The Parents, Families and Allies Network (PFAN) – a parent-led group which supports families going through Britain’s social care system – has published a report based on the ways the system impacts families, and the significant problems this creates.
The report, entitled, “The Way Forward” also offers solutions to these problems.
PFAN has produced a press release along with the report, which they have very kindly shared with Researching Reform, and we are adding this information below.
PFAN Press Release
Children’s Social Care: The Way Forward
Children’s social care as it operates in England is not fit for purpose. It alienates families and communities, fails to protect children, and places older children at increased risk of involvement in gangs and sexual exploitation. The Parents, Families and Allies Network (PFAN) brought together five organisations working with parents involved in different aspects of children’s social care to make suggestions for transformational change. This report is based on the experiences of parents who have lived experience of children’s social care and allies, who work in children’s social care or are social work academics.
Tammy Mayes co-chair of PFAN said:
“The parents we consulted identified the key areas for change and made their own constructive suggestions to transform children’s social care which are detailed in the report.”
Professor Andy Bilson, co-chair of PFAN said:
“We are concerned that the children’s social care system, under the pressure caused by the deaths of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson, will restart the cycle of escalating investigations and blaming of parents which has seen one in every 16 children in England investigated before the age of five, yet no reduction in child deaths. To avoid this, transformational change is needed as well as urgent reforms.
We will need to nurture and test out a range of strategies which shift the power from government and public services to parents, children and communities. Alongside this, immediate changes are required which must be co-led by parents and children with lived experience of children’s social care.”
The report identifies detailed specific changes required urgently and some examples that show how these changes may be achieved. Key to this is the need for children’s social care and other agencies working with children to move from a culture of parent blame and child rescue to partnership and participation. The report calls for parent advocacy to be developed alongside services as a powerful way to change organisational cultures in child welfare systems and to improve support for children and families.
Examples of approaches to provide the bottom up change necessary to transform children’s social care include the organisations that have created this report along with, for example, Hilary Cottam’s work on Radical Help and the Community Paradigm’s approach to transfer power from the public service institutions to the community.
The current system lacks enough champions with the remit to develop the new ways of working that are required. The report calls for a dedicated workforce, working in partnership with families, whose job is to co-produce services with families; to promote the use of these services as alternatives to care and investigative approaches to families; and to raise public awareness of the need for change.
You can access PFAN’s report, “The Way Forward” here.
Researching Reform 
This is the concise and “easy to understand” way forward as I see it……… Social Services very rarely break the law of the land ! They behave outrageously because the law allows them to do so.
The 5 simple changes that are the most necessary are as follows:-
1:- Stop the taking into care of children “likely to suffer harm” and only allow those to be taken who have actually suffered serious harm.
All other measures are “punishments without crime” based on “Crystal ball predictions” and should be banned.
2:-Family courts should be replaced by criminal courts (as it used to be ) operating to criminal standards of proof (innocent until proved guilty etc)
3:-Social workers should be replaced by trained police (as it used to be)
4:-Parents and children should be granted FREE SPEECH and be allowed to discuss their cases with the media or whoever else they choose.
5:- Abolish forced adoption (adoption actively opposed by the child’s parents)
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‘1:- Stop the taking into care of children “likely to suffer harm” and only allow those to be taken who have actually suffered serious harm.
All other measures are “punishments without crime” based on “Crystal ball predictions” and should be banned.’
This did not work well for the Websters and there will be other Cases like theirs where any one of the parent’s had in fact not caused serious harm.
Injuries can also be accidental, not deliberately done and have already been proved as much at Criminal Court.
As Brendan Fleming once shared, Solicitor at the 2012 Birmingham conference, when it was all done solely under criminal court, the parent innocent of causing harm to their child, did not face having their child taken from them.
Yet there are parents getting to keep their other children once it goes through secret family court afterwards.
Makes one think. As we also know, many other factors can be responsible such as brittle bones for example.
Then these parents spend years, more so and so do their children living with the consequences of Professionals mistakes including having their factual evidence go ignored once minds are already made up and after.
