The Children and Families Truth Commission‘s latest survey about contact between children in care and their birth families has now gathered 255 submissions since it launched. The survey has remained open as part of an ongoing effort to reach as many affected children and their families as possible.
The commission would like to say a very big thank you to the families who have taken the time to fill out this survey, and we remain hopeful that we can match the more than 300 responses our first survey received, thanks to your generosity and kindness.
The commission would also like to thank everyone who shared the survey and spread the word, the team is so grateful.
The Commission had announced an October 31 deadline for the survey but an ongoing weekly increase in submissions led the Commission to keep the survey open beyond the closing date.
The survey will remain open for at least one more month.
What is the survey about?
The survey asks parents about their experiences of contact with their children once they were taken into care, and whether they felt their family’s human rights were supported in relation to child contact.
We decided to produce this survey as an additional piece of research connected to our first survey, which we believe is the first ever human rights-focused survey for children and families going through Britain’s child protection system.
An oversight on our part meant that we did not include what we feel are important questions about child contact with birth parents during child protection proceedings.
What happened to the first survey?
Our first survey is now closed. Once we receive responses to this latest survey, we will produce a joint report with findings from both of the surveys.
We would be so grateful for your support in filling out this second questionnaire, if you feel you are happy to do so.
Like the first survey, we have created the second survey so that we can better understand which human rights are being breached inside the system, and how.
We warmly invite you to complete the survey if you are a child or child-protection experienced parent or relative. The more responses we get, the more we can understand the problems.
Please fill this survey out if you can, and share it with others who may want to complete it, too.
How can I access the second survey and what if I have questions?
If you have any questions about, or problems with, the survey, you are very welcome to email the Commission at truthcommissionuk@gmail.com
You can access the survey here: https://qualtricsxm43cmb2m6b.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6Q1eaGfk9cc9C2a
The Commission would also like to extend its deepest thanks to Dr Jeri Damman, for her assistance in formatting this survey, her guidance on language and terminology, and for providing us with the text in the introduction about confidentiality and anonymity.
Dr Damman is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Social Work and Social Care at the University of Sussex, who “specialises in how child welfare systems seek to engage with and involve birth parents.” Her research “addresses how meaningful participatory practices with birth parents at multiple levels in the child welfare system contribute to service improvements or reform, and ultimately positive child, parent, and family outcomes.”
dianaisitt said:
I completed this survey but I missed the first survey is that still running as our human rights were hugely violated as a family but when you want to appeal apart from going through relentless red tape you then find you don’t have the right to appeal and if you do appeal it will get refused and then you don’t get legal aid the whole Court system is Up The Creek babies are getting taken away illegally on the basis of crystal ball technique. For example they say what if in the future you met another man who wasn’t very nice to you or committed domestic violence…. that could actually happen to anybody. If a family member goes forward to have the child that has already got custody of one child because the birth mother was 17 even though she is now 27 they will say oh but you’ve had one child not live with you so therefore we are taking this child. When she found out she was pregnant and had kicked her ex out permanently and he had been incarcerated at Her Majesty’s pleasure social services turned up to tell her they had found adopted parents for her unborn fetus which was a huge shock then they don’t let relatives be party to proceedings until the 11th hour then use the excuses that they are either working can’t afford the child or because they’re not working then they use age… which I thought was discrimination in fact the entire sentence on the first line of their statement said I was a plain overweight middle aged single parent…. how does that comment even get through court!
