Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi,
I am an autistic adult who is a parent. Since having my daughter I went through a terrible time with social services who set me up to fail and removed my daughter from me because I have a diagnosis of autism. It took me two years to fight for my daughter back and through this time social services and Cafcass used the so called deficits of my autism to justify the removal and to stop the return of my daughter. Thankfully the judge saw through this and returned my daughter concluding in her judgment that I parent my daughter to a high standard.
I want to know how many my adults will autism who are parents have been through a similar situation. How many parents with ASD and other disabilities and or impairments are being targeted by social services and having their children removed? If you have experienced this please tell your story because the current system is outrageously discriminative against parents who have a disability and or impairment and I would like to raise awareness of the current failures within the current child protection system which is targeting parents with disabilities and or impairments so that change can happen.
social services took my children because of my aspergers diagnosis
I am curious as to how they even knew about your diagnosis, unless somebody had already notified them of a concern. Social Services don't just "take children" ... it requires a Court Order. To get a Care Order a social worker needs to meet the "threshold" test that the child is "at risk of significant harm" before even making an application to the Family Court.
Usually there is a safeguarding investigation. Most authorities use the "Signs of Safety" model which includes a safeguarding meeting which the parent can attend. Usually a Safety Plan is agreed and monitored for several months. If the plan fails, sometimes the parent agrees to have the child "accommodated".
If the authority wants to remove a child against the wishes of the parent - which is how I read "took my children" it requires a court hearing and a Care Order. However ...
Most children's services are overspent ... it costs a lot of money to keep a child in care. Apart from humans rights and legality, the social worker will need to convince a senior manager that the authority needs to spend the money involved - even making an application incurs court fees and legal costs in excess of £2k ... it is a lot cheaper to put in a s.17 Child in Need Plan.
Cases like Baby P show that sometimes we leave it to late in the hope that the parents will "sort their lives out". Every social worker is between the Scylla of the right to family life and legal process, and the Charybdis of knowing that if we don't intervene some kids will die and we will be hung out to dry by the press.
Because Famiy Court proceedings are confidential, social workers can rarely talk about out work. We are accused of "taking" children, but usually all one hears is the aggrieved parent. We are rarely able to refute some of the "my social worker did ... " stories, because to breach confidentiality would cost us our jobs.
Social workers do make mistakes, and there are plenty of documented cases of bad practice which need to be challenged. But I doubt any child has ever been taken into care BECAUSE of an autism diagnosis. The parent's autism may have been a contributing factor. There may have been a poor assessment that was not challenged by the parent's solicitor - many lawyers are not autism aware either - or by the childre's guardian ad litem. It is never good when the system fails. Please do not demonise the social workers ... most of us are doing the best we can with limited resources.
Ian said:Cases like Baby P show that sometimes we leave it to late in the hope that the parents will "sort their lives out". Every social worker is between the Scylla of the right to family life and legal process, and the Charybdis of knowing that if we don't intervene some kids will die and we will be hung out to dry by the press.
Part of the problem is social services seem to have option A, do nothing, and option B, take the child in to care, and very little in between. Parent says they can't be at home for a visit, reschedule. Look at the star case, How many visits were rescheduled. There ought to be a range of 'in between' options to ensure access to a child and the environments a child moves in but those that exist are rarely used because it requires manpower and leg work and isn't much easier than getting an order to get children removed anyway.
Maybe those sorts of desicions shouldn't be made by councilors anyway. Or any one in the executive. Maybe locking kids up should always require court involvment. Maybe we should reduce the period before court reveiw (sub section 2) to someting very short like 5 days so in effect the courts are reveiwing all cases. You'd have to empower magistrates to handel the cases in the first instance with an automatic appeal to a higher court. That would be a better system.
Ian said:You just need to look at the present fiasco with the Post Office ... having a government minister did not help the postmasters, did it? The Home Office and Department of Environment did not prevent Grenfell.
Isn't the private sector playing the role of the local authority there? A layer of authority between centeral goverment and the operational level the goverment can blaim for problems created by their under funding. If there was a 'national child protection service' then ministers would be sacked when things went baddly wrong. Which means they would fight for more money at cabinate meetings.
You might want to look at https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainer/local-government-funding-england. A large proportion of local authority funding consists of central government grants which have not fully funded increased expenditure. The reason for potholes, library closures etc. is that most authorities are overspent on education - particularly special education - and social care. A lot of overspending is on care - "looked after" children and residential care for the elderly. There is not enough early help because funding has to go to high-risk cases ... and they become high-risk when there is no early intervention. It is a vicious circle.
Councillors are responsible for strategic policy, and individual members sit on panels to agree on funding. You would not get a minister, or even several ministers, sitting on funding panels for all 150+ social services! Also, would you really want a minister for child protection who was the junior minister for fisheries last week, and who really wanted a job in the Foreign Office? To give just one example, if a young person is placed in secure accommodation under s25 Children Act 1989, the case is reviewed by a panel chaired by a councillor - there is no way a minister would be able to attend all the individual review meetings and run a department ... do you really intend to give social workers the power to lock kids up without any oversight?
