31 Thursday Oct 2019
Posted in Researching Reform, The Buzz
The latest child welfare items that should be right on your radar:
30 Wednesday Oct 2019
Posted in Family Law, Family Law Cases, Researching Reform
The President of the Family Division, Sir Andrew McFarlane has said that journalists may be asked to pay court costs if their reporting of a case amounts to an “unreasonable stance,” in the latest guidelines on family court reporting.
The guidance does not clarify what might constitute unreasonable reporting.
However, McFarlane also told courts that they should support journalists wishing to report on family law cases.
The guidelines offer a summary of the law around reporting family law cases and explain that permission to attend a family court hearing does not give the attending journalist an automatic right to report on the case. The guidance goes on to outline how journalists can apply for permission to lift the reporting restrictions.
In the guidance, McFarlane says, “Courts should be astute to assist reporters seeking to attend a hearing, or to relax reporting restrictions, and should provide them with relevant contact details of the court office, the judge’s clerk and the parties where requested.”
If the court and the parties to a case cannot agree on whether to allow a journalist to report on a case, the journalist will then have the right to make oral submissions in court. Attending advocates will be required to assist the reporter with the relevant law and procedure that needs to be followed.
Courts deciding on an application to report will still have to carry out the balancing exercise between privacy and transparency, prioritising the best interests of children involved in these cases.
On the point of costs, McFarlane said, ” In seeking to vary/lift reporting restrictions, the standard approach as to costs in children cases will apply and a reporter, media organisation or their 6 lawyers should not be at risk of a costs order unless he or she has engaged in reprehensible behaviour or has taken an unreasonable stance.”
You can read the guidance here.
29 Tuesday Oct 2019
Posted in Domestic Violence, Researching Reform
The government has promised to amend the Domestic Abuse Bill so that it includes a provision which places a legal duty on all councils to provide support to domestic abuse survivors.
The new duty is set to come into force in 2021.
The move was confirmed by Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick last week, in a press release on the government’s official website, while also announcing a further £15 million to run the support services in 2020 to 2021.
The Domestic Abuse Bill, which will contain the legal duty, will also include the first ever statutory definition of domestic abuse to specifically include economic abuse and controlling and manipulative non-physical abuse.
The proposed legislation will also create a new Domestic Abuse Commissioner and ban the cross-examination of alleged victims by their alleged abusers in the family courts. This ban is already in place inside the criminal courts.
The government also published its latest report on how the family courts protect children and parents in private law children cases involving domestic abuse and other serious offences. The progress update outlines the review’s objectives, its approach to evidence gathering and the next steps for the review.
The update confirms that the review’s panel members have finished the evidence gathering phase of the project and are now analysing the data with key stakeholders. The panel hopes to produce their final report in the coming months.
28 Monday Oct 2019
Posted in Family Law Cases, Researching Reform
A mother whose children were removed from her care in 2012 is launching a law suit against the Ministry of Justice and Security, the Salvation Army Youth Protection, and the youth protection service of Gelderland province, in the Netherlands.
The mother, Ms Jelena Antonova, alleges that her children were removed from her without any legal justification. She was accused of neglect by social workers, because she spoke Russian to her children instead of Dutch and allegedly tried to alienate the children from their father.
The mother’s case was heard in the Dutch Court of Appeal, which ordered that the children should be returned to her care, but the order was overturned by the Ministry of Justice and Security.
The child welfare proceedings were then highlighted in the European parliament in 2014, where MEPs were shown a video of the two children being taken away from their home, filmed by their brother Ilja Antonova.
Ms Antonova was eventually reunited permanently with her children, Nikolai and Anastasia Antonova, in 2014, after a judge ruled that the children should never have been removed from her care.
The hearing included a report from a family psychologist who said that Ms Antonova had not been guilty of neglect.
The mother was given permission during the hearing to question social workers involved with her children, which revealed several failings in the way the case was handled.
Ms Antonova and her family are now suing the parties for “unlawful and careless removal of the children”, and, “for the damage suffered and to be suffered” by the family.
The case was originally raised by former Telegraph journalist and family court campaigner Christopher Booker, who passed away in July.
25 Friday Oct 2019
Posted in Family Law, Research, Researching Reform
A new study looking at the way social workers in England use social media to observe parents and children has concluded that covert surveillance is rife among social workers engaging with families.
The study, which was published in September, by academics at the University of Birmingham, England and the University of Auckland in New Zealand, also noted that the proper use of social media within a social work context was largely unknown due in part to confusion around what kinds of investigative powers were available for child welfare professionals.
