Researching Reform wishes children and their parents a happy and hopeful holiday, in what has been an exceptionally difficult year for families going through the child protection system in Britain.

Lockdowns and failures to apply government policies enabling contact with children in care during the pandemic left many children and their parents deeply upset and anxious.

Revelations about the way survivors of domestic abuse and their children were treated in court also caused concern.

And as we looked through the data on Researching Reform’s website, we were able to see what really mattered to families the most in 2021.

By far the largest search term used was “who does the local authority owe a duty of care to?”, while our post outlining a worrying trend in which mothers who alleged abuse increasingly had their children removed from their care was one of the most read stories this year.

As always, our readers offered thought provoking comment and insight on Britain’s family courts and children’s social care. We would like to thank these children, parents and grandparents, many of whom have been a part of the Researching Reform community since we launched more than a decade ago.

This project could not exist without you or your support, and we remain humbled and deeply grateful for your engagement and wisdom.

We know this is a painful and challenging time for parents who have lost a child to the care system, or through other forms of loss, and although we realise our words of comfort may not offer comfort at all, Researching Reform is with you, and thinking of you at this time of the year, and all the year round.

We started this project for you, and it will always be for you.

We wish you strength and the possibility of a better year ahead, and we send our love to every child in care this Christmas,

Natasha, Researching Reform xxx

A mother with lived experience of Britain’s child protection system is calling for a government inquiry into whether family court decisions are breaching children’s and parents’ right to family life.

A sharp increase in recent years in the number of children being removed from parents and placed in state care in England and Wales in the wake of government figures showing that maltreatment and abuse have plateaued for decades has caused concern among human rights experts.

The Human Rights Act, ratified by the UK, includes Article 8 which protects a person’s right to and respect for their private life and family life, and their ability to live their life privately without government interference.

Victoria Hudson, who campaigns to raise awareness about the way women and children who suffer domestic violence are treated in the family courts, asked the Joint Committee on Human Rights to launch an inquiry into current-day family court decisions to investigate whether the judgments and orders are breaching families’ human rights.

The call includes a request to the committee to look at current forced adoption practices in Britain, alongside its recently launched review into forced adoptions which took place between 1949 and 1976.

Victoria is also asking the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) to review her own family law case.

The call has been published on FiLiA’s website, a charity which promotes the women’s liberation movement. The web page invites readers to support Victoria’s campaign by emailing Harriet Harman MP, chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, and requesting that she undertakes a review of recent family court decisions and their impact on the rights of children and birth mothers to family life.

Additionally, supporters have been invited to email Lord David Wolfson MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the MOJ, to ask for Victoria’s case to be reviewed.

The page offers lots of useful links, and includes letter templates for readers who want to support one or more of the calls to action, which you can access here.

A greeting card congratulating people for adopting children has sparked a furious backlash on Facebook.

The card, which is being sold in Tesco supermarkets in the UK, says: “Congratulations on your adoption. You don’t have to be born into a family to be a big part of one.”

The card was posted in a closed Facebook group with more than 1,500 members on Tuesday by one of the group’s admin staff after it was spotted in a Tesco’s branch.

The group, which supports parents who have lost their children to forced adoption in England and Wales, was flooded with comments shortly after the card was posted on their Facebook page.

One of the admin members for the group wrote: “Tesco selling adoption cards celebrating a FORCED Adoption – whatever next – well done TESCO They don’t realise we are dealing with 3 parent suicides in the last 2 to 3 weeks as their children were FORCED Adopted never for the parents to see them again.”

Another poster said: “Some people do it for the right reasons but it is a kick in the teeth for those whom have had their child forcibly removed x”

Parents in the group offered suggestions such as: placing “forced adoption” stickers on the cards to raise public awareness about adoption practices in Britain; writing to the customer complaints department at Tesco; and holding protests outside the stores demanding the cards are removed from the shelves.

Several parents reacted strongly to the image of the card. One mother simply posted, “F***ing sick!” While another parent wrote, “Wtf can’t believe that. It’s depressing knowing that our children are not gonna be with us and now this. Sick c**ts whatever next 😡🤬.”

One father added, “Anywhere that supports adoption will not be getting my money. I will not be shopping in Tesco’s any longer. They should be ashamed of themselves.”

While there is still very little research about how child removals affect fathers, emerging research about mothers who lose their children to foster care confirms that they are more likely to commit suicide than mothers whose children are not fostered.

