03 Friday Jan 2020
Posted in News, Researching Reform
The child welfare items that should be right on your radar:
02 Thursday Jan 2020
Posted in event, Researching Reform, social work
A government-funded social work teaching body is launching an initiative to improve child protection in England and Wales, by including parents with experience of the child protection system.
The project will hold its official launch in Birmingham next month, at an event which it hopes will attract families who have been, or are currently inside the care system.
The Social Work Teaching Partnership West Midlands (SWTP) has created what it calls a “Parent Partnership Programme” which aims to develop “a more supportive, collective and compassionate approach to child protection”, according to the event’s invitation page.
The event will act as the official launch for the scheme, and will feature the experiences of professionals working with parents who have been in the care system in the United States, information on how parent partnership can reduce the need for children to be in care, as well as develop better support for families, and how to foster better cooperation between parents and social workers.
The invitation says that some of the speakers at the event will include parents who have experienced the child protection system. Additional speakers confirmed are Professor Andy Bilson, a spokesperson from ATD Fourth World, and members of the Camden Family Group Conferencing and Southwark Parents Panel.
The event will feature speeches, interactive workshops and a decision making panel.
The organisers are actively encouraging families to attend this event, as well as social work managers and practitioners, with a view to developing the parent partnership scheme further once the launch has been held.
The Social Work Teaching Partnership West Midlands is one of 23 accredited social work teaching bodies funded by the Department for Education to raise the level of education and training for social work students.
The 23 partnerships incorporate 113 councils, 54 Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and 32 private, voluntary and independent (PVI) partners.
SWTP West Midlands is made up of local authorities, children’s trusts, NHS trusts and universities.
The Partnership also has a newsletter it sends out, which can be subscribed to through Coventry City Council’s E Mail Alerts Service.
Teaching Partnerships were set up in 2014 to improve social work education, and an evaluation of their impact is set to be published by the Department of Education in March 2020.
An interim report was published in July 2019, which found that while cooperation between social workers and academics had improved in some cases, the sector continued to face ongoing challenges.
The scheme’s launch takes place on Tuesday, February 25 in Birmingham’s Old Library, from 10am – 4pm.
You can access the invitation and register to attend here.
01 Wednesday Jan 2020
Posted in Researching Reform, The Buzz
Welcome to another year.
These are the latest child welfare items that should be right on your radar:
31 Tuesday Dec 2019
Posted in Inquiry, Researching Reform
High profile child welfare professionals in Britain have called on Education Minister Gavin Williamson, to launch a government review into the children’s care system in England and Wales.
The review would be the widest in scope that England and Wales have ever seen, and would allow for an investigation into the use of forced, or non-consensual adoption, which is currently only used by a small number of countries around the world.
The inquiry also hopes to emphasise the voices of children and families who have experienced the care system.
The call comes after the Conservatives promised to review the care system in its election manifesto this year.
The letter, which was authored by John Radoux, a child psychotherapeutic counsellor, has already been signed by 60 people, including the CEO of Children England Kathy Evans, Article 39’s Director Carolyn Willow, the Chair of Nagalro Sukhchandan P Kaur, and Brigid Featherstone, and asks the government to ensure that the review meets six targets:
The letter outlines the current problems inside children’s social care, acknowledges past reviews, as well as arguing for the need to investigate the challenges in a more comprehensive way, and asks the government to help reform the system so that it works in the best interests of the children it is meant to support.
Here is an extract from the letter:
“The signatories of this letter are individuals with personal or professional experience of children’s social care – some of us have both. We are writing because we fully support the need for such a review, and want to urge you to be ambitious regarding its scope. As ambitious as we should be for every child in care today, and long into the future.
When the state decides to look after a child, because he or she cannot live with family, it takes on an exceptional responsibility for that child in the most formative years of life. Unfortunately, we have been failing in this responsibility with too many children for too long. Significant concerns that have been highlighted through research, the courts and in the media over recent months, include:
Insufficient, and geographically incoherent, capacity in foster care and children’s homes to meet the needs of increasing numbers of children; rising numbers of children being moved too far from their local areas; children and young people living in unregulated homes; rising care bills contributing to ubiquitous council ‘overspends’ alongside concerns about profit-extraction by private equity companies; insufficient specialist therapeutic care (including secure provision) for very traumatised and/or vulnerable children; disproportionate numbers of children in care and care leavers in custody; children being moved chaotically to different foster and children’s homes multiple times – too often in double digits. These problems, and there are many more in children’s social care, have been known to most of us for years – indeed, experienced as a painful reality by some of us as children.
