Happy Newyear to you all, we had a nice and peaceful Christmas although no Christmas dinner Christmas day as both children and myself had swine flu! we did however have our late dinner on the 27th!
Anyone who is a single parent will know this kind of situation is a nightmare and if you are not lucky enough to have friends and family around to help at the time it can be exhausting. This Christmas i was particulary thinking about the less fortunate, being ill is one thing but quite another if you are an ill homeless person, have a disability, life threatening disease or those who are being abused and are in fear or full of sadness (iv been there). I have taught my children to think of others at times where they should consider themselves fortunate to have food, presents,a day out/holiday and a caring safe environment. So this piece today is about people who need help, whether they ask for it, whether they get it and get the right help for the right reasons.
I personally am pleased the UK is rid of the big brother labour government that was hell bent in spending tax payers money,getting Britian into debt with their silly ideas to force the public to conform with more laws and regulations (well over 300 infact since conservatives even the judges are confused). I wont get into politics too much but labour lavished the British public and businesses with money conservatives had worked hard to make Britian’s economy a booming debt free one, obviously this was done because they wanted to keep the votes in! Now the people who voted for them are complaining at conservatives/lib dems that they are having to make cuts! even the current government did not realise how much money labour spent until they got their own in to do the books. Anyway….In particular the labour government gave massive budgets to children’s services departments in a bid to change society and erradicate child abuse/neglect.
The theory was that if they could wipe out child abuse and get these children into foster care and then adopted they could then wash their hands of the children and bring on the next cases to court (bit like recycling really). Firstly society will never wipe out child abuse, there is always someone out there who is going to do it whether it be their own child or someone elses. What actually happened is that Childrens services became more and more brave interferring with family life taking children whose parents were deemed unfit or rather were not perfect, using the at risk of emotional harm card introduced in 2002 gave them much power to do this aswell as the huge amounts of budgets. As we all know under labour if we did not conform to the ‘ideal citizen’ we were punished by way of persecution in a criminal or a family court be it a speed camera,leaving our bins on the street, bike riding on a pavement,late for sending children to school..you get my drift and so social engineering began and society began to divide.
There are two types of outcomes for children on full care orders, those who go onto adoption whom the intention is to have a ‘perfect life’ with parents deemed ‘perfect’ by social services and the adoption agencies (whether they have ever had a child or not ) and those who stay incare because they are not adoptable (usually children over 5). I will go into those groups indepth later on but for now how do these children end up in the care system in the first place? I have to add that i am not aginst adoption but i am against forced adoption where a birth parent does not agree bad parent or not, ‘guardianship’ is more appropriate (more on that soon).
The answer to this varies,
Whistle blowers; some come to the attentionof Children’s services by someone who takes a dislike to a person/family and hell bent on ruining their life by way of government intervention. On the other hand it could also be a member of a family or the public who knows the children and can see there is abuse happening or a strong possibility.
By criminal investigation,offence or conviction
By going to authorities for help (do gooders, jobworths etc..), this could be to the doctors or hospital to seek medical help, confiding in a health visitor or teacher about the state of your family life, approaching Childrens services for help or just a general chat about your needs as a family or yourself.
I have mixed feelings on the multi agency government groups concerning their services to the public, labour spent millions if not billions on creating mass serveillance when it came to state services the public require and pay for. There is a very fine line between needing and requesting a service and it turning into a circus of social workers, paperwork and court proceedings. For example domestic violence crime rates have gone down apparently, is this because of labours big brother heavy handed way of dealing with DV in that people are starting to ‘conform’? (they probably think so) or is it that victims are nolonger requesting for help?
We already know my freedom of information requests to every county council childrens services department in England and Wales have no idea themselves due to the coding of child protection recording how many children they have taken themselves away from victims of domestic violence and adopted out. How disgraceful is that? how is the government who constantly moans and dithers about questioning how they can reduce the amount of children going into care when they cannot even get their own statistics together to even research it?
