he should be hailed as a hero.” In a show of agreement, several posters liked and ‘hearted’ the comment.
Another poster wrote:
“What do they expect when they destroy loving happy family lives… with no evidence at all.”
A further comment read:
“Finally, a judge that speaks the truth.”
One Facebook poster accused Barnsley council of trying to censor the judge, while another felt that a complaint should be made about the council’s conduct, rather than the judge’s.
The news that a judge criticised child social workers during a hearing in the criminal courts is another blow to the family justice system, which has been struggling for over a decade to shed its negative image.
Families across the UK have taken to calling social services around the country, “The SS”, because of the way they are often treated by social workers, and the ability of social care professionals to remove children from parents so that they can be put up for adoption without the need to get parental consent. This policy is sometimes referred to as forced adoption, and is in sharp decline around the world. The majority of European countries now elect to get parental consent before placing children with adoptive families.
If you would like to see the end of forced adoption in the UK, please consider signing our petition asking the government to put a stop to non consensual adoptions and to launch a consultation on better alternatives for families and children in need of support.
A very special thank you to Jane Doe for this story.
19 Friday Oct 2018
Posted in child welfare, Researching Reform, social services, social work
Barnsley council has said that it will make a complaint to the Sheffield Crown Court, after one of its judges likened social workers at the local authority to Hitler’s paramilitary organization, the SS. Judge Robert Moore also called the council’s social workers ‘draconian’, after reviewing its handling of a child protection case.
The Crown Court judge was sentencing a father for harassing a school teacher, as part of a case which saw the council wrongly accuse the father of sexually abusing his daughter, and subjecting her to invasive and unnecessary medical examinations.
Formal grounds for the council’s complaint are not clear, though it’s unlikely that any action will stem from the grievance. Community Care followed up on the story this week, after this site published details about the case last Friday. The online magazine also linked to our piece on the case, and quoted a selection from a judgment we shared, in which Munby criticises parents for likening social workers to the SS. The magazine did not offer information on why parents use the term, which has come about as a result of the often inhumane treatment families face when engaging with social services. How the council found out about the judge’s comments also remains unclear.
In June 2013, Munby, who was President of the Family Division at that time, reprimanded the parents in the case harshly for calling social workers Nazis, but he was also on the cusp of changing his mind about the child protection sector, forever. Just four months later, in October of that same year, he released another public judgment, in which he attacked social workers who had failed to tell parents that their children were being adopted. He went on to say that the social workers’ conduct, which included breaching a court order and blocking the family from mounting challenges to the adoptions, was ‘deplorable’ and ‘symptomatic of a deeply rooted culture in family courts’. Their conduct was also illegal. Munby’s frustration with the family justice system only deepened throughout his presidency. That concerns over the child protection sector would spill out into the criminal justice system, is not altogether unexpected.
Barnsley council’s executive director for people, Rachel Dickinson, told Community Care that Judge Moore’s comments were directed at children’s social workers generally rather than at her staff, and she told the magazine that the comments were “distasteful, derogatory and undermining the essential work social workers do”.
Sheffield Crown Court
18 Thursday Oct 2018
Posted in Researching Reform, The Buzz
Child welfare items that should be right on your radar:
Researching Reform 