Have you read the reports about child deaths from Victoria Climbie to Baby P? Nothing happens. Services are still underfunded. The problems of inter-agency working remain unresolved. Individual social workers still have too many cases. You just need to look at the present fiasco with the Post Office ... having a government minister did not help the postmasters, did it? The Home Office and Department of Environment did not prevent Grenfell.
The politicians responcable for child protection are local councilors and most of them want to put council tax up. It's loony to leave the wellbeing of kids in the hands of people who waste obceen sums on white eliphant redevolopment projects but can't fill in the pot holes. The first thing we should do is take the responcability off the council and relocate to centeral goverment. If a goverment minister had to go on breakfast news when a child is murdered by their parents and explain why opotunities were missed funding might actually materialise.
Do you mean the church full of paederast priests, schools run by sadistic nuns, etc.? Or the loony hard-right evangelicals?
Social care is underfunded. There is not enough preventative work with troubled families. There are not enough drug and alcohol services. Politicians talk about improving services, then buy off the proletariat with tax cuts, bread and circuses. We could have excellent NHS and social care services if the voters were prepared to pay for them through taxes.
When you want the courts to be "militant" do you want more kids taken into care? The outcomes for children in public care are not good - poor education outcomes, more mental health issues, higher rate of offending. These may be due to the adverse childhood experiences that led to care proceedings, but the care system does not add a lot of value once kids are "in the system".
It just shows and highlights several areas for legislative change that need to go through Parliament - we should be lobbying our MP’s for these changes
IrishInManchesterUK said:must never be any separation between church and state
I hope you are kidding
I totally agree with this - when it comes to child protection issues, the courts must take an approach which is far more Millitant, hardline, resolute, determined and uncompromising and in acting in the best interests of children, the courts must develop an attitude and mindset that is zero tolerance and zero patience against the deliberate mismanagement of local athoriites who are following a political agenda and are engaging in political point scoring at the expense of innocent and vulnerable children - frankly, I would prefer it if religious organisations took over this very important area and it’s another reason why I firmly believe that there must never be any separation between church and state
As I said earlier on I think judges should be a lot harsher with local authorities. If I were them I wouldn’t wait for the authority to ignore the Court order once to put a penal notice on it. Id put the penal notice on the first court order. The threat of imprisonment would probably help stop these little administrative ‘accidents’ from happening. Especially where court orders require councils to spend more money than they want to.
https://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2009/2474.html
in this case someone was asking that a penal notice be attached order directed against A local council. Generally speaking in order for someone to be imprisoned for contempt of court for disobeying a court order there has to be a penal notice on the order.
The judges response is basically to say that he’s not going to put a penal notice on the order because local councils almost never deliberately refused to obey court orders. But that if they do disobey the court order they will be called the court to explain themselves and if they still refuse to obey he can issue a second order with a penal notice, and if they disobey that they can be sent to prison.
see paragraph 12
”Accordingly, I do not think that a penal notice is necessary in orders made against a public body. A failure to comply with an order can be dealt with by an application to the court for a finding of contempt and, if necessary, a further mandatory order which may contain an indication of what might happen should there be any further failure to comply. Adverse findings coupled with what would probably be an order to pay indemnity costs should suffice since it is to be expected that a public body would not deliberately flout an order of the court. Were that to happen, the contemnor could be brought before the court and, were he to threaten to persist in his refusal, an order could be made which made it clear that if he did he would be liable to imprisonment or a fine.“
A corporation is not "a class of people " it is legally a fictitious single "person". Councillors and officers are just the human means by which an authority operates.
" If a councillor ignores a court order or instructs other council employees to they are acting unlawfully. That's how court orders work. " OK, I will call you out on this one. Give me ONE example from Public Law where a councillor or officer is held personally accountable for the outcome of a statutory duty by an authority. Just one concrete example... Give me a citation of caselaw or a reference to actual legislation. That should be easy enough if you actually know what you are talking about.
Forum rules prevent us from identifying ourselves, but I have given a few clues as to my training and experience. As a teacher, I tell all my students "Don't believe anything unless you can check the evidence. What are your sources? Where are the references?"
Ok here are some examples of where directors / officers of a corporation have been imprisoned for contempt of court
https://www.howatavraamsolicitors.co.uk/imprisonment-for-company-directors-disclosure-order/
https://www.kingsleynapley.co.uk/insights/blogs/dispute-resolution-law-blog/contempt-of-court-the-prospect-of-prison-even-before-proceedings-are-issued
https://www.macfarlanes.com/media/1857/fraud-and-financial-crime-holding-the-director-in-contempt.pdf
https://www.weightmans.com/insights/de-facto-directors-personally-responsible-for-company-contempt/
Dear Peter - your profile states that you " have a PhD in biometalworkometry (not really) " Forgive me if I question how this experience is relevant to this discussion. Have you ever represented a local authority in court, either as an advocate or as an officer? Have you ever applied to the Family Court for an Order, or responded to an appeal against an order? Have you ever been a senior officer of a public body? Have you ever served on a local government committee? In other words, where is your credibility?
I ask this with the greatest respect, but when you make statements as facts which are contrary to my forty-plus years' experience in public service, I would like to know on what you are basing your opinion so that I can either learn from your greater wisdom - or decide that you are talking through your hat.