Children are now able to submit their experiences of the child protection system and children’s social care to the Children and Families Truth Commission.

Following the launch of the commission’s Family Testimonials page, which already has a large volume of testimonies from families in Britain, the commission invites children to share their experiences of child protection and social care, in their own words.

The testimonies are an important part of the commission’s work, which is dedicated to making sure the voices of children and their families are heard in government and to offer everyone spaces to process their experiences and heal.

As well as offering solutions to the current problems inside children’s social care, the commission is providing children and families with immediate help and support, and producing ongoing content like our rights guide for families going through child protection processes. Our aim is to be of help and of use from the moment we launch to the moment we close, and beyond.

Children’s testimonies will be added anonymously and will only be published if children feel completely comfortable sharing their experience with the commission.

If you are a child and you would like to add your experience to the commission’s testimonials page, you can share it with the commission using their contact form or email them at truthcommissionuk@gmail.com.

The commission would be very grateful if you could help them by keeping your testimonial to a maximum of 500 words, so that they can include as many experiences as possible on the site, and please put the phrase ‘CHILD TESTIMONIAL’ at the top of the message. Thank you so much.

Readers, please share this call if you can – the more children’s voices the commission can raise, the more it can do.

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

• House of Commons debate: The recruitment and retention of foster carers (check back to see who has asked for this debate and for its briefing paper)
• Cafcass to improve practice when representing children in public court cases (for the millionth time)
• Integrated birth certificates for adoptees (Victoria, Australia)

The Court of Appeal has allowed a mother and father to appeal a placement order for their baby leading to an adoption after it found a judge in a lower court had not taken the parents’ significant efforts to improve their situations into account.

The judgment is a must-read because it highlights, in technicolour, exactly how the system fails parents. It also offers a very good reminder of how judges must apply the threshold criteria of ‘risk of significant harm’ when considering care orders, which begins at paragraph 16 of the judgment.

The case includes all the usual suspects:

• No secured access to legal representation (two very good barristers it seems step in at the last minute from Advocate [formerly the Bar Pro Bono Unit] and fight hard for the parents)
• Outdated assessments of parents being used when updated information — which works in their favour — is available
• Disregard for the parents’ substantial efforts in improving their circumstances,
• Missing transcripts of evidence in the case and,
• Failure by the lower court judge to apply the law properly.

The judges in the Court of Appeal also offer a helpful checklist for cases in which a placement order is being requested:

(1) Are the threshold conditions under s.31(2) CA 1989 satisfied, and if so, in what specific respects?

(2) What are the realistic options for the child’s future?

(3) Evaluating the whole of the evidence by reference to the checklist under s.1(4) ACA 2002, what are the advantages and disadvantages of each realistic option?

(4) Treating the child’s welfare as paramount and comparing each option against the other, is the court driven to the conclusion that a placement order is the only order that can meet the child’s immediate and lifelong welfare needs?

There is an excellent summary of this case on LexisNexis for subscribers. The first section of the summary is added below:

“The Court of Appeal, Civil Division, allowed the appellant parents’ appeal against a Family Court judgment which had resulted in a placement order in respect of their 18-month-old son, E.

The court held that the judge had failed to engage with the parents’ oral evidence of several changes in their circumstances, namely, that the father had abstained from drugs, undertaken therapy, and held onto paid employment.

Rather, the judge had compromised his ability to undertake an assessment of future risk by almost entirely focussing on residential assessment reports and social workers’ witness statements from 12 months prior to the hearing.

The judge had also fallen into error by conducting his entire evaluation of the proposal that E should be placed with his parents within the context of s 1 of the Children Act 1989. Given the presence of adoption in the range of realistic options, s 1(1) of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 had also been relevant.

Further, by ruling out placing E with his parents as a realistic option prior to an evaluation of adoption, the judge had adopted a linear approach in which he had disregarded the former option on its own internal de-merits and had not weighed up both options against each other.”

The judgment can be accessed for free on BAILII: Re B (a child) (placement order: adequacy of reasons)

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

• Infants, children and families to benefit from boost in support
• Child Poverty Action Group initiative to go UK-wide after Scottish success
• Children in low income families: local area statistics, financial year ending 2021

Welcome to another week.

Social workers were considered to be the least helpful people during care proceedings, while judges and legal professionals were considered to be the most helpful, according to new research looking at parents whose children were made the subject of a supervision order or a care order at home at the end of care proceedings.

Care orders at home enable children to remain with their parents while a care order is in place. The executive summary for the research says: “When a child is made subject to a care order at home, parents share responsibility with the local authority. The order lasts until the child reaches eighteen unless the local authority discharges it earlier or the parent successfully applies for its discharge. The child is a ‘looked after child’ within the terms of regulations and guidance and can be removed from parents without the need to return to court.”

The research was produced for the government by the Centre for Child and Family Justice Research at Lancaster University.

The findings highlight the reality that big caseloads and a lack of resources — which are experienced by everyone inside the child protection system, not just social workers — are clearly not the drivers behind poor social work practice. If judges and lawyers can be helpful, social workers can be helpful too.

