“The public service is not a serial child-snatcher” – Anthony Douglas

Many parent’s hearts will have skipped a little to learn that Mark and Nicky Webster were being allowed to keep their son Brandon with them, after their first 3 children had been adopted, primarily because one of the 3 children, known publicly as Child B, had been diagnosed with multiple fractures, thought at the time to be caused by either Mark or Nicky.  Since then, doubt has been cast on that received medical opinion, with a new set of paediatric experts suggesting the fractures were most likely caused by multi-nutrient deficiency, or even good old-fashioned scurvy.

Sections of the press and the family’s solicitor are claiming the case is a miscarriage of justice along similar lines to the cases of Sally Clark and Angela Cannings.  Unpopular though they may be, alternative explanations are equally important to shout about.

In cases where children may need safeguarding, there are often few clear-cut facts.  A ‘finding of fact’ court hearing is itself only usually able to establish what is most likely to have happened, rather than to be able to reach a definitive conclusion.  Many parents refuse to tell the truth, and many children for one reason or another are too young or unable to communicate exactly what has gone on when they present at a hospital or school with serious unexplained injuries.  This is why family courts have to operate on the balance of probabilities, rather than to the criminal standard of proof which is ‘beyond reasonable doubt’.  It is unacceptable to take undue risks with children’s safety.  Where risks are taken and go wrong, when children are seriously abused when professionals have known about the risks, it could equally be said those children are the victims of a serious miscarriage of justice.  Few campaigners take up these cases with the same vigour they do the cases of parents who may have been wronged.

Over the years, many children have been left at home in situations of grave and constant danger because professionals were gripped by the ‘rule of optimism’, wanting to believe parent’s protestations of innocence, desperate to believe children would be safe because they wanted to keep children out of the care system at any cost, and as a result, not facing up to the dangers that were staring them in the face. 

Campaigning journalists are now suggesting the Webster’s first 3 children could have been taken into care through a callous pursuit by Norfolk County Council of Government-set adoption targets back in 2004/5.  This really is conspiracy theory running away with itself.  The primary reason local councils were seeking to increase the number of adoptions was to do something about the scandalous situation of children released by courts for permanent care outside the family, for whom no adoptive parents or long-term foster carers could be identified. These children waited, and some still wait, in a disgraceful limbo. The babies who do need to come into care are frequently born to parents with a track record of extreme danger to children, or increasingly they may be addicted to opiates in the womb through their mother’s drug-taking, with few immediate growth prospects.  We need to get real about this. 

No system of justice is foolproof.  The most that can be achieved is a percentage of successful cases upwards of 95%.  That is the real world. Of the 75,000 children in the UK care systems (Scotland’s system uses slightly different thresholds to those in England Wales and Northern Ireland), most are there for good reason according to researchers.  There are likely to be more children living unsafely in the community who should be in care than the other way round.  Only Poland and Italy take fewer children into care in Europe than we do.  The UK public service is not a serial child-snatcher.

Campaigners point to the Webster case as evidence of why the family courts need to be opened up to the media, to prevent future miscarriages of justice.  But there are other ways of increasing the percentage of accurately diagnosed cases.  The Chief Medical Officer has proposed that expert witness services should become a mainstream NHS service for the first time, and that medical expert witnesses are better trained and supported in what can be a lonely, unnerving and isolating profession.  An accreditation system and access to a national knowledge service may be developed, which will decrease the risk of flawed diagnosis in highly specialised areas like paediatrics and child mental health.

More specialist family judges would increase the likelihood of judicial decision-takers getting it right first time.  More specialist family solicitors, especially in those parts of the UK where they are in short supply, would ensure that a child, and parent’s legal advocates, spotted areas of doubt when cases are bought and focus earlier on the key issues.  A revised public law protocol, being introduced from April 2008, will place stricter controls on the cases local authorities bring before a family court, to ensure all assessments have been carried out before the case is accepted fully into the court system.

Parents whose children are taken into care need tremendous support and backing, both to cope with events, and to be given a fair chance to turn their lives around for their child or children to be returned home safely.  Two key elements of a professional social work assessment are the capacity of parents to change, and the capacity of parents to work constructively with the professionals charged with both helping them and protecting their children.  Whilst this is a complex and difficult area for parents, it is for professionals too.  Much change can be achieved through positive working relationships, and it takes a lot of courage and trust to work together well – yet many parents and professionals up and down the country do just that.  It is good that Mark and Nicky Webster acknowledge the help and support they have had from their social worker, and from other professionals, in caring for Brandon.  This is just as accurate an image of social workers and child protection professionals, as is the less wholesome image of professionals assessing parents negatively for gratuitous reasons.