Any regular readers will already know the in’s and out’s of DV as i have already blogged so lets concentrate on other cases where a family required a service and then suddenly found themselves in amongst the child protection malarky see the case of the websters http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/lawreports/4592069/Adoption-stands-despite-possible-miscarriage-of-justice.html . Imagine if your child fell ill or had an accident which required you to go and see a doctor or worse hospital, then all of a sudden instead of getting your child better and your parenting skills recognised you are then labelled a possible child abuser. What is also shocking is the rate that children’s services seem to be taking perfectly healthy children from disabled parents, the Norah Fry Research Centre showed that 12% of the UK’s 14.1 million paranets are disabled and 40% of those children whom parents are disabled are in care. Where is the support?? why is Britain (or was) giving millions of pounds to other countrys when our own country should hang its head in shame because it cannot simply afford to give the help and assistance to familys where there maybe child protection concerns instead of whipping children away when it actually costs the government more in the long run and creates sadness, bitterness, lack of nurturing and love a birth parent could be giving their child so they grow up to be better people than the ones that tend to leave care at 18 or 21 in some cases.
We have all heard of horrors such as baby p echoed all over Britian with social workers being blamed for failing these children amongst other so professionals..most recent being http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/Suspension–for-social-worker.6689130.jp We hear of these failings of negligence not just in child protection but in everyday cases of hospital admissions,the prison service and plenty going on at the moment regarding the abuse and power of the police over innocent members of the public. So again i will say that there will always be someone somewhere committing abuse and also not doing their job properly even if they tried hard to. We cannot make a perfect world with perfect people but we can try to make the world a better place and convince people to be good.
There are levels of punishment which confuse me within the UK and indeed other countries, for example why does a persistant peadophile offender keep getting locked up and let out? why not just cut his life short? or castrate him? why if a known and proved guilty peadophile gets to live his pathetic life when he has ruined the lives of others over and over again when a law abiding citizen goes for help with their child and gets a life sentence of having their child taken away and adopted against their wishes on a ‘possible risk of’ where there is no criminal charges?
The family court needs to come inline with other countries policies on child protection and the law. If childrens services can prove someone neglected or abused a child then that person should be prosecuted in a criminal court and then i would be satisfied that their child would not be returned. We do this with animals, we prosecute people who abuse animals and remove those animals for good so why can we not going along the same lines in human society? There are some brilliant social workers out there as there are police officers, doctors etc..and we desperately need more with intelligence and common sense to do right by families.
I wish it were all that simple Angela. But what about parents who are shamed across international newspapers for ‘keeping the children in cages and feeding them petfood’ when the allegation was made up by a Social Worker?
Sure, I’ve been exhonerated by the police conducting a 3 month investigtion into over $86m worth of my commercial Hollywood award winning film work. My privacy, flashed around the world on the front page of over 400 news services – the respect I earned for decades, thrown by people with a wish to believe something tat wasn’t true, Even my kids have said over and over they have NEVER been kept in a cage, not even for a second, not even locked in a room, and they have NEVER eaten pet food.
But what now? We go to court every month. We search for ‘significant change’ to our circumstances.
Before ‘care’ we had
- greater than £40,000 a year income.
- our children were home educated and the Judge recognised their high success rate – GREATER than the local authority schools (who incidentally stated that their schools are the worst in England and they don’t expect more than 30% of students in the next 5 years to get more than 3 GCSE’s – so 70% will fail.)
- we had friends, commercial growth, a future in planning.
We have no domestic violence, no divorce, no separations, no kids to ex partners (we don’t have ex partners save the ‘ex girlfriend or boyfriend’), we have never sued drugs (and avoid prescriptions anyway) we’ve never been drunk, we don’t even drink. We’ve been on call for our kids for over 12 years, no matter what we’re doing (even leaving work, despite being threatened job loss because our children come first,), No mental health or mental illness, no criminal convictions, not ‘cautions’ and, until all of this started, no arrests.
