Big money to be made in the adoption trade

[Elaine Kirk]

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from the

Shropshire Star

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Nearly 100 children have been forcibly taken away from their parents in Shropshire in the last four years, new figures today revealed.

The release of the information comes following a Freedom of Information request published on www.whatdotheyknow.com The figures, revealed by Shropshire Council, show that between April 1, 2006, and March 31 this year, 95 children were forcibly removed.

Forcible adoption or “placement orders” are orders authorising a local authority to place a child for adoption where there is no parental consent, or where consent is not required.

The consent of a parent or guardian may not be necessary in certain circumstances, such as if the parent or guardian cannot be found or they are incapable of giving their agreement, for example through mental illness. Consent may also not be required if a court is satisfied that the welfare of the child is in danger.

[Elaine Kirk]

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from the

Stourbridge News

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AN ex-Kingswinford and Wallheath councillor is spearheading a campaign involving hundreds of British families who claim their children have been the victims of “forced adoptions.”

Lynn Boleyn has received complaints from six families in the Dudley borough who claim their children have been taken from them despite a lack of evidence that they were at risk of harm or neglect.

So far three of the mothers have joined the nationwide Class Action campaign which is taking the fight to the European Court of Human Rights.

Miss Boleyn, former vice chairman of a select committee on Dudley Council’s children’s services, said she was “totally convinced” the mothers were capable of caring for their offspring.

The three cannot be named to protect the identity of their children, but include a 21-year-old Dudley mum whose two daughters, aged two and three, have been adopted; a 16-year-old Colley Gate teenager whose baby son is being put up for adoption; and a 31-year-old Halesowen mother, whose five daughters are with three different foster carers, the youngest of whom is up for adoption.

They see the Class Action campaign as their best hope of winning their children back and after years of battling against the system, are grateful for the support from the former Liberal Democrat councillor....continued...

[Elaine Kirk]

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statement from the

Victoria Climbie Foundation

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Social Services need to explain their role to prevent families from fleeing

Social Services need to explain their role to prevent families from fleeing
Imagine this scenario if you can: You are parent to a young child. As a result of some relatively obscure event, you and your partner run into conflict with children’s care services who believe that you’ve ‘done something wrong’ with your child. They accuse you of failing to show emotional warmth; or of neglecting to nourish your child because you prefer to feed them the traditional food of your cultural background rather than deep fried chips.
Shocked and surprised at the intervention of the state in your family life, you argue that you love your child and only ever do the best for them. But children’s services insist that they must take your child away for their own safety.
Weeks down the line, your child has been removed from your care and your calls to the social worker are met with abuse and point blank refusals. The limited contact you have with your child are strained, impersonal, and under the eyes of a distrusting stranger. Your parenting skills all come under question, and you feel your worth as a parent drain away.
Sound like a horrible scenario in some parallel universe?
This, unfortunately, is the type of service that some members of the public receive from children’s services in the United Kingdom in 2010.
It may sound like an unlikely scenario, but the Victoria Climbié Foundation (VCF) has dozens of just such examples- where parents find themselves on the receiving end of mind bogglingly cruel treatment.
VCF was formed following the death of eight year old Victoria Climbie ten years ago. Her death was marked by the failure of social services to intervene even though there was enough suspicion that she was at risk. Over the past ten years, we’ve seen similar cases where the authorities have failed to intervene when they should.
But we’ve also seen too many of the reverse: cases where social services seem intent on adopting the harshest possible line towards parents, effectively ignoring the serious impact that their decisions can have on vulnerable families.
As it currently stands, social workers take the lead in planning the forward agenda. They have a massive influence on the direction of proceedings, and their word is often seen as golden by the courts.
Many parents, on the other hand, have simply never had to deal with questions about their child’s safety, and the whole process can be very overwhelming.
It must come as no surprise therefore, that so many parents choose to run away.
Over the past few months, VCF has intervened in cases where parents have fled the UK for the Republic of Ireland, Turkey, and Spain.
Each family told of their absolute terror at the idea of their child being taken away from them and placed into care.That’s why the Victoria Climbie Foundation is calling for a new approach to the way that families and parents are engaged by social workers and within the social services model.
As things stand, too many people simply believe that social services can just come in, take your kids and leave. It is clear that social services are simply not making clear their long term plan for families. It’s no surprise then that families decide to take drastic action and flee the country.
Children’s services have failed to properly explain their role to the public, and that’s what VCF has always been about – getting communities to understand how the system works.
That is why the recently announced governmental review into social services could not have come at a better time.
New Children’s Minister Tim Loughton has been longing to shake up children’s care services. Speaking at the memorial to mark the 10 year anniversary of Victoria’s death, he said:
‘Our top priority is making sure that social workers have the freedom and flexibility to spend more time with vulnerable children and families. We believe that this is at the very heart of the present problems we find in social work. People do not sign up to be social workers so that they can fill in forms on computers and sit behind a desk. Social workers are people people. They are trained to help human beings and that‘s what they should be doing.’
VCF believes that we ought to go even further. Social workers need to not only be freed from bureaucracy in their day to day work, but empowered to participate in proper family engagement, recognising that families can and do often improve when they are properly supported.
A proper and full engagement of families within the child protection system is more humane, can be better managed, and makes perfect sense to all involved. That is the direction in which we need to be heading.