In relationships, there is rarely a simple truth, and any attempt to reduce a complex set of explanations to a single set of politicised issues risks misunderstanding an area of public service that is tough to get right at the best of times.    

Anthony Douglas is Chief Executive of Cafcass, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service.

Responses to the John Hemming comments

Anon: 

Thank you for your invitation for readers to comment. I am only too glad to contribute.

I am totally outraged by what is happening in the community. Mr Hemmings is totally correct and it is time the British Public woke up and smelt the stench that this country is wallowing in. Family Courts? Huh, Kangaroo Courts more like. Dangerous, corrupt, covert and disgraceful.

I am disgusted, enraged and desperately saddened by what I see and witness with my very own eyes. There for the grace of God go I. Not only am I witnessing a mum struggling to save her child (due for removal next week) but I myself went through similar.

Sadly this situation is not restricted to babies but to older children with special needs. Want proof? I can supply EVERYTHING you need.

Thank goodness Mr Hemmings has the courage of his convictions and has spoken up. Now let the rest of us talk about the disgraceful association known as SOCIAL SERVICES/FAMILY COURTS or should we rename them the DOMESTIC POLICE. Trouble is when you come into contact with them, there is no fair trial for any offence. Abuse the children, abuse the parents, abuse society, but who cares as long as targets are being met and COMMON PURPOSE is in place. Shut the parents up, scare them so much they have noone to turn to and then kill their spirit and their souls.

What place is the world becoming? ‘Every Child Matters’? I think not.

A social worker: 

In response to your views, I would like to point out that  social services uses the service of other professionals i.e. psychiatrists, guardians et litum, family support workers health professionals to assess the capability of a parent to be just that, a parent.

Social workers do not make the ultimate decision as to whether a child remains with their family. So therefore your comment which attacks social workers does very little for the plights of social workers who are faced with weighing the difficult decision to remove a child or not. Also a judge makes the final decision based on evidence from all sides and I have witnessed judges going in favour of the family against the LA’s recommendations.

As a social worker who is doing research at this unforesaken time in order to carry out a pre-birth and support plan to ensure that a unborn child is able to remain with their parent with all the available support possible. I find your comments appalling and surely shows your ignorance of past and recent enquiries into child deaths about the previous failings of all professionals who work within this field. Maybe if some of those dead children were removed, either fostered or adopted we would not have the issues that we are facing today.

The decision to keep children with their families, who clearly with all the support in the world will never manage to win prizes for being the best parent they can be, has resulted in a society where young people feel failed by the system that had the opportunity and power to help but failed to do so.  

Your comments also do very little to help build some much needed bridges between social workers and the families that we work with.

I don’t accept much from an MP who belongs to a party that supports cuts and fails to make any positive impact on those in society who are less fortunate. Take for example your party’s record in Lambeth - its been left in shambles due to your overspending and ignorance and scaremongering instead of doing the job you said you could do better than others. 

Please stick to bad mouthing your oppennts in the political arena and leave us social workers alone.

Suzanne Spooner:

(senior mental health worker for looked-after children)

I have worked as a social worker for many years and currently sit on an adoption panel.  In all my years as a social worker I have never once felt pressurised to remove a child from its family in order to meet targets - if anything there was at times a pressure to leave children at home when the potential harm to the child was unacceptable.

Whilst sitting on the adoption panel I have heard many cases of children who have been returned to the care of their parents time & time again - only to suffer further neglect and abuse and to end up back in the care system when they are older, more damaged by their experiences and harder to place.  The courts often seem to be biased in terms of the rights of the adults (especially the right to a family life), when surely the right of the child to grow up without experiencing abuse should be paramount.

The case referred to in the story where the cause of multiple fractures to a child was questionable is very hard to balance.  As a social worker I have been involved in similar cases and we do examine all the evidence very carefully and seek expert advice from medical professionals.  We do not remove children from their families lightly but we do have to consider the likelihood that the child may suffer harm, and also the potential seriousness of that harm.  I do feel for parents who have had their children wrongly removed but I do feel that there are few genuine cases of this in Britain.  As someone who has to be involved in these decisions and then has to go home and sleep at night I have always been concious that a wrong decision could lead to the death of a child, or them suffering years of abuse.  This leads me to ensure that I have as much evidence as possible before making such decisions.  Where there is a small element of doubt however, I will happily admit that I would rather err on the side of caution.