Currently, once this comes to light there is literally nowhere for them to go to get it admitted there has been a miscarriage of justice as we see said child/ren then suffer even further by the time they’re older and old enough to reunite should said child/ren get to know about their natural parent/s and in the meantime they can have grown up to lose at least one natural family member, which is even worse for them to cope with if it is their own real mum or dad, perhaps they never ever got to see again or at all if taken from birth for some other parents.
I like your points on the whole, just looking all round these situations as a parent who got set up myself and had my children used in the process. It’s not me having a go as much as me feeling frustrated and of the belief I’m just one of those family’s who has suffered a miscarriage of justice.
I’m also responding as the lead parent for our Review.
Xx
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Point 2 would have saved the Websters who were found to have injured one of their children “more likely than not” in the family court .
In a criminal court there would have been no evidence that showed this to have happened “beyond reasonable doubt” so they would never have lost any children under purely criminal jurisdiction. once criminal courts replaced family courts .(as in effect used to be the case before 1948 when social workers and family courts were invented !
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‘Point 2 would have saved the Websters who were found to have injured one of their children “more likely than not” in the family court .’
Not necessarily true Ian. Please refer to my previous comment as to why and even when an injury on a child was proved not to be deliberate by one parent who had physically harmed their child and therefore did not face prison. The other parent did not have to attend Criminal Court. The other parent still got their other three children back except for the youngest child physically harmed and that child was ‘allegedly’ adopted.
‘In a criminal court there would have been no evidence that showed this to have happened “beyond reasonable doubt” so they would never have lost any children under purely criminal jurisdiction. once criminal courts replaced family courts .(as in effect used to be the case before 1948 when social workers and family courts were invented !’
Please refer to my previous comment re Brendan Flemming. In a Criminal Court there would have been no evidence to show this had happened “beyond reasonable doubt” for one/or the other of those parent’s either and said other parent still got three of their children out of the four children back home.
I might be mistaken, but i thought Brendan Fleming shared here that this was the way it was when he helped parent/s re Criminal law who had Social Services (since referred to as Children’s Social Services) involved, before it was done under the Family Court’s, but that link is here. My understanding is Brendan is back working as a Solicitor once more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpt1VJ_vuWo (Brendan Fleming – Stop Forced Adoption Conference) which is on youtube.
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My point 5″ abolition of forced “adoption” would certainly have saved the Websters as all their children would have been returned to them
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Point 5 could have saved alot of us families if recognised legally. Just needs to be recognised lawfully too now 😘
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This report is supported by Andy Bilson which takes all the evidence to a new level as Andy explains. Match mothers feels 100% behind this work .Rosalind Barton.
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I’m looking forward to reading this report from PFAN. Well done guys 👍🏻 Xx
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Reblogged this on tummum's Blog.
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I am sorry but this report is full of pious hopes that people will behave better in various ways but not a single piece of the legislation needed to bring this about is suggested or mentioned.
The present situation was largely brought about by the Children Act 1989 and the remedy is to repeal that Act and pass a new Act bringing about the 5 changes I suggested above or at least something very similar.
An Act of Parliament is needed and campaigners should direct their efforts to bring that about if they want to be seriously effective.
The abolition of slavery, votes for women, and freedom for Gays were all brought about and then enforced by legislation and that is what is needed to reform Social Services and the family courts !
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“We will need to nurture and test out a range of strategies which shift the power from government and public services to parents, children and communities.”
What Professor Bilson and everyone else campaigning for change never talk about is the financial incentives paid to councils to get more children adopted. Tony Blair introduced these cash incentives to drive councils to place more children for adoption. it was later claimed that these incentives were withdrawn but this is simply not true. the incentives are hiding under the new label “Inter-agency adoption fees”. starting at £32k per child rising to £80k for 5 siblings its easy to see where the corruption came from. i would like to ask Mr Bilson how he intends to take the power from a huge money making network of corrupt social workers and other professionals that leads all the way to the family courts.
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You could contact Andy and message him through Twitter Xx
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