[Elaine Kirk]

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Christopher Booker in the Telegraph

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For once, after all the shocking stories I have reported on the secretive system that allows social workers to seize children from loving parents for no good reason, to send them for adoption, I can at last report a story where a family torn apart for nine years has been reunited.
When Winona Varney, now a pretty 16-year-old, recently fell into the arms of her mother Tracey at Truro railway station, they had not seen each other since she was seven. During that time, she and her 12-year-old sister Daniella have been living unhappily with an adoptive family, who repeatedly told them that their mother was a bad woman who did not love or want them. But when, in June, Winona managed to track her mother down, via Facebook, a short time later the two girls and their mother were again living under the same roof.....continued

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Not dissimilar was the case of Tammy Coulter, taken away from her mother by Derbyshire social workers when she was only seven months old, after an accident left her with a bruised cheek. After time in foster care, she was put out for adoption by a judge who said that, thanks to delays by the social workers, she and her mother would by now be strangers. Only after 17 years did she find her mother again through the website Genes Reunited, and was able to return happily to her birth family.
In 2006, Tammy told a London audience, which included judges, lawyers and Harriet Harman MP: “Finding out you’ve been adopted is one of the worst feelings in the world, because you feel that all of your identity, everything you’ve known about yourself, is a lie.” She said she was speaking out “on behalf of children and parents who have also been through the secrecy of family courts and the injustices that have taken place, and the devastation of one decision that determines the future of a child”.

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Winona is so angry about what has been done to them that she has opened a page on Facebook entitled
“Anti-Social Services Forced Adoption – We Can Help!”,
to join up with other children in the same plight. She pays tribute to the advice she was given by Ian Josephs, the businessman living in the South of France who, through his Forced Adoption website, has helped hundreds of families who have fallen into the clutches of this corrupt and secretive system.

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There are 70+ comments on the article and this one may be useful
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suffolkboy
2 hours ago
If I understand correctly a direct consequence of judgments earlier this year is that it should now be possible for an aggrieved person who has witnessed or suspects perjury in a Family Court, or conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, or has any complaint about the behaviour of an expert witness (and possibly other professionals) to file a crime report at a police station or a complaint with the relevant professional body. Until this year, any attempt to make a report at a police station elicited an oral warning that, should the complainant insist on filing a written crime report, they would be arrested on suspicion of contempt of court for disclosing to the police the events in the courtroom. Most complainants were frightened off by this, but the threat is now lifted.

Once a crime report has been filed, the police have either to investigate it or be prepared to publish their reasons for deciding not to.

It seems bizarre that these steps have to be taken, but self-regulation and normal checks and balances in the UK without recourse to law seem to have disappeared.