What can we significantly change in our life to ‘win’ our children back?
We can’t promise to Detox from drugs – we don’t take them. Only twice in my life has I had someone jump in front of me in the street offering to ‘sell me something’ to which I walked on.
We can’t go into alcohol rehab, we don’t drink.
We can’t seek anger management or Domestic Violence Counselling, we have no such issues.
Our children want to be home schooled, they enjoy the broader range of subjects, activities and the focus they can give to one subject rather than having their attention ripped away at the ring of a bell. They love being around the work place (which is FAMILY friendly and protocol that people can bring their children to work because I don’t believe parents should have to ‘second’ rate their children in order to do a job.)
I guess we could get better jobs, but Paul Ballatt from Merton only gets £37,000 a hear for heading the Childrens Trust Board.
We have no sickness or illness in our home. We can’t seek psychiatric help, we have no such conditions.
So I’m confused, our children adore us, they draw the most amazing pictures (since they have been in ‘care’) of us parents. I’d prefer they were drawing something imaginative and creative than us, because they should see us every day and be with us, not wishing and hoping to be with us.
So please, tell me, what do I have to do to reunite my family? I’ve read all the protocols policies, procedures, and legislation and I just can’t see what it is we need to significantly change in order to be the perfect parents.
Because if parents exchanging a few ‘disagreeable’ lines of text in a private chatroom is considered emotionally abusive to the children – then what is divorce? Drunk husbands (or mothers) who arrive home and beat up the family?
Or is this where we’re failing? We don’t smoke and drink and act violently, but if we did, we’d get our children back because we’d fall below the ‘perfect parent’ threshold?
And what if, we go to court, and set the threshold for ‘perfect parents’ at the level of our family’s structure, relationship and habits?
How many children will be removed from single parents – after all, we’re a COUPLE of 15 years and growing stronger every day. Anyone with less than 15 years isn’t a suitable parent. Right? Anyone single can’t even be half an suitable parent. Lets not add drugs, alcohol, gambling, domestic violence, unemployment … and the rest of the ‘negatives’
So tell me how we can turn our children’s daily wish into a reality and bring them home?
Hi, Thankyou for your comment, i am a tad confused have you been convicted in court? or have your children been taken on probabilities by a court? My personal views are that children’s services should not have a leg to stand on unless there has been a criminal conviction in a criminal court this would stop thousands of children going into care although child protection plans and budgets would still be available to help the children and families.
If a parent is convicted then there must be clear evidence the crown prosecution throw a large percentage of cases down the drain and they simply do not have enough evidence in court. I am simply saying that a conviction should be the only way children’s services can apply for a care order another idea is to have a family court jury.
I have NEVER BEEN CHARGED yet alone got near a court for any hearing or conviction.
Our children were taken by police on allegations made by social services before they had met with our children, claiming that our children had made the comments. Our children video and audio recorded all the police and social worker involvement around them on that day.
You can see the video of the police at http://ukss.beinfilm.com/l/tmpo
I don’t think a conviction necessarily means a person should be punished by way of removal of their family for life. That’s equal to putting a person in jail for life for making a mistake.
Many parents who do not have the skills, or support networks, may make serious mistakes that could otherwise have been prevented. Does it make them a life long person of guilt because the SYSTEM that is SUPPOSE to help them didn’t?
If a parent ‘abuses’ (in the broadest sense) a child and the Local Authority failed to protect that child (say Baby P) then wouldn’t you therefore agree that each person and the social workers to the CEO should also wear the same criminal conviction?
In Peckham a teen was shot. Only one person pulled the trigger, but several are charged with and convicted of the murder.
Should it therefore follow that each person in Social Services and the LA should be convicted of the murder of Baby P also? Given they were there before it happened and watched it happen?
