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4 December 2014
Marianne Haslev Skånland:
England - the authorities favour express speed to adopting children away from parents
It is now 10 years or more since the authorities - of every political bent - in England 'got tired' of all the difficulties (for the authorities) with children living in institutions and fosterhomes for years, costing the authorities money and 'making problems'. In order to end this, they hit upon the idea that children taken by the child protective services (CPS) should be adopted away at top speed. No nonsense or discussions on the part of parents, thank you!
And then all the politicians (with a solitary encouraging exception: John Hemming) and the authorities in the land very touchingly trusted, and trust, social workers. So they let them decide, practically on their own, which children would 'benefit' from being adopted away, and they let them get a move on expediting children through this quick-fix system. For speedy and 'successful' adoption the social workers get a bonus!
The family courts of England (like the County Committees here in Norway, which are to be elevated to full court status) practice stict secrecy of all information about the cases, parents are warned to shut up and given prison sentences if they speak about their cases. (England is of course famous for being the venerable homeland of a respectable, honest judicial system.)
Enough of that, here is a very informative article from 2008 about the way the system 'worked' then:
How social services are paid bonuses to snatch babies for adoption
Daily Mail, 31 January 2008
As the Daily Mail article shows: The warm-hearted social workers did not find it easy to locate willing adoptive parents for all of those children in care homes and foster homes - they were no doubt too 'difficult'. On the other hand, there was a hunger out there for babies. So the social workers concentrated their adoption work on babies and let the older children remain where they were. With their professional expertise and long experience in how to arrange the world and the people in it, social workers have set to and removed new-born babies from their mothers in hospital and wherever else they may be - whirl on!
The theories they have been taught give them crafty arguments too: the danger of abuse and neglect some time in the future. From Sue Reid's article:
"parents have been told by social workers they must lose their children because, at some time in the future, they might abuse them.
One mother's son was adopted on the grounds that there was a chance she might shout at him when he was older."
These are false and incorrect predictions (again exactly like in Norway) but this lack of a basis in facts seems to be endemic in both teachings and practice in social work, so why should we especially blame English social workers? We could instead look closer to home and stop this kind of 'education' and practicing going crazy here.
Christopher Booker's many articles on child removal in England are also very important and illustrative, cf
British press discovers the child 'protection' racket?
22 April 2012
Lastly, an important indication of the situation in England, not only in 2008 but still in 2014: The Strasbourg court receives a steady stream of complaints against English child 'protection' at present.
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