What is happening to our judicial system?

[Margaret Pilkington]

I have been reading in the paper today about a married couple in Essex who have had their children removed from their care and forcibly put up for adoption.

The children were said to be well cared for, the home was clean.......so what was the crime of the parents that meant their children could be removed by Social Services.......they were described as 'slow'.
The husband has held down a job for the past 22 years with the same company. The wife has an IQ of 60......and the social workers judged that her 'anticipatory skills' in caring for the children were lacking.

Essex Social Services have taken the case to court and a female judge has given social services the go ahead to have the children removed and adopted. The natural parents will have no access to the children until they are 18......they will get two photographs a year and maybe a video. They will not be informed if either child has need of medical care or treatment.

Human rights.......do they have any.....?

So the courts can do this to a law abiding couple, but they cannot sanction what they see as the abuse of human rights of the hate preachers and would be suicide bombers.

What is this country coming to......? I really do despair.

[grego]

Thats heartbreaking Margaret and totally wrong, how can this be allowed to happen, those children are obviously fine, there are hundreds if not thousands of children living in awful situations who need to be removed from parental care, but yet they get overlooked.

[entwisi]

This has been in the papers for the last few days. It is disgusting that two people who seem so stable and caring for their children are discriminated against because some high and mighty thinks they are not as intelligent as someone else.

I doo hope this gets put right.

[Debbie J]

I have read of three other cases like this in the last year. I thought social services were there in order to keep families together where ever possible? With a bit of support there is no reason why those kids couldn't have grown up in the loving care of their parents. I think it is diabolical and as the saying goes "the law is an ass" Some kids are allowed to stay with parents as their carers some with junkie parents e.t.c but woe betide you if you can't read or write very well or come across to the SS as slow!

[Margaret Pilkington]

The mother is heartbroken...... and the response of the Social Services to this is.......we'll organise some counselling for her, or help her to get a job.
Well, to my mind she already has a job........to be the mother of her children, and if they allowed her to do that (maybe with some support) then she wouldn't NEED counselling.

[Margaret Pilkington]

Entwisi, this case has been going on since May. The newspaper has pointed out that Essex Social Services are a long way off meeting their Government set targets for the number of adoptions in their area........I might be being a bit cynical but do you think there could be a link.

The other thing is that since the children have been in the care of Social Services the younger child has developed Hydrocephalus (water on the brain), no one can account for how this developed. The adoptive parents that had been identified for these children has now pulled out of the adoption because of the younger childs' medical problems.

[SPUGGIE J]

Its a bit of a coincedence that the social services initials are SS considering thats how they are behaving.

[lettie]

This is a disgusting state of affairs. I often see wildly inappropriate people given access to their babies with Social Services support, supervised access etc. This includes sex offenders. This is a terrible abuse of power and an attempt to make it look like Social Workers actually do a job. We all know the cock-ups that they have made in the past, Victoria Climbie and the Cleveland child sex abuse scandal are just 2 examples.

We all know that social problems didn't exist until they invented social workers..

[Margaret Pilkington]

I think the family have been advised to take their case to the European Court of Human Rights.

[cashman]

this is absolutely disgraceful and if anyone on here works for the SS i darent print what im thinking now,but i hope you get my drift,

[chav1]

the judge is just as bad and should be barred for life from residing as a judge as well

anyone with a shred of dignity or common sense would have thrown the case out of court

its one thing these idiots at social services actualy got this case to court but more shocking the judge didnt throw the case out

[Busman747]

Sorry Margaret, I read about this in the mornings paper and remembered it from Mays report, I have been seething all day at work and when I finally came home just had to give vent to my anger in "word." to put on the accy web. I am glad that you also feel as I do and judging by comments, other accy web members also.

As I have just spent a couple of hours one-finger typing my comments (without checking the accy web first) please forgive me for putting my contribution on as it stands as it is too late to make amendments.........

In May, there was a report in a national paper about a couple who loved each other, set up home together for 10 years and ultimately had two children- - - - and the follow-up story was in todays newspaper after they received the results of a court case held behind closed doors!



What had they done wrong? NOTHING according to the Judge

And their punishment? To have both their children aged 4 and 14 months put up for adoption! They were told that the ONLY contact they should have with their children is to be 2 photos per year until the children reach the age of 18.