It doesn’t matter that they felt it ‘wasn’t going to happen’ – I’m sure not all of the severl convicted of pulling the trigger on the gun believed that it was going to be pulled and if it did that the teen would in fact die? Surely?
And what about parents who are found guilty of things that didn’t happen – like the Websters who you link to in your blog? Guilty of breaking the bones of their child, all their children adopted, but then a few years later it’s revealed the child had scurvy and the parents are innocent – but they can’t get their kids back. So they are convicted for life of something that just did not happen.
Worse, because the parents will cope and they will survive, but what about the children who when they get to 16 and can LEAVE their current hostage situations can return to their parents knowing they were abused by a system that supposedly set out to protect from them from, false allegations, but in fact thrived on and used the false allegations to ruine their own child hoods and their future childrens lives?
You do realise that Looked After Children records are kept and processed for 75 years? That means their own children will automatically come under care planning in the future. Because the system says that a Looked After Child is highly likely to cause future emotional harm to their own children and that care planning and removals need to be assessed before the babies are born.
I have more documents than you can imagine. Including flow charts of how to bring a child into ‘Need’ and get them to adoption without the parents having a remote chance of keeping up.
yes i am quite aware of all the things mentioned, sorry to hear about your children
So I guess I’ve gotta ask the obvious question. Noticing that all the parents who are ‘traumatised’ by these astounding repeating events, engaged and conducted by 154 local authorities against 60,000 families a year, why is it that the LA’s are all getting together to compare notes and share experiences of where they won and successes or where they failed and need more input, yet parents just scream and yell ‘you stole my children’?
There are 110,000 registered social workers and students. (15,000 are students)
With 60,000 families, that’s at least 120,000 mums and dads, add in friends, and extended family and it dwarfs the count of social workers and well dwarfs the 154 ‘machines’ that simply add salt and repeat mix.
When are families going to swap Threshold documents and see the cut and paste methods?
Swap statements and realise that Johnny aged 15′s social worker in Leeds wrote the same words in a statement to the court that was written about Mary aged 4 in Portsmouth. How is this possible?
When are parents going to stop using the same Powerpoint bullets:
- nazi social workers
- child stealing
- peadophiles
and work together, just like the social workers do.
I’ve been waiting for people. I’ve been developing, researching, reading, and I’ve got a strategy and it’s starting to work. I’m getting results and mistakes of parents past (be it their own or the fact that put faith in a solicitor) are well enlightening as to what to do to prevent the same things occurring or being able to occur.
But again, I come back to, can you please tell me what I need to significantly change in our parenting capacity to win our children back?
Because I’m rather tired of hearing about how the system abuses parents, but what I’m not seeing, is what the system does well, grinds on and wins.
I am not your solicitor infact I am not a legal professional at all so i have no idea how you get your children back, the best person to ask is your social worker, if he/she says never then I would take that as a fact unfortunately..well at least until they are 16 inwhich case they can insist to come back although children can get their own solicitor and considered to be gillick competent at around 11 years of age. I am just a blogger stating my story and my experience, I do not have any experience in cases other than for domestic violence so i unable to help with any other sort of case. May i suggest fathers for justice might have experience in your sort of case.
I’m well aware you aren’t a solicitor. However what I am acutely aware of is the constantly complaining by people that ‘the system is failing’ but the mere fact that no one complaining is proposing how to make it work.
Everyone says ‘this will happen’ but then doesn’t elude to how to prevent it happening. If child protection is to ‘prevent harm’ then why is the system itself causing harm for such prejudiced lengths of time?
Solicitors are only as good as their knowledge and in interviewing over 200 solicitors I’m yet to find one that knows that the CAF is. None have read the London Safeguarding Children’s Board Child Protection Procedure. None have read the Metropolitan Police Child Protection Procedure.
Ask my social worker huh? Clearly you didn’t watch the short film I provided a link to in my first posting. I’ve had 5 meetings with ‘my social worker’ in 8 months. The first meeting was 13 minutes long.
