Welcome to another week.

More than 1,200 parents in Minnesota, America, have launched a class action to shut down social services in the state, accusing it of gross negligence and law breaking. The parents are also calling on the US government to make lying, fabricating evidence and ignoring the law whilst carrying out social work, a punishable offence.

A local media outlet spoke with a mother who had joined the class action, and reported that:

“After taking her ten-month old son to the hospital for a cough, doctors said he was stable, though they recommended she should stay. She chose to go home because, as she told the outlet, “After waiting, I had asked to leave because I wanted to put my kids to bed and I had my three-year-old with me.”

“I asked if there was anything else that had to be done,” she said. “They said ‘No, there was no other testing or anything that needed to be done.’”

But two days later, police showed up at her home to take him back to the doctor, and there was already a foster family lined up to take him. “She checked him out, all his vitals were stable,” she said. “They already had a foster parent in the room, in the room to remove my son before they ever proved … before they ever proved there was an emergency situation.”

He has been in foster care for over a week. Weber was supposed to get [her son] back on Tuesday, but the judge postponed the case because no county attorney could make it to court.

“I need to share my story and if I need to share it a hundred times, a thousand times – I will,” she told KMSP.”

Our question this week then, is just this: should the UK government make lying and fabricating evidence whilst doing social work a crime?

Many thanks to Maggie Tuttle for sharing this news item with us.

Welcome to another week.

The European Court of Justice has just ruled that EU law does not limit child contact rights solely to parents, but that it also includes grandparents.

The case, which was brought by a Bulgarian woman wanting to see her grandson, confirms that rights of access refer not only to those conferred on parents in relation to their child, but also includes other people who are considered to be important to the child.

As the UK is bound by EU law for the time being, this ruling will have a significant impact on our Family Court and the way it interprets contact.

Our question this week then, is just this: would you like the President of the Family Division to comment on this recent ruling? 

Many thanks to Maggie for alerting us to this case.

Welcome to another, slightly shorter, week.

A petition on Change.Org asking Prime Minister Theresa May to stop children being abused through the Family Court process, has gathered almost 77,000 signatures.

The petition anonymously details a case where two children were taken by force in the middle of the night, from their mother’s home, by the police, and forced to live against their wishes with their father. It alleges that the children have tried repeatedly to tell Cafcass that they wish to stay with their mother and have no contact with their father, however the petition suggests that Cafcass are not listening to the children, and that the father has used his financial advantage to hire specialist lawyers to remove the children from their mother’s care, as part of an ongoing series of controlling behaviours the petition alleges he has been exerting over the mother for some time.

The view outlined by the petition is that despite policy, guidelines, and legislation, which make it clear that the family courts should not be used to facilitate abusive behaviour or to place children in more situations where they could be emotionally or physically harmed, little in reality is being done to stop these practices. It also highlights the ongoing persecution parents face if they try to challenge the system’s decision making, or amplify the voices of their children if contrary to the court’s interpretation, or lack of interest in those voices.

As we cannot verify the contents of the case, this week’s question is not about the legitimacy of the claims themselves. Instead, we are asking you this: do you think the family courts and Cafcass have improved the way they listen to children?

Very many thanks to Evie, for alerting us to this petition.

Welcome to another week.

As the government gets set to build a working model around best practice in social work, the question being asked by the Department Fo Education now, is what does best practice look like?

So our question this week, is just that: what examples of best practice would you like to see implemented nationwide?

Welcome to another week.

A recent article in Community Care questions the jargon used in child protection, calling it divisive, demeaning and devoid of feeling. The piece comes after Researching Reform featured findings from Scotland’s care system review which recommended that the language used by social workers should be overhauled to make it less alienating for children in care. This site invited readers to consider whether the language needed to be reviewed in England and Wales, as well.

The use of corporate style language inside the care system is something we have written extensively about. In 2015 we wrote a piece for Lexis Nexis on what we felt was unhelpful and unnecessarily cold language inside the family justice system, affecting not only children in care homes, but families and litigants in person too.

Our question this week then, is just this: what words or phrases currently used inside the child protection sector do you dislike?

Welcome to another, slightly shorter, week.

A politician has accused the government of failing to prevent children in care from being placed huge distances away from their natural homes. The government promised to halt the practice in 2012 after it emerged that the policy was putting vulnerable children in danger of being exploited.

Labour MP Ann Coffey has said that she will use a Commons debate to say a “sent-away generation” is at risk of falling prey to paedophiles and drugs gangs.

The government’s duty of care towards looked after children has become an important topic in the last few years. A steady rise in cases against the state, which has led to children who have been abused in state and foster care suing successfully for harm they suffered whilst placed in those homes, means that the government is much less able to deny its legal obligations in relation to these children. A recent case which confirmed that foster children can now sue councils for abuse they suffered whilst in their care makes those obligations all the more obvious.

The sheer scale of non recent and recent abuse has also left the government reeling, and looking to find ways to stem payouts, such as offering restitution schemes with financial caps on the compensation offered and using the courts – which should never be politically connected – to limit instances in which claims can be made. 

Our question this week, then, is just this: do you think the government’s duty of care to looked after children extends to placement policies which could lead to child exploitation and abuse?

Welcome to another week.

An official review into the care system in Scotland has concluded that children in care are being bullied because they are using social work jargon they are picking up from their case workers. The review calls on the government to use language that makes sense to children and doesn’t lead to them being singled out and bullied.

