Monthly Archives: January 2020

Protest To Be Held Outside The Central Family Court

31 Friday Jan 2020

Posted by in event, Researching Reform

≈ 3 Comments

Legal Action for Women (LAW) have scheduled another demonstration outside the Central Family Court in London, to raise awareness around unjust removal of children from their mothers by social services.

The demonstrations, organised under LAW’s ‘Support Not Separation’ initiative, are held on the first Wednesday of every month outside the Family Court in Holborn, and take place from 12.30-1.30pm.

LAW offers interesting facts in their email blasts for the protests. The latest message contains the following information:

  • Women are primary carers in 90% of households. 28% of children live in poverty.
  • There are more children ‘in care’ now, than at any time since 1985 – 75,420 by 2018. Children from poor areas are 10 times more likely to be taken. Of families whose children are taken, 75% are single mothers.
  • 90% of adoptions are without parental consent.
  • While mothers are denied support, it costs £56k p.a. to keep a child ‘in care’.
  • 70-90% of court cases feature domestic abuse yet less than 1% of child contact applications are refused – violent fathers nearly always get contact.

The email also offers helpful advice on rights, resources and reading materials, including a Self Help Guide which has been published on the Support Not Separation blog.

The advice offered this month is added below:

  • Courts and social services must prioritise the welfare of the child by keeping children with their mother or other primary carer wherever possible.
  • Section 17 of the Children Act (1989) instructs local authorities to assess what resources they should offer ‘children in need’, including what support (financial and other) mothers need to keep children safe in the family. This should happen BEFORE any care plan. If it doesn’t, a lawyer can challenge it (by judicial review).
  • Disabled mothers are entitled to further help under the Care Act (2014).
  • Victims of domestic violence have a right to be protected in court and NOT to be cross-examined by their abuser. Lawyers and judges should follow the guidelines in Practice Direction 12J.
  • Mothers have a right to REFUSE to sign a Section 20 allowing their children to be taken into care. S20 is ‘voluntary’ but once signed it’s very hard to get the children back. No one should sign ANYTHING they don’t agree with.
  • Children in foster care are entitled to an Advocate (and possibly their own lawyer). There should be review meetings at least every six months which mothers have the right to attend to discuss how the children are doing.
  • Mothers denied contact with their children by Children’s Services, the special guardian, or other parent/carer have the right to go back to court.

The next demonstration is taking place on Wednesday 5 February. The address for the Central Family Court is 49 High Holborn, London WC1V 6NP.

SNS

In The News

30 Thursday Jan 2020

Posted by in News, Researching Reform

≈ Leave a comment

The latest child welfare items that should be right on your radar:

News

Family Law Debates and Questions in the House of Commons

29 Wednesday Jan 2020

Posted by in Family Law, Interesting Things, Researching Reform

≈ 2 Comments

A debate was held in the House of Commons yesterday, in which members of parliament discussed sex offenders, the grooming and sexual exploitation of children and two new sex offender training programmes.

The two programmes, which were originally named Horizon and Kaizen, will be delivered to sex offenders inside prisons, and have been developed for different groups, though there is currently no evidence suggesting that these programmes reduce re-offending.

Asked whether the government could confirm the effectiveness of the programmes, Chris Philp, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice, side-stepped the question entirely, and did not offer a response.

As part of a group of programmes the Ministry of Justice is calling the New Delivery Model (NDM), Horizon and Kaizen aim only to “strengthen the intention of participants to desist by supporting the development of both human and social capital in a manner that is personally meaningful.”

Members of parliament also talked about the length of sentences given to sex offenders, including child sex offenders, and concerns around the appropriateness of the lengths of some of these sentences.

One abuse survivor was quoted as saying, “What’s two years? My sentence has been 46 years and counting,” while another survivor of sexual abuse said, ““It is a slap in the face for the victim. What message does that send to people thinking of reporting a crime? Why put the victims through years of mental anguish when a lenient sentence is the outcome?”

Another concern raised was that often, victims of sexual violence do not find out that their abusers have been released until they see information about that release on social media.

The debate itself was held to discuss the Release of Prisoners (Alteration of Relevant Proportion of Sentence) Order 2019, which will come into force on 1st April, 2020.

You can read the debate in full here. 

Another interesting item in the House of Commons yesterday, was a question about legal aid for women who were unable to afford legal representation during divorce proceedings. 