The unpalatable truth is this: many thousands of children are being harmed by a system intended to protect, nurture and care for them. Harmed by inadequate or inconsistent care, harmed by the lack of stable, ongoing relationships as they are moved around the care system and into adulthood, harmed by the abuse and exploitation they are made vulnerable to. This has to change – we, as a society, must do better.”
You can read, and sign, the letter, here.
Tweet with John Radoux at @JohnRadoux.
30 Monday Dec 2019
Posted in event, Researching Reform
The latest court reform event, which enables child protection professionals to learn more about the modernisation programme for the family courts in England and Wales, invites people to send in questions about the proposed changes.
But the event invite does not extend to service users, whose input is arguably the most important, and says “the session is aimed at local authorities, legal professionals, professional court users (judges and lawyers) and the third sector”, so this site is encouraging families and children to submit questions instead.
The invitation, which doubles up as a registration portal, explains that the webinar will offer insight into the court system’s work modernising the system so far. The session will also provide updates on the latest changes made, which include tests carried out on a new digital process allowing local authorities to make applications for care and supervision orders online.
The new processes were tested at the start of 2019, with a few local authorities and family courts. The invite says the pilots involved working closely with local authorities, CAFCASS/CAFCASS Cymru, the judiciary and “people involved in the family courts”, though it is not clear whether this group includes families and children with family court experience.
During the event, viewers will be able to submit questions and the presenters will then answer a selection of questions in real time. However, questions can also be emailed in advance, to changesomethingthatmatters@justice.gov.uk.
The services that are being tested are set to be rolled out across the whole of England and Wales in the new year.
For anyone unable to watch the webinar on the day, the session will be recorded.
The online event takes place on Thursday January 23, 2020 from 1pm-2pm.
20 Friday Dec 2019
Posted in Researching Reform
We would like to wish you a Merry Christmas, and thank our viewers for taking the time to read our posts, engage with the Researching Reform community and help to shine a light on some of the most important issues of our time.
This is also a period in which we invite you to remember those mothers and fathers who cannot be with their children this festive season, as they are being kept in state care.
In the ten years that we have been assisting families, we have never come across a parent or family member that did not love their child deeply.
If anyone doubts that reality, all you have to do is look at the way parents who lose their children to care behave once those children are gone.
Filled with the most awful pain imaginable, they fight to win their children back. They will tell you that they are prepared to do whatever it takes, but that being treated badly inside the system has made it impossible to engage with the people in charge of taking their children away. They speak calmly, and truthfully, but you have to listen first.
Perhaps the most telling signs of all, are an incredible grace and dignity in the face of their awful truth. Many of these parents go on to campaign for change, to help others going through child protection proceedings, and some even break the rules to show that the rules are broken.
Our thoughts go out to the parents and extended family members whose Christmases will feel empty and cold without their children at home. Please know that you are never alone, and that there are many of us out there, thinking about you and trying to make a change, for the better, with you.
Wishing you all a hopeful New Year,
Researching Reform xxx
19 Thursday Dec 2019
Posted in News, Researching Reform
The latest child welfare items that should be right on your radar:
18 Wednesday Dec 2019
Posted in Judges, Researching Reform
Baroness Brenda Hale, the first woman to become President of the UK’s Supreme Court and one of the architects behind the pivotal Children Act 1989, will retire on 10th January, 2020.
Lady Hale may have risen to the top of the legal hierarchy, but she is remembered by most child rights campaigners as the judge who tried to put children first in court settings and cases involving child welfare issues.
And as the person who pushed the boundaries of family law so that it worked as a practical tool to enable better outcomes for children.
While the Children Act 1989 has its fair share of critics, most notably because it includes the right to remove children from parents without their consent (forced/ non consensual/ involuntary adoption) and because it uses the nebulous test of ‘risk of future harm’ to allow those removals, it is also the first piece of legislation in England and Wales to try to put children at the centre of every child welfare case.