The researchers interviewed 44 parents, and 20 of the families had experience of a child on a supervision order, while 24 had a child living at home on a care order.

There’s some propaganda to wade through, but if you can stomach reading the odd quote from government stooges like Chief Social Worker Isabelle Trowler who once said, “The vast majority of decisions taken to initiate care proceedings were certainly reasonable. The question is whether or not they were always necessary” (an uninformed and deeply offensive comment considering the high stakes in care proceedings), it’s an interesting piece of research.

These were the key findings from the report:

On pre-proceedings and the court experience

Most parents felt that they had not received enough help during pre-proceedings.

• Most parents felt the court treated them with a lack of respect and understanding of their mental health, substance misuse and domestic abuse problems. It made it harder for parents to present their situation and circumstances effectively.

• Some parents from ethnic minorities reported a lack of cultural sensitivity.

• Parents found judges and their legal representatives the most helpful, and social workers the least helpful professionals during proceedings. The relationship between the local authority and parent had improved by the time the final order was made in most cases.

• Parents wanted clearer explanations of the court process with better signposting to the next steps.

• Some parents did not understand why they were not allowed to work or remain in education during the proceedings when their child was not living at home. They worried it would push them into poverty and harm their job prospects.

• A few parents, with previous experience of ordinary care proceedings, had their case heard in a Family Drug and Alcohol Court (FDAC). They felt that FDAC offered a better approach.

• Parents welcomed both the making of a supervision order and care order at home.It meant they could be a family again.

On the implementation of the supervision order

Parents had mixed views on how helpful the supervision order had been. For some it had provided all the support and services they needed. For a few, it had not helped or been supportive. The largest group of parents had a mixed experience. Nearly all parents felt that the supervision order could work better.

• The relationship between parents and the social workers was a key determinant of their experience of the supervision order. Trust was a critical issue. Providing guidance, practical help, being knowledgeable about the issues parents were dealing with, and fighting their corner were equally important.

• Most parents praised children’s nurseries, schools and health visitors for supporting them and arranging services for their children.

• Multi-agency working was uncommon, but it was considered very useful when it did happen.

• Parents who had experienced domestic abuse reported that support from children’s services was limited to referral to courses on co-parenting and the Freedom Project.

• The engagement of the wider family had sometimes been identified in the care plan, but family group conferences were rare. Sometimes relatives stepped in to help parents when children’s services had under-delivered.

• Many parents felt that the support for their family outlined in the care plan, or a support need that emerged during the period of the supervision order, was not delivered.

• The framework for delivering and ending the supervision order was very variable. Parents wanted to see a formal review introduced at nine months and some thought reviews should begin much earlier.

• They advised other parents to see the supervision order as an opportunity and not to be afraid to ask for support and services they needed.

On implementation of the care order at home

Most parents felt that their family had been helped by the care order at home.

• Parents with experience of both supervision orders and care orders at home preferred care orders at home because they:
o made parents feel safe and confident that the order would be delivered
because of the legal requirements
o provided a consistent delivery framework
o were more likely to deliver support and services.

• Some parents found the care order at home placed restrictions on the family which they did not always understand. They could prevent families developing social relationships and moving on with their lives.

• Contact arrangements were singled out as a particularly difficult area.

• Parents felt motivated when discharge was planned early so they could move on with their lives.

• The parents’ relationship with the social worker was extremely important. Most parents had a positive relationship with the social worker. Trust was a key factor.

Parents also offered recommendations which were included in the research:

Listen to parents and provide more support and collaboration in pre-proceedings, with clear directions, advice, and be specific about expectations and timescales.

2. Involve an ‘independent parent supporter’ to provide legal, emotional, and practical support to the parent from pre-proceedings to the end of the order.
3. Ensure continuity of personnel, especially between pre-proceedings and care proceedings.
4. Care proceedings need to be more humane and more understandable, with information leaflets written from the parents’ perspective.
5. Use the 26 weeks’ timeframe more flexibly to increase opportunities for families to stay together or be reunited.
6. Retain but revamp the supervision order to provide more consistency, support, intensive services for parents, and a fully independent reviewing process.
7. Retain the care order at home with a set end point.
8. Introduce an order to sit between the supervision order and care order at home.
9. Overhaul the response to domestic abuse in the child protection and family justice system to include single and multi-disciplinary training for child protection and family justice personnel, more services and a change of culture in the courts and children’s services to avoid the risk of re-victimisation.

You can access the research in full here.

Families who would like to know more about the law and procedures that must be followed for children subject to care orders who are placed at home, can access this information from Knowsley’s council’s page.

The featured image for April on our banner is by Paul Brian Tovey, an adult adoptee who was abused by his adoptive parents as a child.

Paul now campaigns for adoptees to have the legal right to revert back to their birth identities.

Researching Reform has been sharing his work for several months and he is, with affection, our “artist in residence.”

Paul’s paintings reflect his experiences as an adoptee including the loss of identity he suffered as a result of being forcibly adopted.

With our ongoing and deep thanks to Paul for allowing us to feature his work and his enormous talent on Researching Reform.