Jim Shannon, the Shadow DUP Spokesperson for Human Rights and Shadow DUP Spokesperson for Health, asked the following question:

“To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if his Department will include women unable to afford a divorce without access to legal aid as part of his Department’s review of the financial eligibility thresholds for people seeking legal aid.”

Wendy Morton, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice, replied:

“The Legal Support Action Plan (published in February 2019) announced a review of the legal aid means tests for England and Wales, which is currently underway and expected to conclude in Summer 2020 with a public consultation on potential policy changes to follow.

The Means Test Review is considering the thresholds for legal aid entitlement and their interaction with the wider eligibility criteria and is assessing the effectiveness with which the civil and criminal means tests protect access to justice, particularly for those who are vulnerable, such as victims of domestic abuse.

Divorce proceedings are not usually in scope for legal aid, other than when there is evidence of domestic abuse or child abuse. The Means Test Review is not considering changes to what is in scope for legal aid, however some divorce cases may qualify for legal aid under the existing Exceptional Funding Scheme, where there is a breach (or a risk of breach) of the individual’s human rights.

In addition, The Family Legal Team at Royal Courts of Justice Advice provide free and confidential legal advice to anyone in England and Wales who is not able to afford a solicitor. Litigants who feel they cannot afford the tribunal fee for their divorce proceeding may apply to the Ministry of Justice fee remissions scheme: Help with Fees.”

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Government U-Turns on Adoption Drive, and other Interesting Things

24 Friday Jan 2020

Posted by in Adoption, child abuse, child welfare, Researching Reform

≈ 7 Comments

The government’s acting Children’s Minister, Michelle Donelan, made a dramatic U-turn on Wednesday over a policy pushing adoptions for children in care after this site published a post explaining the proposal was illegal.

Donelan had asked all councils in a letter sent on January 16, to prioritise adoptions in every child protection case, and to ignore court judgments which approved alternative forms of care.

The proposal was met with strong resistance by several key stakeholders inside the child welfare sector, including fostering agencies who were concerned that the policy would lead to a reduction in business.

Children’s charities and child welfare professionals with no vested interest in fostering or adoption also expressed concerns that the minister’s demand was out of touch with reality, and overly simplistic.

But on January 22, Donelan released a video statement through the Department of Education’s (DfE) Twitter feed, expressing a different view.

In the video, the acting Children’s Minister, who is filling in for Kemi Badenoch while she is on maternity leave, said that all forms of care should be considered, including kinship care.

Donelan also unveiled a new project in an answer she gave to a written question sent to the House of Commons on January 23, which asked what recent assessment the DfE had made on the effectiveness of contextual safeguarding.

Answering the query, Donelan announced that the government had been looking at this issue in a pilot to test “contextual safeguarding theory”. Contextual safeguarding examines the way councils respond to vulnerable children who may be being exploited outside of a family setting. She confirmed that the DfE had given Hackney Council up to £2 million to work on the project.

The pilot has been running since 2017, and focuses on phenomena like county lines exploitation and is led by Professor Michelle Lefevre at the University of Sussex, Dr Carlene Firmin from the UoB Contextual Safeguarding team, as well as Professor Gillian Ruch and Dr Kristie Hickle from the University of Sussex.

 

Family Court Watch List

23 Thursday Jan 2020

Posted by in Researching Reform, The Buzz

≈ 1 Comment

These are the following things to look out for today:

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Concerns Raised Over Quality of Care Children Receive in Fostering and Adoption Placements

22 Wednesday Jan 2020

Posted by in child welfare, Researching Reform

≈ 5 Comments

A growing number of parents with children in care have become concerned that their children are being left to play violent video games while in fostering and adoption settings.

Children as young as seven are being left alone by carers to play video games with graphic violence, which birth parents say have led to their children displaying increased levels of aggression and anger.

A father told this site, “My son desperately wanted to stay in my care, but his wishes and feelings were ignored. After some time in foster care, he was a changed person. He began to show signs of aggression and depression after he became addicted to a violent video game. I was blamed for this happening, even though I was not looking after him.”

A mother whose son is no longer in care, said that she was initially penalised in child protection assessments for allowing her son to play non violent video games.

Another mother whose 7 year-old son is still in care, explained that she had asked her son’s foster carers not to let him play violent video games, but the foster carers ignored her request.

Violent video games and music with aggressive lyrics have sparked a global debate about whether this kind of content can alter children’s behaviour. That debate has given rise to a large volume of research which concludes that there is no definitive evidence to suggest that violent content is a key factor for aggressive behaviour in adults or children.