An article on the findings, published in The Herald Scotland, tells us:

“”Children in care talk about being “LAC kids” (looked after child), discuss their “siblings” rather than their brothers and sisters and often live in a “unit” rather than a home”, said Fiona Duncan, chair of the Independent Review of Scotland’s Care System….

Duncan Dunlop, chief executive of the advocacy charity for care experienced young people Who Cares? Scotland (WCS), backed the findings.

“This definitely leads to bullying,” he said. “Workers just don’t think.”

Fiona Duncan is now calling for services such as health, education and social work to use language that children feel comfortable with.

Our question this week then, is just this: do you think England and Wales should also look at changing the way its social workers speak to children in care about their lives? 

Welcome to another week.

Sir Ernest Ryder, the Senior President of Tribunals, who is also a judge in the Court of Appeal, gave a speech last week, in which he said that the family courts’ focus must be on safeguarding children’s best interests, and that better training was needed for judges.

Ryder also questioned the system’s current adversarial approach, which has historically led to a shift in focus away from children’s needs, and more on individual performances of lawyers representing parties. On this point, he observed that an adversarial approach ‘is challenged in the context of family justice with its more inquisitorial process, where the focus must be, on ‘safeguarding children by securing their best interests’.

Whilst Ryder notes that family courts are increasingly trying to use inquisitorial avenues to process cases, the Family Court still remains largely adversarial, from the processes used, to the working, day-to-day culture inside the courts. The discussion about these two models though, is not new.

Researching Reform started the debate around whether the family courts should remain adversarial, or switch to an inquisitorial model in 2010, where we attempted to offer a balanced view of both. The two systems are not always mutually exclusive, with neither being completely immune to bias, error, or abuse of power. Both models can also share similar characteristics, and unsurprisingly, a more inquisitorial model would hand judges far greater powers than they have at present, which may explain judicial support for an inquisitorial system.

Our question this week, then, is just this: would you like to see the Family Court move away from an adversarial system, to an inquisitorial one? 

Welcome to another week.

April is always Child Abuse Prevention Month here at Researching Reform, and this year, we are going to share our Top Ten ‘How To’s’ which focus on stopping abuse before it starts.

1. Economics: A functional society that wants to reduce incidents of child abuse has to be one where children get the best possible start in life. It’s not a coincidence that most ‘at risk’ children are vulnerable children long before they’re victims of abuse.
2. Education: The vast majority of child abuse happens within a home setting, carried out at the hands of relatives or family friends. Raising awareness around the different types of abuse, why they occur and what can be done to stop these abuses is crucial.
3. Excellence in training: The social work sector needs to start raising the bar. One of our original Bug Bears, social work courses and training sessions continue to work to a standard the sector calls the ‘good enough’ principle. Much of day to day practice though, is nowhere near good enough. Either revise the definition and content of the courses to ensure that good enough is good enough, or strive for something far more exciting: the best practice standard. If the sector gets this right, the label really won’t matter, but the results will matter to vulnerable children everywhere. (It’s also the only way this sector can rebuild its reputation. Hey, if it was easy, everybody would be doing it).
4. Everybody Counts: From agencies working with each other and not against each other, to birth parents playing an inclusive role in an adopted child’s life wherever possible, the idea that everybody counts in the child protection ecosystem, is a huge one. If we don’t acknowledge that every individual has something important to offer, and go back and constantly revise those roles to ensure they’re working in the best interests of every child, the system will keep on failing.
5. Ethical Practice: The system can’t ignore the fact that it is suffering under the weight of unethical behaviours and routine law breaking by professionals working in it. We have to take stock of, and revise those functions, before we can put an end to what’s become blatant defiance of policy and legislation designed to protect vulnerable children in the first place.
6. Experts: As a minimum, the government should pass legislation that requires every practicing social worker to register with an independent regulatory body. All experts working with the family courts should also be vetted by an independent organisation tasked with checking backgrounds, qualifications and practice history.
7. Explain Everything: Doctors and surgeons don’t expect their patients to speak the language of medicine when they advise or operate on them, and vulnerable families should not be expected to understand legalease, or be shut out from life changing decisions which affect them if they don’t. It’s time the family justice system set everything down in plain English.
8. Equality: vulnerable families should be treated with the respect and dignity that everyone else inside the system expects to receive. We are all here to support these families, not the other way around.
9. Evidence: A proper system for gathering evidence, filing it and ensuring that decisions are only made off the back of genuine, high quality data has to be implemented. A social worker spending 5 minutes with a child and then writing a report which is designed to send that child into care should never be allowed. We have the scientific tools at our disposal to get some truly powerful insights into what children really need, let’s use them.
10. Efficiency: managers of every department should be required to look at their department’s working processes to see what works and what doesn’t, with the sole aim of ensuring that vulnerable children are given the time and support they need. If that form you’re being asked to fill in is completely pointless and taking up time that could be spent talking to a vulnerable child and being there for them, flag it up. The more people who join together to speak up, the more of a difference you can make.

Our question this week then, is just this: what would be on your list? 

Welcome to your week.

In an article for The Express yesterday, Peter Saunders, founder of the National Association of People Abused In Childhood (NAPAC), has lashed out at the Church for failing to properly address child abuse within its churches and internal management structures.

Saunders, who was abused himself by two Catholic priests, also points out that child abusers are not always male, and that more needs to be done to raise awareness around this issue, as well as make it easier for male victims to come forward.

Victims of child abuse often find it very hard to open up about their experiences and access support, and this can sometimes be even more difficult for men who have been abused by women.

Our question this week, then, is just this: how would you help male victims of child abuse to come forward and find the help and support they need?