[Elaine Kirk]

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Parents' child abuse 'nightmare' in family courts - BBC1 8.30pm 23/08

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A couple suspected of hurting their three-month-old son and who spent nearly two years fighting to clear their names, have won the right to tell the full story of what happened to them after a landmark legal ruling.
It is every parent's nightmare. Your child is badly hurt and you are accused of doing it. But that nightmare became a reality for first-time parents Jake and Victoria Ward, from Cambridgeshire.
Victoria Ward said she would never forget hearing that tests had showed that their son William's lower right leg was broken - an extremely rare injury in a child not yet walking.
"This nightmare seemed like it was completely spiralling out of control. I think having a child with a fracture is bad enough, being accused of something is bad enough and then I think your next worst nightmare is that the accusations are going to grow and grow and grow."
The local authority Cambridgeshire County Council put William on the Child Protection Register when neither parent could explain how the injury occurred.

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How can you celebrate knowing that someone has decided you didn't hurt your child when all along you've known that you didn't hurt your child?
Victoria Ward, William's mother

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In fact, initial tests suggested the infant's arms had been injured too.
The Wards were suspected of abusing their son and when Cambridgeshire County Council applied for a care order, this signalled that their case would be heard in the closed world of the family courts.
Thousands of children have their futures decided in the family courts every year and because of strict rules on what can be reported, often little is revealed about what happens once the court doors are closed.
The Wards were also investigated by the police and were arrested on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm and child cruelty. Jake and Victoria, who both worked for Cambridgeshire County Council, the same local authority that was also investigating them, were suspended from their jobs.
Because neither Jake or Victoria appeared not to fit the profile of child abusers, William was allowed to stay with his parents, but on one condition - he must never be left alone with them. His grandparents moved into the family home and supervised the Wards 24 hours a day.

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[llondel]

I don't think it's mentioned in the programme, and certainly wasn't relevant at the time, but they home educate, so it's got some direct relevance to us all.

[llondel]

An interesting programme. I don't fault the hospital or social services for the initial response, because we've been critical of them for not acting properly in cases such as Ishaq and Baby P. However, good for Jake and Vix for taking on the secrecy of the family courts and winning, because that's the part of the system that really needs scrutiny and should have to justify its decisions.

The irony is that the new legislation mentioned at the end of the programme about allowing journalists into the family courts was contained in the later sections of the CSF Bill.

[Elaine Kirk]

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Wnona whose story is told in this post has started to build her own website Anti-Forced Adoption.
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[Spartacus]

Perhaps this could herald the beginning of the voluntary sector coming under greater public scrutiny.

'CDC has completely abandoned its mandate of poverty reduction in favour of one of wealth creation. It is a travesty.'

Read more:

Certainly the thinking that the NSPCC has become more concerned with corporate growth strategies and revenue generation than prevention of cruelly to children is applicable.

[Elaine Kirk]

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Christopher Booker in the Telegraph

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Child protection: why did this woman lose her children?

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A new case in south London highlights the ongoing scandal in our social services, reports Christopher Booker.
Nine days ago six policemen, three psychiatric workers and three social workers from the local council arrived outside a house in south London, threatening to beat the door down unless they were given entry. Inside were a mother and her two terrified children, aged nine and 11. Once inside, they removed the mother to a psychiatric hospital under the Mental Health Act, and gave the children to her estranged husband, a solicitor, from whom she parted some years ago because she didn’t consider his promiscuous lifestyle compatible with bringing up two young daughters.
What had this mother done to be robbed of her children and incarcerated alongside psychotics who were drugged to the eyeballs? There is no accusation that she has in any way harmed her daughters, who have been frenziedly texting her asking why they can’t be allowed to come home.

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[QUOTE]It became clear to her that they thought she was suffering from a persecution complex. In May, she was called on her mobile by a psychiatrist who asked whether she heard voices. She calmly replied: “The only voice I hear is yours down this telephone.” Last week, she was interviewed in the mental hospital by another psychiatrist. After receiving nothing but sane replies, the baffled expert finally said: “I’ll have to ask the social workers what’s wrong with you.”[/QUOTE]