However, research suggests that external factors like abuse, neglect and emotional difficulties can make children more susceptible to violent content.

Children in care can often feel neglected and alone. Unable to express their feelings with people they feel safe with, some children in care appear to be lashing out in home and school settings after playing games like Halo, Fortnite and Call Of Duty.

Other children are finding comfort in music bands whose lyrics share anti-establishment messages. This kind of music is popular with young people, and should not be banned in a free society, but questions could arise when looking at some of these lyrics in the context of vulnerable children.

A mother said that her son had been traumatised deeply by his experience in care. She believes that his mental health difficulties, for which he takes medication, were aggravated by that experience, and he is now turning to bands like Suicideboys, which she says offers her son a connection.

“When my son started going downhill, it came out he’d been doing a lot of negative things he’d picked up from a band or group called Suicideboys. I only realised because he said he’d been listening to a song called “Kill Yourself Part III” by this band, and he’s even got a tattoo done called grey 59 connected up his lower arm.”

“He told us he likes listening to Suicideboys a lot because they help him. He said they get across a message not to take tablets as they’re the devil. I said don’t listen to that band, you need to trust the nurses and me instead and the people looking out for you, ” she said.

Suicideboys has received criticism by mainstream music critics for its aggressive image, lyrics and behaviour. Several of the band’s songs contain themes around devil worship. The band’s musicians have claimed that the use of satanic imagery in their lyrics is nothing more than a substitute for the negative effects of money and drugs.

The mother went on to explain that her son’s adoptive parents felt that video games could also be worsening his frail mental health.

“His adoptive parent thinks my son sometimes believes he’s been shot in real life. I think this is to do with video games. She mentioned to me that he plays a game where one gets shot and gets back up, when of course in real life that doesn’t happen.”

Research suggests that parents and carers can influence whether or not a child plays violent video games. The study, which was produced by Iowa State University in 2015, found that carers who were more anxious and emotional could affect the amount of violent video games their children played.

Further reading:

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Poll Finds Public Want to Scrap the UK’s Adoption Policies

20 Monday Jan 2020

Posted by in Adoption, Researching Reform

≈ 9 Comments

A Facebook poll has revealed that 93% of those surveyed are in favour of scrapping the UK’s full, forced adoption policy and replacing the model with simple adoptions.

Simple adoptions allow children and their birth families to remain legally connected, and encourage meaningful, child-focused contact with biological parents while in the care of adoptive parents, wherever possible. Adopted children are able to keep their original surnames and can inherit from both families.

Under the UK’s current adoption policies, which feature a full adoption process, all ties between birth families and their children are severed when an adoption order is made.

While post adoption contact is possible under existing legislation, the policy behind the law is weighted heavily in favour of the adoptive parents’ wishes and wants, making physical contact almost unheard of in adoption cases.

France uses a two-tier system which features both full and simple adoptions, but since the 1990s, the number of simple adoptions have far exceeded the country’s full adoptions, making simple adoptions the most common form of adoption in France today.

Luxembourg, which also uses simple adoptions, only allows a simple adoption to take place where there are strong grounds, and if it offers advantages for the adoptee. Interestingly, the law in Luxembourg also requires that the adoptive parent must be at least 15 years older than the child, unless there are compelling reasons to permit otherwise.

The survey, which this site ran on Facebook, gathered 445 votes and found that 93% of those polled wanted to see the UK’s current adoption policies removed and replaced with a simple adoption process, while just 7% did not want to see the current full adoption policy scrapped and replaced with a simple adoption framework.

One poster commenting on the poll said, “I Don’t think adoption should exist. I think working with families so much better for the kids overall health wellbeing.”

Another poster said, “Adoption should only happen with the consent of everyone involved.”

And another commentator responding to the survey wrote, “In cases where the parents are either dead or doing life in jail and NO ONE else could have the child, I don’t see it as a bad thing. However, we all know it is being abused…. It’s horrific how something that I am sure was devised with good intentions, is being used to target the ‘lower classes’.”

Adoption, by law, should always be the last consideration in any child protection case but in rare instances where it is an appropriate course of action for a child, adoptions should be fully transparent.

In practice, that means each adoption plan must be highly tailored to each child to ensure birth family ties remain, and should be reviewed regularly and updated to reflect a child’s developmental needs.

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