In one study, the researchers discovered that suicide rates among women who lost their children to foster care was almost three times higher and the death rate almost four times higher than those mothers whose children had not gone into foster care.

A second study held that mothers whose children were placed in care were almost five times more likely to die from avoidable causes such as unintentional injury and suicide, and almost three times more like to die from unavoidable causes, including car accidents and heart disease.

And a third study found that when a mother lost her child to the care system, her physical and mental health became significantly worse.

The UK is one of only a small number of countries implementing forced adoption policies which allow the state to remove children from parents without their consent. Parents whose children are placed for adoption often spend several years inside the legal system fighting to get their children back.

Forced, non consensual or involuntary adoption is viewed by most countries as an outdated and harmful practice, which has been overtaken by consensual and open adoptions in the majority of countries around the world.

Many thanks to Tum Mum for alerting us to this development.

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

• Research: specific genes may contribute each year to an estimated 400 sudden unexplained deaths (SUD) in children aged 1 year and older, and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).
• Calls for cabinet-level children’s minister to ‘turbo charge’ policy
• Victims of one of Britain’s worst child abuse scandals win £100m in compensation

As we enter the Christmas period we know that thousands of families across the UK who have children in care or cannot be with their children will feel alone and anxious. But you are not alone.

Researching Reform recently launched the Best Interests of the Child Review, which included the publication of a guide setting out every right children and their families have going through the social care system in Britain.

The guide doesn’t just outline all of your rights. It also offers you links to resources and support groups who are there to help. And we are here throughout the Christmas period if you need us, too.

So our message to children and families experiencing the child protection system is please don’t feel there is no hope, no lifeline for you. As well as remaining open throughout the festive season, Researching Reform can also put you in touch with other care experienced parents who run support groups and a range of kind and compassionate organisations who really want to help.

You can access, read and download the Children and Their Families Have Rights Booklet here, and you are always welcome to message us if you need us.

Welcome to another week.

These are the latest child welfare items that should be right on your radar:

• Woman forced to give up son for adoption says it ‘never should have happened’ (England)
• ‘We’ve been totally vindicated’: State admits rights of Mother & Baby Home survivors were breached (Ireland)
• Man born in mother and baby home to sue State over redress (Ireland)
• Star Hobson council left children at risk for years (England)

Simon Haworth, a lecturer in social work at Birmingham University and a core member of the Best Interests of the Child Review (BIC) has warned the government not to crack down on families in the wake of the deaths of Arthur and Star.

The piece, published in Community Care yesterday, follows Secretary of State for Education Nadhim Zahawi’s calls to remove children from parents if there is “even an inkling of harm.”

As well as explaining why child removal on “inkling of harm” grounds is illegal, Simon also sets out several powerful arguments pushing for more humane social care and less investigations into families in Britain.

The piece is very much worth a read, and both Michele Simmons who is a core member of BIC, and Researching Reform were very generously invited by Simon to offer our feedback on the piece prior to publication.

You can read Simon’s article here.

A family court case — where the judge had previously found that the father was responsible for the fatal poisoning of the maternal grandfather and the non-fatal poisoning of the mother and maternal grandmother — has concluded that the father can retain his parental responsibility.

The latest application launched by the mother and heard in the Royal Courts of Justice had asked Judge Williams, amongst other issues, to: discharge the father’s parental responsibility; permission to change the child’s name; and to block the father from making any further applications.

The judge concluded that it wasn’t in the child’s best interests to give the father any forms of day-to-day decision making about his child, but decided that the restriction should not go so far as to strip the father of parental responsibility. As a result, Judge Williams decided that it would be “in the child’s welfare interests that parental responsibility is almost entirely titular or status in nature and that all decisions relating to the child save for permanent relocation should be taken unilaterally by the mother.”

Judge Williams granted the mother’s request to change the child’s name, in order to shield the child from identification, following media reports about the father and the allegations relating to the poisoning of the child’s mother and maternal grandparents.

The judge also barred the father from making any more applications to the court for a period of three years, although the mother had asked for the bar to last until her child reached 18 years of age.

The parties were also assisted by legal counsel, and of note is that the mother was co-represented by Dads House Family Law Clinic.

This is an interesting case, in part because the family court’s findings of fact in relation to the incidents of poisoning have not been made in a criminal court and do not carry the same weight as a criminal finding. (There appears to be an ongoing criminal investigation in Bulgaria where the alleged poisonings took place, and what appears to be the possibility of a criminal investigation being launched in the UK).

