This week’s story highlights the often disorganised and emotional responses to vulnerable families, which can lead to professionals losing sight of the real issues in a case and instead choosing to take a defensive stance to protect their local authority’s decisions, even when they are poor ones. Crucially, this kind of behaviour deeply affects the Voice Of The Child, whose wishes and feelings go unheard, causing them significant emotional harm.

1. Could you give a brief summary of the facts of your case?

I’m a single father who before his son was taken into care was the sole and primary carer. It was incredibly difficult juggling work and parenting on my own and on a couple of occasions I was forced to leave my nine year old son in the house on his own for a few hours. The incidents were reported to the police and I was charged with child neglect, although the charge was later dropped. Nevertheless my son was taken into care. He was routinely pin ponged backwards and forwards from my care to state care and then foster care – initially returned to me because I protested relentlessly but found himself back in care because I refused to let the poor handling of our case go. I chose to seek compensation for my son’s removal and shortly after that, the council involved changed its mind about revoking the care order. I’m still fighting to get my son back.

2. What went wrong in your  case?

The evidence used to take my son into care was contradictory and based on factual errors. For example, a video of police raiding my home was used as evidence that my home was in disarray, but the video does not show a badly kept home. This was confirmed by one of the judges in the case, who said the video was completely at odds with the police report. I later received an apology from the CPS. This, however, didn’t stop the situation. I was also diagnosed with a mental health disorder linked to my culture and religion because I dared to complain about our treatment, which I found irrational and offensive. Three other, independent doctors also examined me and found no evidence of any mental health disorder. My son also desperately wanted to stay in my care, but his wishes and feelings were continuously ignored. After some time in foster care, he was a changed person. He began to show signs of aggression and depression after he became addicted to a violent video game, which I was blamed for even though he was not in my care. I also found the more I complained, the more our contact was reduced. I now only see my son 4 times a year.

3. What happened after you alerted the professionals to the errors?

They refused to look at the evidence properly. Anything I said which flew in the face of their decisions or perceptions was ignored and treated as a hostile act. It’s an unnaturally defensive environment which seems to focus on the best interests of the agencies, rather than the child.

4. How do you feel the errors were dealt with?

They weren’t, except to say that they were met with deep resistance.

5. What do you think could have been done differently?

I could have been offered some support as a single, working parent. Someone could have helped me find a way to juggle my work with my parenting responsibilities. Instead I was treated like I was subhuman, and below normal levels of intelligence – I’m a classically trained musician, who speaks several languages.

6. What message would you like to pass on to the child welfare system?

I think the system needs to bin ‘emotional harm’ and ‘future emotional harm’ as the criteria used to take children into care and that only in exceptional circumstances, and only through the criminal courts, should the state have the power to remove children from parents. I would also like to see the police receive greater funding to deal with serious crimes against children rather than allowing social services to be involved in the first instance. Social workers should be directed by the police in an investigation. All the money this would save could be spent on helping families and support parents to find work. I would like to see a bonus system in place for social workers too, every time a social worker manages to keep a family together.

Our next story looks at what happens when councils ignore expert evidence encouraging the use of support services and choose to file care orders instead.

1. Could you give a brief summary of the facts of your case?

Our four children were removed from our care without our consent, all through forced adoptions. The two eldest were placed with family and our two youngest were adopted by strangers. The orders were made using the ‘risk of emotional harm’ threshold, however my wife’s lawyer felt strongly that the criteria had not been met. I was unrepresented because I could not afford a lawyer.

Our family became known to social services because my wife pushed one of our children’s car seats a little too aggressively, which resulted in her being placed on the child protection register. She was then removed from the register a year later and was never placed on it again. We both have medical conditions which can be addressed with medication. Both my wife and I have argued in front of the children at times but we have never gotten physical with each other. Like most parents, when we get tired we can shout at the children too, however this behaviour was viewed in a completely different light by social services.

Despite several assessments which confirmed that my wife and I could look after our children with support from professionals, we never felt supported or listened to. When I began to get upset about losing my two eldest daughters, professionals in the case just assumed the behaviour was proof that I couldn’t parent, and instead of offering me help to cope with the loss, they simply penalised me for my pain, and assumed the anger was “part of a pattern,” which professionals ended up taking personally and then simply pushed on with the adoptions out of what felt like spite. It was all very primitive.

Incidents included a social worker assaulting my daughter, another social worker blocking my way when trying to stop the assault, being routinely threatened with prison if I didn’t agree to various suggestions, and being told my children would simply vanish if I was obstructive.