But a piece by The Times in March confirmed that some British social workers were breaking the law by covertly surveying and accessing private information about service users through platforms like Facebook. The Times referenced a government-funded study also produced by the University of Birmingham which found social workers had used fake profiles to “friend” parents in cases where their posts were not publicly viewable, which is in direct violation of the law. Social workers even watched parents’ relationships and behaviours online to monitor domestic violence and substance abuse.
A research paper from 2017 noted similar patterns among American social workers, with over half of those polled saying it was permissible to search for a client on Facebook.
The new research suggests that social workers using Facebook are set into three categories: those who actively use the platform to spy on families, those adamantly opposed to the practice (through either an inability to use social media or a moral standpoint citing user privacy) and social workers reluctantly drawn into usage by service managers sharing content with them.
The report calls for more clarity on social media use by family professionals, but this call is not the first.
This site originally made the call in 2017, which prompted the President of the Family Division at the time to issue guidelines. Those guidelines were produced by social work regulation body, the Health & Care Professions Council.
However, the published guidance for social workers was limited in scope and did not offer a robust breakdown of the law and what social workers could and could not do in relation to social media searches.
An earlier piece of guidance was issued in 2012 by the British Association of Social Workers, which was also too limited in scope and content.
There is a need for an organisation like the The Nuffield Family Justice Observatory to produce a definitive guide setting out human rights and legal privacy boundaries, as well as proper ethical processes for any social worker thinking about accessing service users’ social media content.
Further Information:
24 Thursday Oct 2019
Posted in News, Researching Reform
Child welfare research, news and more:
23 Wednesday Oct 2019
Posted in event, Researching Reform, Westminster Debate
A Westminster Hall debate on the sexual and criminal exploitation of looked after children takes place today.
The debate, which will be led by Ann Coffey MP and is scheduled for 2.30pm, will focus on the latest report from the APPG for Runaway and Missing Children and Adults and ways to make placements safer for children.
The APPG is asking the government to introduce an Emergency Action Plan to tackle the issue. Key measures the APPG would like to see implemented include funding for councils to develop local provision, including children’s homes and foster placements, as well as regulation and inspection of semi-independent accommodation.
The APPG’s Chair is Ann Coffey, the MP hosting this afternoon’s debate. The Group has two Vice Chairs, Tim Loughton and Sir Peter Bottomley, while the position of Secretariat for the APPG is held jointly by The Children’s Society and Missing People, who were both paid up to £3,000 for their engagement with the APPG. As of the last AGM (October 2018), the group did not publish an income and expenditure statement.
You can see full details for the APPG on the Register at page 996.
Westminster Hall debates allow MPs to raise local or national issues with a view to receiving a response from a government minister.
The debates are open to the public and are held in the Grand Committee Room, just off Westminster Hall.
Useful links:
22 Tuesday Oct 2019
Posted in Researching Reform, The Buzz
The latest child welfare items that should be right on your radar:
21 Monday Oct 2019
Posted in Question It, Researching Reform
Welcome to another week.
A letter from a member of the public in Brighton’s Argus newspaper has suggested councils should take seriously overweight children into care, as the phenomenon amounted to child neglect and abuse.
Mike Howard, from Greentree’s Crescent, in Sompting told the Argus that while the measure sounded draconian, it was the only way “to seriously address the problem”, and that Sally Davies, the former Chief Medical Officer for England, had offered a pointless solution to the issue in placing a ban on eating while on public transport.
Mr Howard said:
“A seriously overweight child is prima facia evidence of child neglect by the parents and should be treated as such. Feckless parents, who are clearly neglecting their child’s welfare need to be offered training on health and nutrition, which it would be reasonable to expect them to pay for, followed by a period of monitoring of their child’s health.
If, at the end of this period there is no improvement in the child’s well-being then the possibility of taking the child into care should be seriously considered.”
Research tells us that children can become overweight for a variety of reasons, including genetics, a lack of physical activity, unhealthy eating patterns, or a combination of these factors. In some cases, becoming overweight can be caused by medical conditions.
Our question this week then, is just this: do you agree with Mr. Howard?
18 Friday Oct 2019
Posted in child welfare, Researching Reform
It seems as if Researching Reform is constantly updating this segment, but we feel it’s worth sharing the latest on all things ministerial in child welfare.
Here is the current list of ministers involved in children’s policy, and the new posts the government has created, as well as positions the government has scrapped:
Home Office:
Ministry Of Justice:
Department For Education:
Department Of Health & Social Care:
Department For Work & Pensions:
Department For Digital, Culture, Media And Sport:
Department For Housing, Communities And Local Government:
For a full breakdown of departments and which ministers head them, click here.
