Re: How social services can seize our children

axel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Brave New Britain <me@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> By Cassandra Jardine
>> Telegraph.co.uk, UK: 30 August 2005
>> http://www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/08/30/do3002.xml&s***=/opinion/2005/08/30/ixopinion.html
>> Or, http://tinyurl.com/7sk8r
>
>> It is scant solace, but parents whose children have been taken from
>> them by social services on what they consider insufficient grounds now
>> know that they are not the only ones. Over the year since I first
>> described the plight of Emma and Martin, and looked into Essex's child
>> protection and adoption procedures, scarcely a day has gone by without
>> a distraught parent bringing another case to my attention.
>
>> These parents cannot understand why seemingly minor or passing
>> problems have become magnified or distorted by social services. Time
>> and again, rather than investigate and observe - or support and
>> rehabilitate - the chosen solution has been to take a child, and often
>> then that child's siblings, into care.
>
>> A major factor seems to be the Government's target, set in 2000, for a
>> 40 per cent increase in adoptions. The motive was to take children off
>> the care register but, like many well-meant initiatives, it has had
>> undesirable consequences. The target has encouraged social services
>> departments to achieve Beacon status by arranging the adoption of
>> easy-to-adopt children - young, healthy and white - rather than strive
>> to find permanent homes for older children, or those from ethnic
>> minorities, or those with disabilities.
>
> It is a sick system. Luckily I am pleased to include amongst my
> friends people who have adopted children with disabilities (not,
> I hasten to add because they were stolen from their parents).
>
> To my mind, a child who is cared for by a loving parent is well
> cared for... maybe the mother is not intelligent or knowledgable,
> it does not stop her loving and caring for the child and doing
> so much better than the child being sent into childrens' homes
> and shunted through foster parents.
>
> I don't know if school counts as that... still at least
> it was with other children of similar backgrounds.
>
> Axel (A confirmed bachelor with no children)

It does seem odd. It had been prevailing thought amongst social services,
that the child was best with the mother, virtually no matter what, drugs,
prostitution etc, didnt matter, as long as the mother could look after the
child with 'support'. With retarded adults, with children, some of the
lengths Social Services would go to, to enable the family to bring up the
children (a rotar of up to a dozen staff) could be considered silly.

This seems at odds with some of the incidents we are hearing. I am sure we
only hear half the story. If you check a recent posting on uk.politics.misc,
and i think cross posted here, a link was posted to the summary by a family
court judge as to why a particular family with a low IQ had their children
removed from them.
It makes interesting reading, and while sadly it sounds like the right
decision made, the astonishing arrogance displayed by the professionals
involved, their revulsion at the idea that their decisions should be
challenged, and their expressed opinion considered to be the last word,
truly beggers belief.

It seems it would be a dangerous decision to make an enemy of a social
worker.

Gaz


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