The judgment is also important because it highlights an attempt at balancing the best interests of the child and the father’s allegedly significant involvement with the child, and raises important questions about what the threshold should be when considering stripping a parent of parental responsibility.

There is very little information about the views and wishes of the child, who we estimate is between 11 and 12, save for one mention of the child’s express wish to the Guardian that they did not want to have direct contact with their father.

This is the key passage from the judgment:

“Direct contact at present and indeed for the foreseeable future would be contrary to the child’s wishes as expressed to the Guardian. It would expose the child to the unquantifiable risk that the father represents; I having been unable to clearly discern why he poisoned the family and he denying that he did so notwithstanding my findings.

Direct contact would also pose a real risk to the mother’s emotional and psychological well-being. The father allowed his relationship with the child to diminish by his inactivity between 2013 and 2018 such that the re-establishment of the relationship presents many hurdles. It seems likely that the child has no real recollection of his father and his life over the last eight years has been lived without his father.

The mother has chosen, in my view rightly, not to tell the child of the reasons for his father’s absence from his life. Her reason for changing his name for the purposes of his education and how he is known in the community was to protect him from being associated with the father’s name which has been the subject of press reporting in Bulgaria in connection with the poisoning.

The pursuit of indirect contact with the father would require the father’s actions to be confronted and explained to the child. It would be unconscionable to seek to reintroduce the child to even an indirect relationship with his father as an essentially benign character who had been absent for unexplained reasons when the truth is so shockingly different.

I cannot imagine that the child would forgive the mother or the court if we were to sanction the re-establishment of a relationship keeping the child in the dark only for him to learn the truth at a later stage when some sort of attachment had been re-established. It would be potentially harmful to his relationship with his mother, to his trust in authority and would be immensely confusing for him.

Whilst of course having some relationship with his father might bring some benefits in terms of parental affection and support and indeed knowledge of his paternal family the potential benefits are less than they might be given the father’s prioritisation of his own interests from 2013 to 2018 (at least) but most importantly his capability as a father is fundamentally undermined by his poisoning of the maternal family.”

There is a very good summary of the case on LexisNexis for subscribers, and as always BAILII offers free access to the judgment here.

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

• Council could lose control of child services after ‘deeply disturbing’ Star Hobson murder
• Children’s Services boss in charge of Star Hobson’s care quit his £121,000-a-year post five days before couple went on trial
• Forced adoption play shows how children become the ‘property’ of social services before being given up for adoption

Welcome to another week.

A petition launched by Women Against Rape (WAR) has asked the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA) to abolish all discriminatory obstacles and rules in claims by victims of sexual assault. WAR argues that these rules disproportionately affect female victims of rape and sexual violence.

Many of the women making claims reported they had been raped and sexually assaulted as children.

The petition will be formally announced on December 15, 2021 at an open online event.

Figures show that almost 1,000 claims for compensation by people who reported they had been sexually assaulted were denied by CICA, many of whom say their claims were rejected because of minor rule breaking such as sex work and unpaid TV licenses.

Data from the Ministry of Justice shows that 74% of convictions for TV licence fee evasion in 2019 were made against women, while almost a third of all women’s criminal convictions are for not having a licence. These convictions have been called into question by experts, who say they are unnecessary and unfairly penalise women living under the poverty line.

The press release for the launch says the current rules have deprived 895 sexual assault victims of any compensation in the five years up to 2020, and that one half to two-thirds have been assaulted as children.

The release adds that a further 331 claimants were subjected to a reduction in compensation and that while many women have asked WAR for support, some have been too traumatised to consider appealing CICA’s rulings.

The event’s panel includes several women who have experienced CICA’s compensation system including a woman who brought a legal challenge which led to a review of CICA’s rules.

The body was asked to amend its Victim Strategy to, among other things, ensure that a victim’s claim was not “automatically rejected in circumstances where an applicant’s criminal convictions are likely to be linked to their sexual abuse as a child.”

However the current rules do not go far enough to protect sexual assault victims who are still unfairly discriminated against through CICA’s compensation scheme, according to WAR.

Anyone interested in attending the event, which takes place on 15 December 2021, from noon to 1pm, can register here.

The petition can be accessed and signed here.

Many thanks to Legal Action for Women for alerting us to this development.

If you have been affected by sexual assault you can contact WAR on Tel: 020 7482 2496, Email: war@womenagainstrape.net and Twitter @Againstrape.