When I got custody of the first child they use the excuse that I was working full-time and I had to leave my job in order to have her so I did which meant I had to sell my house and hand back the keys of my new car, because family is priority. I had to go through extended DBS checks psychological checks and be assessed by the fostering and adoption panel. So I was shocked when the Neighboring local authority 10 years later when she got pregnant decided to use the complete opposite they said I wasn’t working so I couldn’t afford him they refused to do a support plan because they had limited funds they said that he had already been earmarked for somebody else when she was pregnant and they were very cross with me for trying to put my name forward because it’s slowed down the process. When I questioned some of the things they were doing they then wrote that I was challenging and they could not work with me when in reality if I didn’t challenge them nobody else would because they were breaking the law and these people are supposed to be professionals but unfortunately they have their own targets biases and perceptions that influence their decision making they are not objective and when I said but I am his grandmother and I have been approved at the Neighboring local authority fostering and adoption panel I got told by this Russian social worker that none of that mattered even though I had custody of his sister that did not matter they were not going to keep siblings together he had been promised to 2 gay men in Oxford and that my assessments and approval at a fostering and adoption panel in my LA was irrelevant. They had decided from day one that nobody else was gonna have him apart from this adopted couple. It was a waste of time going to court. My barrister said there’s no way I wouldn’t be able to have him then afterwards he said that was a totally unfair trial and needs appeal but I wasn’t allowed to appeal how is that for justice they said they don’t place children with adopters at Christmas but they placed him with these adopters just before Christmas they did no life story work so he will have absolutely no idea on anybody in his family or any health issues and we were seeing him at a contact center until he was about 20 months so he was already talking calling me [edited] calling his sister [edited] and crying out for his Mummy when they bundled him away. His mum was a single parent I was a single grandparent. They thought they had the right to take our child even though health visitor GP everybody said she was an excellent parent as well it was just two specific social workers that don’t work though anymore they were agency workers. They should have been reported to the social work ombudsman when I raised a complaint it was totally ignored they said that I had missed the deadline for complaining. They refuse to let my local authority go to court in my defense because local authorities are not allowed to go against other local authorities there’s politics involved… it’s these processes That Ruin lives. It should be wholly independent. I was not allowed to bring in an independent social worker that my barrister had found I was not allowed to bring in experts for special needs as my granddaughter has special needs but they thought it was okay to tell me that I was talking rubbish and lying about special needs she was officially diagnosed four months after the final hearing. No one was invited to the adoption here in apparently the local authority didn’t even know it had taken place and I thought the birth mother had to be there in case she wanted to appeal…. that’s what it says in law but in reality they don’t tell you when it is they tell you afterwards that it’s already taken place and it’s too late. Then we have the threshold criteria which is quite clear however it is ignored by social workers anything can be used as significant harm. My granddaughter was getting into school a little bit late on occasion and they tried to say that her attendance was low when in reality it was about punctuality which is not significant harm but they used it as that, because it doesn’t matter what you say they will clutch at straws twist everything to get that baby if they want it and there’s absolutely nothing you can do to get that child back out of foster care my daughter’s son got taken from the hospital illegally by social workers and the hospital was complicit because they didn’t know any different they also just trust the social workers. The judge said open Direct contact but the local authority lost him for two years they didn’t know where he was when they located him we had missed two years contact and the adopters did not want open Direct contact even though it benefits the child which has now been proven they reluctantly agreed to letterbox contact only for the mum but have also not stuck to the arrangement and what has happened is they have written twice and he is now eight years old we don’t even have a photo of him after the age of 22 months. This is theft by the state not that dissimilar to when they were taking babies away from single parents in the 50s 60s and 70s they are doing it still but in a different way and it totally destroyed our family this was my first grandson my granddaughter lost a brother which destroyed her too, she kept asking why he couldn’t come and live with us and I had no answer because he could easily have come and live with us he could easily have stayed with his mother she was on her own as a single parent it was as though they had to have him they had promised him to a rich gay couple and by hook or by crook that’s where he was gonna go. Thank you for reading x
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Natasha said:
Thank you for your comment, it’s incredibly courageous of you to share your experience and I’m so sorry you and your family have been through so much. Thank you for completing the survey, on behalf of everyone at the Commission it’s much appreciated. I’m afraid the first survey is now closed, but we will be holding other events and launching other projects which we will share on Researching Reform if you want to take part in those. With love, Natasha xxxxx
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