Pioneered by Lady Hale and others who formed an Interdepartmental Working Group including representatives from the DHSS policy makers (Rupert Hughes), legal department (Edwin Moutrie) and social work (Pam Thayer), the Home Office (Bill Jeffrey), and the Lord Chancellor’s Department (Peter M Harris), the Children Act 1989 included key clauses which insisted that children should be the priority in every family law case.
Hale’s compassionate judgments and courageous efforts at applying the law in a way which allowed children to be put first, as well as using those judgments to remind child welfare professionals that children had to be the most important consideration in any case they worked on, earned her a great deal of respect and admiration around the world.
Baroness Hale famously once said that the law had trouble viewing children as real people, in a speech she gave for the Society of Legal Scholars Centenary Lecture, and was often critical of the way the legal system worked, not for the most disadvantaged, but for the wealthy few.
She was passionate about ensuring that children were only removed from their parents in child protection proceedings where absolutely necessary, and spent a great deal of time in the Supreme Court when family law cases came before her, repeating the legal principle that adoptions should always be the method of last resort and not the first, wherever possible.
Researching Reform will be sad to see her leave the Supreme Court, but we hope she will remain active in the fields of family law and child rights, and use her brilliance to help improve the family courts in ways she may not have been able to do so as the country’s most senior judge.
Wishing you luck, Lady Hale, and a wonderful retirement.
You can watch her valedictory this morning at 9.30am in the Supreme Court live here.
A note about the valedictory on the Supreme Court’s website can be read here.
If you’d like to know more about Lady Hale, please type “Hale” in our search bar, and a variety of items should pop up, including past speeches she made, child cases she worked on and more.
17 Tuesday Dec 2019
Posted in Researching Reform, The Buzz
The latest child welfare items that should be right on your radar:
16 Monday Dec 2019
Posted in Human Rights, Researching Reform, social work
Welcome to another week.
The British Association of Social Workers (BASW) has published a human rights handbook to familiarise social workers with the law.
The BASW decided to produce the handbook to coincide with Human Rights Day on 10th December, and it offers a summary of human rights legislation in the UK, how human rights engage with social work in both adult and child cases, and the impact of Brexit on those rights.
While the handbook makes a valiant effort at explaining how austerity and poverty should never be used as justifications to breach families’ human rights, the guide also glosses over important human rights issues within child protection, and seems to offer ways to bypass those rights rather than protect them.
Part 2 of the practice guide begins with a look at the human rights laws applied in social work and section 6.2 offers advice on which rights apply in children and families cases.
A dedicated ‘case example’ page which highlights forced adoption in the UK, called “Dispensing of Parental Consent to Adoption”, refers to the practice of forced adoption as ‘controversial’, which is astounding.
Forced, or non consensual, adoption, is very rarely used by other countries around the world and is considered to be an inhumane and unnecessary practice. An established body of research also bolsters that view.
Forced adoption is no longer seen as controversial by experienced academics, politicians and campaigners in this field. It is seen as a phenomenon which breaches the human rights of children and families without good reason.
Although the section explains the need to choose non consensual adoption as a method of last resort, and also outlines the conditions in which a child can be removed from their parents, the segments dealing with child removal are sparse and don’t paint an honest picture of the real human rights challenges within the practice.
For example, the guidance does not at any point highlight the human rights concerns with the way in which UK social workers currently justify removal, a process which has been seen as an increasingly important human rights issue, while a growing number of children are being returned to their parents by judges in the family courts.
The open admission by the sector that much of the policies and working guidelines are not evidence-based, meaning that social work practice is to a very large extent not backed up by science or data which suggests that doing something a certain way is in fact the right way, poses enormous human rights questions.
Another gaping omission in the practice guide is the use of covert surveillance on social media platforms, by social workers. A spike in child welfare professionals using platforms like Facebook to spy on families and children has been particularly concerning, after a study carried out by Lancaster University confirmed that social workers were breaking the law by accessing users’ personal information.
And the link offered, which should take readers to the BASW’s (very brief) guide on how social workers should use social media in a professional context doesn’t work – you can find the right link to the document here.
Are we being unfair? Take a look at the handbook and tell us what you think.
