SUMMARY:
THE CONSENSUS REPORT
99 pages fully-sourced and referenced released
19 September 2005
‘Assessing Ordinary Parents as Abusers
Assessing Ordinary Children as Victims’
Potential
Problem Areas with the official 2002 Guidelines on MSbP / FII:
‘Safeguarding Children in whom Illness is Induced or Fabricated’
A.
THE FII GUIDELINES: Flawed Intellectual Architecture?
p16:
The 2001 departmental Working Group (‘WG’) adopted
a mistaken remit
p17: The WG’s stated aim was to devise “correct”
methods of “identifying” FII cases
p18: The WG went off on a tangent, setting up machinery to process
supposed FII cases
p21: The WG’s membership lacked expertise/qualifications
to evaluate the FII hypothesis
p22: The WG did not consider medical evidence sceptical of the
FII hypothesis
p25: “A defective WG, working to the wrong brief, produced
the wrong guidelines”
p26: “Sick children were reclassified as abused children”.
The 2001 draft Guidelines:
- - lowered the
standard requirement for significant harm (p29)
- - listed many
ordinary behaviours as telltales of abusive FII parents (p31)
- - listed many
ordinary behaviours as telltales of abused FII children (p33)
- - directed referrals
to Social Services on a ‘possibility’ FII ‘might’
be involved (p5)
- - gave no / almost
no consideration to medical explanations other than FII (p35)
p37:
The Department’s own statistics concede that there is
no significant FII problem
p41: The 2001 departmental public consultation on the draft
guidelines was misdirected
p42: The widespread reservations about the draft guidelines
were not taken into account
p45: In 2002, the flawed guidelines went to tens of thousands
of non-medical practitioners
p47: During this wide dissemination, the flawed guidelines were
further ‘dumbed down’
p49: Official training in the guidelines has added elements
of anti-medical extremism
p64: The promised review of the FII hypothesis (post-Cannings)
was circumvented
B.
THE FII GUIDELINES: Possible Effects?
p50:
There are some 570,000 referrals to Social Services (all causes)
each year - 2003 quoted
p51: There are some 264,000 Social Services ‘Initial Assessments’
(all causes) each year
p52: A number of these interventions (x000s?) could be for misplaced
FII concerns*
p55: Marked regional variations could suggest that some counties
might be over-zealous
p51: Each needless initial assessment can seriously damage a
family*
p51: Some 90-95% of Social Service interventions seem to be
misplaced:
p52:
Some children may be on the At Risk register for invalid FII
concerns*
p53: Some children may have been removed from their parents
for invalid FII concerns*
p56: Some children may be adopted for FII (despite a tacit official
admission of no FII)*
p15: Areas of primary need-and-risk may be skimped in the quest
for nebulous FII-cases
*Statistical information / research on the likely scale of any
problem may be a priority
Summary prepared by the Cross-Party Parliamentary
FII Group. For evidence, see the full text as per page citations
Attachment to the letter March 2006 from the Chair to the Minister
4
pages correspondence, showing:
- the bogus internal DfES investigation
- the Permanent Secretary tried a cover-up
Note
the last line of the 4 October 2005 letter to the DfES:
"The
problem, which remains unaddressed, passes in enlarged form to
Ministers, professionals and the public."
Family Law Reform
57
Cornwall Grove Bletchley Milton Keynes MK3 7HX Tel 01908 630856
Sir David Normington Permanent Secretary
Sanctuary Buildings
Great Smith Street
London SW1P 3BT
14 October 2005
Dear Sir David,
DfES INTERNAL
MISMANAGEMENT: Policy on Children
Thank
you for your letter of 20 September 2005 proffering the results
of your internal investigation. Perhaps you will accept that this
inquiry evinces a certain lack of rigour?
I
am sure we can agree your explanations do not (see over) cover
the facts. The upshot is:
Private
family law cases: Section 8 Contact Disputes
Two
years’ work, by two government departments, has been
wasted:
-
-
the benefits innate to the EI project (killed by its
Fam Res substitute) are the stated
objective of Government policy
-
- you concede that EI was replaced by Family Resolutions
before work on EI started
Government family
policy is now inoperable: it is based on an elementary factual
error.
Public family
law cases: Social Services and MSbP
The
DfES’s agreed objective was to develop diagnostic criteria
for MSbP to protect the innocent and identify the guilty. Instead,
and as you concede, the DfES launched a nationwide protocol
- on the basis that innocent activities are indicators of guilt.
In
one sector, Ministers were misled. In both, family policy is distorted.
The problem, which remains unaddressed, passes in enlarged form
to Ministers, professionals and the public.
Yours
sincerely,
David Mortimer
c.c. various
Encl.
MISMANAGEMENT of FAMILY POLICY (Public
Law)
The DfES
Internal Investigation: 20 September 2005
Sir David Normington, Permanent Secretary, DfES (re Mr Bruce
Clark)
What
Went Wrong: the Government undertook to develop diagnostic
criteria to establish if-and-when parents were ‘guilty’
of MSbP. Instead, the DfES launched a nationwide scheme enabling
innocent parents to be processed for MSbP on an assumption they
might be guilty.
Sir David’s Explanation? : To offer no defence
Sir
David’s response merely recounts the salient facts, agreeing
them with no particular demur. In this vein, he cites a new text
- which re-confirms that the DfES’s remit was to find ways
of correctly identifying MSbP cases.