IN that meeting I was told that I would breach LA police and suffer consequences. When I asked what the policy was, they refused to tell me. When I FOI’d the policy it was ignored. When *I* personally cross examined the Social Worker in the High Court 3 months later it was admitted that there was no policy, that no one in the LA had heard of or produced such a policy and that the policy did not exist.
So why in 13 minutes was I threatened with consequences as a result of a policy that does not exist?
http://allesegretti.com/cps/20100705_july1_bogle.htm and you can re the extract from the Statement the social worker provided to the court. You tell me.
Going to be hard for my daughter to leave China once she is adopted there, or y other daughter to leave Afghanistan once she is adopted there or my boys to leave Australia once they are sent there – when they all reach 16.
Is this IN THE CHILDREN’S BEST INTERESTS?
My 12 year old challenged June Lewis the CAFCASS Children solicitor right on front of a phone recording the video and conversation. Lewis told my son he could NOT speak to the nudge because children do not speak to judges, that’s for adults to do. My son then told her that it was odd then that the ‘Coming Into Care’ booklet for children coming into care in the LA says that the Childrens Guardian will organise just that if the child requests. She then brushed him off.
Is this the PROPER CONDUCT expected of a Social Worker? To brush children off and tell them they are wrong and don’t know what they are talking about when they get the information from the OFFICIAL literature?
The LA is putting extraordinary pressure on us to divorce. The Social Worker on 4 January told my partner that ‘you need to look inside yourself and make a decision about your individual future life to get your life on track’ – the body language told the rest of the story.
When this started, my partner was given a solicitor by the LA who then tried to talk my partner into starting divorce proceedings. They sent my partner a BILL for the future proceeding and all the paperwork, filled in and ready to sign.
Not bad for less than 1 hours ‘engagement’ – don’t you think?
Needless to say one does not toss away at a whim, 15 years of happy and supportive marriage just because a stack of divorced and separated people want to place their misery upon you, and your success.
I don’t deny that there is domestic violence in many relationships. I’ve studied relationships for over 20 years and I’m well aware that many people get into relationships for all the wrong reasons, that is wrong for the long term, not the short term.
But when you have 2 parents, and 4 children all saying that their lives were pretty damn good, and they all want to be together to continue their lives and reach their full potential and ambitions, why is it up the the Local Authority to do everything possible to prevent the children’s growth in areas they wish to grow, and to do anything possible t separate the parents, including making up things like one parent self reported to a mental hospital saying they were suicidal when it never happened? And assuming that the parent did, why was the parent left in the outside world and not ‘treated’ or assessed for such an allegation?
Herein is the problem.
SO I ask you, when you have a pretty much text book perfect family, why is it you have your kids when we don’t have ours? And why should out kids have to wait till they turn 16 to come home? How is that in their best interests. To have their lives limited by people who are far lesser capable than us? Something already determined by the court.
I’m just trying to understand how the system thinks it works.
Domestic violence aside, the child protection system works the same way, DV is just one of many triggers. Often people want to escape to ‘greener pastures’ and use DV as an excuse.
You seem to have put a lot of question marks in your comments so i will just answer what you have asked me in your last paragraph.If you had read all of my blogs you would know how and why i have my children..i took my child back illegally and inturn kept the other who was born abroad (i bought more time to show/prove i was not in a relationship and never would be with my ex which most women do not get considering the timescales and dynamics of DV). I did watch the video and im afraid that the social workers hold the cards and the children not the judges and it is them who will tell you what they want you to do to get your children back.If you want more answers to the system you can google there are plenty of groups and sites out there with forums to discuss as you sound like you have a lot to say , this is not really the place for a long comments/drawn out debate.
Ang , do not waste your time on this one please. It is not worth it in fact block it , as I get the impression that the he/she is upset at you as you won your case and thinks he is clever and is far from it.
The advice is to change , let your wife go after the children . She will get them back from there then you make the rest up and stop all the amateur dramatics .