2. What went wrong in your case?

Our solicitors during the first set of hearings didn’t seem to be bothered, and just weren’t interested in pursuing the truth. Most of the judges we came across in subsequent hearings seemed preoccupied with internal politics which appeared to affect the way they processed our case. We got the feeling there was collusion between the professionals and a lot things had been decided before the hearings actually took place. A strange cultural quirk I also noticed was that judges seemed to accept whatever social services told them without questioning the quality of the reports or evidence produced. When it came down to our word against theirs, we didn’t stand a chance.

Bizarrely, when we did eventually get a good lawyer who was fighting our corner, the council then threatened to sue her and her firm. It was like watching a soap opera.

3. What happened after you alerted the professionals to the errors?

Nothing. No one seemed to be able to correct the mistakes that had been made in the paper work. The most distressing aspect of the case was the taking out of an Emergency Protection Order for my son. A prominent politician at the time was so concerned by the EPO in our case that he even raised it in Parliament, where he questioned the legal validity of its use in our case both under Family Law and Human Rights Law.

4. How do you feel the errors were dealt with?

They were never dealt with and no one has been held to account for the incredibly poor way our case was handled.

5. What do you think could have been done differently?

I think adoption targets have a lot to answer for. They blind social workers to their reason for being, which is to first and foremost offer families support and guidance. Not remove children from loving parents who if you treat with respect and kindness would be only too glad to work with them.

6. What message would you like to pass on to the child welfare system?

The system can’t carry on like this, it needs to improve drastically. If it doesn’t, its days are definitely numbered.

If you would like to share your story, get in touch by leaving a comment below or emailing Researching Reform at contactnphillips at gmail dot com. 

Our first story in this series looks at what happens when an adoption is badly filed.

1. Could you give a brief summary of the facts of your case? 

I went through adoption proceedings for one of my children. It was not a voluntary adoption, it was forced. 

2. What went wrong in your  case? 

There were serious administrative failings in our case, including the wrong adoption year and name being written on the adoption certificate as well as queries over the authenticity of the certificate itself, which led me to wonder whether the adoption had gone through at all. I also felt as if the evidence I produced was either ignored or dismissed and all the positive reports about me as an excellent mother were never acknowledged with a view to looking at potential options for support. Instead, adoption seemed like the end goal from the beginning.

3. What happened after you alerted the professionals to the errors?

When I complained to the Information Commissioner’s Office that the wrong adoption year had been applied, they accepted my complaint and wrote to my council. The council gave an unsatisfactory response which included unfounded comments about myself and the nature of the case.

4. How do you feel the errors were dealt with? 

Pretty badly.  Despite the error on the adoption certificate, which was hugely traumatic given that it suggested the adoption had happened years before the event took place, there has been no compensation or no suggestion of compensation. The errors spread across my family court judgments though acknowledged, were never put right, so the documentation is filled with errors making it almost impossible for me to get any kind of legal relief. As a litigant in person I also felt very let down by the court, no one really helped me understand what I needed to submit for hearings or how these things should be done. If I had had some help, maybe a lot of errors could have been avoided and my case would not still be going 10 years on.

5. What do you think could have been done differently? 

I think the professionals in the case should have been more careful about the administration of the adoption process and more mindful of the fact that I did not have legal representation, through no fault of my own. I also felt they did not listen to my son and give his wishes and feelings the weight they deserved or take into account my ability to care for my son.

6. What message would you like to pass on to the child welfare system?

My message to the child welfare system would be to ensure regular checks are done on their written records they hold. In my case, this led to my child’s identity being interfered with, which is a hugely serious thing and definitely not in any child’s best interest.

The Researching Reform blog often hosts real stories from inside the family justice system, whether they are families’ experiences or child protection professionals’, however we have started to receive an unusually high amount of requests to share stories, so we’re offering families, and anyone else who would like it, an open platform to amplify their voices.

Your Story is a series featuring family court experiences which need to be heard, either due to alleged miscarriages of justice or a desire to alert the public and policy makers to a specific problem inside the courts.

Our first story will be published tomorrow, and is about a forced adoption gone wrong, which features some remarkable errors.

All the stories we add are fact checked by us, and will be published without names and information which could lead to identification of the parties where reporting and legal restrictions apply.

We will ask the same questions for each interview. You can see them below to get a feel for what we will be sharing:

1. Could you give a brief summary of the facts of your case? 

2. What went wrong in your  case? 

3. What happened after you alerted the professionals to the errors?

4. How do you feel the errors were dealt with? 

5. What do you think could have been done differently? 

6. What message would you like to pass on to the child welfare system?

If you would like to share your story, please get in touch by posting below, or email us at contactnphillips at gmail dot com.