How
social services can seize our children
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/08/30/do3002.xml
Telegraph
- 30th August 2005
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.
Again and again,
I have heard parents say that social workers seem to make an instant
judgment about their fitness as parents and then assemble the evidence
to support that decision. One woman sobbed down the phone from South
Wales that she had been accused of neglecting her children because one
of them was underweight; even those of her children without dietary
problems have been taken from her. A cluster of women from Sheffield
contacted me about the high-handed behaviour of social services: one
had had her two children taken because she had left them with a 12-year-old
while shopping; another had had her younger children taken because her
eldest had mental health problems; a third because she and her partner
had been arguing. From the Isle of Wight, I heard from a woman whose
three-year-old cowered whenever the doorbell rang because twice she
had been taken into care by social services on the basis of inaccurate
information.
The pattern
of these cases became all too familiar. An initial incident brought
a family to the attention of social services. Sometimes it was the parents'
backgrounds: they might have been in care themselves, have a police
record, or just a low IQ. In other cases, they had been denounced to
social services by a vindictive ex-partner or relative. Still others
had been drawn to social services' attention by an incident that appeared
suspicious to a doctor or child protection officer.
In several cases,
behavioural issues due to autism had been blamed on bad parenting. In
every case, the parents felt that minds were set against them before
they had been able to assemble a defence.
These parents
often told me that their loss felt like a bereavement, but worse because
there was no closure. They had to struggle with the guilt of feeling
that somehow they had brought this situation upon themselves, and the
frustration of not seeing any way to clear their names. As they wandered
the streets hoping to catch a glimpse of a lost child whom they feared
might have changed beyond recognition, they felt anger against a system
that allowed professionals to act before they knew the facts.
Some of these
parents may be failing to disclose pertinent information, of course;
but in every case they are desperate to be allowed to care for their
own children. Those who have made mistakes, been in bad relationships
or had mental or physical health problems clearly want to be allowed
a second chance. Yet, in their children's "best interests",
secure, loving attachments had been severed and children placed in the
cold limbo of state care. There, many of them seemed to be receiving
far worse physical treatment - not to mention emotional deprivation.
Often the parents
had tried asking social services for a review of their cases, but their
letters, and those of their MPs, routinely received brief responses
saying that the matter had been investigated internally by the social
services department in question and that the local authority's actions
had been found to be above reproach. Many felt that their complaints
hardened attitudes against them.
In frustration,
many have turned to the police hoping to bring their grievances into
the criminal courts. Parents feel they have strong cases: they have
documentary evidence of distorted reports, refusal to share vital documents
and failure to follow procedures. A group of such parents in Essex who
went to the police found that initially they received an interested
response. Inevitably, when investigations stall, they suspect collusion
between social services and the police. They have no proof, but, unless
their complaints are investigated, they will always harbour such suspicions.
There is, however,
one case that has got further. A couple whose child has been forcibly
put up for adoption after what they consider to be a false accusation
by an aggrieved ex-wife have been to the Independent Police Complaints
Commission. The Crown Prosecution Service is now looking at 11 complaints
against 13 police officers ranging from unlawful arrest, imprisonment
and harassment to refusal to accept the parents' alibi.
"If this
comes to court," says the father, "the social workers concerned
will be named and will not be able to hide behind the mantle of secrecy
that protects them in the family courts."
On other levels
there has been progress over the past year. Following one case that
I brought to light - involving a family in which a mother was deemed
to have too low an IQ to care for her children - other newspapers have
taken up the cudgels. The vulnerability of the low IQ group to interference
from social services is now better understood and the mental health
charities are making a stand against this practice. There is also wider
recognition that the policy of increased adoption needs looking at.
Such moves are
positive. But what is really needed is an independent body overseeing
the actions of social services which would operate like the Independent
Police Complaints Commission. Until we have such a body, social services
will be able to carry on acting as they feel best - which may not be,
whatever they say, in the best interests of children.