OK, In case you missed this story I will explain how it all came about:



Mum is 29 years old and is classed as “special needs.” Although she is slow, she can read and write and loves her family very much. She was told that her children must go to a “forever mummy and daddy” because the S.S. (Social Services, but S.S, is more suitable) said that she was not clever enough to be a good parent and lacked intelligence to understand the childrens needs.



Quote from Mum:

“They kept saying I have no relationship with my little girl but it isn’t true. She loves playing in the bath with me. She loves her baby brother and wants to help me change his nappies.

They said I didn’t play with her when they were observing us but I was feeding the baby at the time”



Dad is 37 and does NOT have a learning disability. He has worked for the same manufacturing company for 22 years but was criticised for not giving up his job to help care for the children and was said to have anger management issues because he became irritable with a team of social workers who appeared determined to take away his children.



The S.S, admit that neither of the children have had an accident in the home or has come to any harm but told the judge that they were at “future risk.”



The S.S. reportedly “crammed” themselves into the flat to watch the family and criticised the parents for not putting out enough toys and for not keeping strict enough daily routines. They highlighted the fact that Mum took too long to brush her teeth and to change the babies nappy while the Dad was criticised for giving his daughter crisps before she had a sandwich.



In April 2004, some Social workers spoke up for them claiming the Mum lost confidence when she was under constant scrutiny and voted to remove the childrens names from the councils “at risk” register but the decision was reversed by a hastily convened child protection meeting and Care proceedings were started by the council to remove the children. In November last year, the couple were banned from seeing the children after Mum, driven to despair snapped and pulled a social workers hair during an access meeting. (I would probably have ripped her F***ing head off personally)



Because of the secrecy that pervades the care system they had no one to turn to for help. They were told that if they spoke to anyone they would risk being jailed for contempt of court which would mean that they would lose their children so they could not even get solicitors advice! The end result was that the courts ruled they should lose their children anyway.



They finally turned to Lib-DemCounty Councillor Barry Aspinall for help and he was immediately served with an injunction by the local authority to silence him but he fought successfully through the courts for the right to discuss the case and allow some scrutiny of the authorities actions. A fresh legal challenge was mounted by the family to overturn the decision but last week, a judge ruled that the children must be put up for immediate adoption.



The judge Mrs. Justice Pauffley said amonst other rantings that “they are selfish in their desire to keep their children” and finished with “A reasonable parent would recognise that his/her childs welfare was the decisive factor in the equation and would put to one side self-interest and desire. The advantages of adoption for these children are overwhelmingly strong. I have no doubts but that the right thing to do is override the parents objections.”



The decision is made and after adoption, there can be no going back, this couple have lost perhaps even their reason for being. I have spent many hours week in week out talking to people like this couple in my job and my heart goes out for them. I feel sickened by the callous heartless bas***** that promote themselves as the new messiah in the name of being politically correct and acute embarrassment for being part of the western world that is destined for the dark ages-----------------



As a footnote, Professor Tim Booth done research that showed that 20% of all local authority care proceedings in this country involve parents with a learning disability!!

[Tinkerbelle]

You'll find that judges very rarely rule against social services because they're supposed to know these families ........... not always the case though is it and it's very unfair

[Busman747]

Originally Posted by Tinkerbelle

You'll find that judges very rarely rule against social services because they're supposed to know these families ........... not always the case though is it and it's very unfair

In this particular case, it is not "unfair" it is disgusting! It reminds me of the agonising pain that people were put through during the "witch hunt" years when women of all ages were persecuted and tortured for no particular reason and their last thoughts must have been .......WHY??

[simon]

I have a freind at the moment who is going through this kind of SS nightmare, his sister has had her kids taken away for no good reason..... The family are distraught, and he is sure it will end in his sister taking her own life

My family has got a few social workers(kid removal type) in it, and they tell me if you do JUST as they say you will be fine.....

Problem is when they sit in your house and suggest that you could lose your kids....who could stay rational and not KICK back to protect your kids...Then they say you are not fit parents, when your actions prove you are ???????

Very sad situations...........With little sign of hope