Otherwise,
Sir David’s inquiry advances nothing to counter the main
charge (which is, by virtue of what the Guidelines say, impossible
to deny).
The
Obvious Difficulty
The
Guidelines introduced by Mr Bruce Clark:
-
define swathes of ordinary domestic behaviours as possible
indicators of MSbP
-
say a possibility that MSbP may be involved should lead to
a referral to Social Services
Guidelines
based on these twin premises [(i) and (ii)] are irresponsible
and dangerous.
A
Mitigating Factor ?
The DfES Internal Inquiry puts forward the point that, in preparing
and launching these Guidelines, Mr Clark (who led the small
and inappropriate Working Group) did not mislead Ministers.
The
question at issue is not whether Mr Clark misled Ministers.
Elementary
Error
The
actual issue is due diligence.
It
is not easy to understand how the obvious problem with the Guidelines
was overlooked.
Irrespective of whether Mr Clark omitted elementary safeguards
from the Guidelines deliberately – or whether Ministers
were misled - the Guidelines are misconceived, substandard and
untenable.
MISMANAGEMENT
of FAMILY POLICY (Private Law)
The
DfES Internal Investigation: 20 September 2005
Sir David Normington, Permanent Secretary, DfES (re Mr Bruce Clark)
What
Went Wrong:
the EI project went into the DfES - but the Fam Res project (the
opposite of EI) came out. Government policy is based on EI - but
work on EI never started
CHALK:
Sir David’s Explanation
“At
no point did the responsible Minister agree to pilot the NATC
(Early Interventions) project”
This
assertion is used as a platform for Sir David to concede an otherwise
inexplicable fact (hitherto denied): that work on the NATC EI
project never started. This new stance underpins the denial that
Ministers were misled – because, according to this version,
Ministers never believed that the NATC EI project was being progressed.
CHEESE:
The Stated View of the Ministers
“In
no sense has there been any abandonment of the Early Interventions
initiative proposed by the NATC”
Lord
Filkin, Parliamentary Under Secretary for State, Children and
Families (13 April 2005 2005/0015774 POLF). This assertion is
one of an extended line of documented official pronouncements
made, and Ministerial meetings held, on the basis that the EI
project, and/or the principles in the EI project, continued in
progress.
The Central Mistake
Sir David, in giving his departmental officials a clean bill of
health, writes:
‘[The]
pilot project had been outlined in a paper submitted by the ad
hoc group chaired by District Judge Nicholas Crichton… This
was the project which was implemented by DfES officials’
The
project proposed to Government by the ad hoc group was the NATC
Early Interventions project - submitted in fully-defined form
by the Ad Hoc Group on 8.10.03 in the NATC document (entitled
Early Interventions: Towards a Pilot Project) endorsed by the
judiciary.
What
Actually Happened
After Mr Bruce Clark decided (in or around October 2003) to ignore
the EI project, the EI papers were mislaid, possibly without being
read. Instead, Mr Clark consulted almost exclusively with those
opposed to, or ignorant of, the EI project. The project name was
changed amidst assurances that this was no more than a name-change.
Mr Clark (unaware of first principles in this area) then began
a different project, from scratch, unwittingly reversing the specific
EI (or ‘Florida’) principle adopted by Government.
Meanwhile
- as DJ Crichton confirms - Mr Clark maintained that the principles
in the original EI project (which he had buried) continued under
development. The judiciary, and hundreds of others, were misled.
The Government remains under the misapprehension that the cornerstone
presumption on which its policies are based, and which it supports,
and which EI would have introduced, is already in place.
Confirmation that Ministers knew:
Family Law Reform
57
Cornwall Grove Bletchley Milton Keynes MK3 7HX Tel 01908 630856
Sir David Normington Permanent Secretary
Sanctuary Buildings
Great Smith Street
London SW1P 3BT
3 November 2005
Dear Sir David,
DfES MISMANAGEMENT:
FAMILY POLICY – Shielding Mr Bruce Clark
Thank you for your letter of 27 October 2005 averring that “Ministers
were not… misled; nor was family policy distorted.”
It is a posture contradicted by the facts:
Public
Law – The Distortion of Policy
The 2002 Guidelines on MSbP are predicated on Mr Clark’s
belief that scores of innocent familial activities (set out in
long lists) can be tokens of guilt which warrant referral to Social
Services.
The Clark Guidelines
replace the customary presumption of innocence with a presumption
of guilt. Unless Ministers intended to cross this line, family
policy is of necessity distorted.
Private
Law – The Misleading of Ministers
The
2004 Green Paper Parental Separation is predicated on a basic
legal error (that there already is a legal presumption of meaningful
or reasonable contact between parents and their children ).
There
is no such presumption. The Green Paper, and the resulting Bill,
are built on air.
It is
assumed you do not seek to imply that Ministers over-rode Mr Clark
- and elected of their own initiative to mislead the public on
a point of fundamental importance.
Lord Adonis
is currently taking a Bill through Parliament, unaware that two
years ago Mr Clark jettisoned the presumption on which the Bill
is supposedly founded.
Are
you absolutely sure it is proper to withhold this information
from your Ministers?Yours
sincerely,
David Mortimer