I wonder if Mr Hemming would leave his child in the care of a babysitter if the previous three children they had cared for had suffered serious injuries.  Although there may be reasonable explanations for the injuries I suspect he would opt to protect his child from potential harm.  He should think carefully before he criticises social workers & ensure that he fully understands the task we do.  His suggestion that social workers are encouraged to remove young babies in order to meet adoption targets is ludicrous!  The actual reason why children are now being removed at an earlier age is because we are increasingly aware of the long-term damage that can be done to very young babies and are seeking to prevent such damage occuring, rather than trying to fix it later.

Paul Martin, team manager, Parkside Child Care Team 

In order for an MP to make such a serious allegation, they must have put a considerable amount of time into understanding the processes of scrutiny that take place within a social services department and the court process in each and every care proceedings case. Can you describe these processes for the ‘layperson’ reader please?

Chris Stanstell: 

Whilst I do understand Mr Hemming acting on behalf of his constituents it is a huge leap from saying that as one child may have been wrongly removed from their birth parents then it must be the case that this is happening to more children because the numbers of children being adopted are rising. Mr Hemming also needs to act responsibly - what I mean by this that he should have researched the nationally published information on adoption before making such claims. If he had done so he would have found that the numbers of children dropped from over 27,000 at the beginning of the 70’s to under 3000 at the end of the 90’s. They started to increase as a result of the ‘Quality Protects’ initiative before the Government introduced national targets. A key objective of ‘Quality Protects’ was to ensure that children should be securely attached to an adult(s) and that if this was not their birth parent(s) or birth family then it should be through adoption. Mr Hemming also needs to be aware that there are many checks and balances in the child welfare system to ensure that children’s welfare is safeguarded and promoted - other professionals (eg designated doctors and independent experts), independent reviewing officers, adoption panels, CAFCASS officers, and courts (magistrates and judges). Are they incapable of making independent and informed decisions?

The national adoption statistics for 31/3/2006 show that 3700 children were adopted from care and that this was 3% less than the previous year. Additionally the average age of children at adoption was 4 years 1 month in 2005/06 and the commentary states that this has remained stable over the last 5 years. This is hardly an indication that babies are being snatched to meet adoption targets!

Mr Hemming is also wrong in fact, as now there is no national adoption targets in terms of the Government stating that ‘x’ numbers of children should be adopted from care or that an increase in ‘x’ % of children adopted from care should be achieved.

I have been in children’s social work in this country and the US for 36 years and for the last 15 years have managed adoption teams. Even though I have a passion for adoption I have an even greater passion to ensure that children’s welfare is safeguarded and promoted and this is usually best done by ensuring children are securely attached to their birth parents or birth family members.[I would add that this is a very strongly held value in social work and most social workers actively carry this out]. In making successful adoption placements it is important that adopters can be assured that everything has been done has been done to keep children with birth parents/birth family be feel that they are entitled to the child(ren). Social workers also know how vital this is as well to the adopted child as they grow up and for them as adopted adults.

If Mr Hemming wants to know more I am sure that myself and a number of social work practitioners would happily meet with him.

Chris Stansell

London

Sarah Prince, social worker: 

Perhaps Mr Hemming would like to resign as an MP, complete his social work training and show us just where we are going wrong…   It is outrageous that someone in public service  is able to make such an ill- judged emotive statement  that will serve the interests of no child.  I suggest that Mr Hemming evidences his statement with clear methodology and undisputable facts rather than spurious attempts at cause and effect or issues a public apology. 

Sandy Phoenix: 

I am replying to John Hemming. The case referred to in the press and on TV re fractures due to bone defficeny was very traumatising. However, I have been a social worker for twenty years and have sleepless nights as to other colleagues across social care worrying about children who remain at home as we do not have evidence to proceed and so to say SW’s snatch babies to meet targets is proposterous and it does not help the view of Sw’s held by those who we have to engsage with in an attempt to protect children. It seems important to publicise all figures so that the general public are aware of the amount of children who do come in to care due to abuse etc and perhaps this would help others to come forward to foster. There is Nationally a lack of foster-carers and programmes like the above without a balance of programmes and information in the press and media referring to the number of children removed due to abuse etc does not help the situation and will not encourage others to come forward.

I have voted liberal democrat as I was not going to vote Labourt after the Irag war but with comments likes this I will not be doing that again. Such comments are socially irresponsible. I do not have the time to do what I need to do let alone look to take children away from familes. Moreovoer, children removed have to go to foster care first. If i was Mr Hemmings I would be concerned what happens to those children as we have a lack of placements. Judegs tend to view the situation that we leave children with their familes to long and again comments like Mr Hemmings will not change this situation.

Anon: 

I am very angered by these comments.

I am a social worker in a child in need team, mainly working with children on a Child Protection plan, children being looked after and children who are being placed for adoption.

The very idea that I would take a baby from a loving and stable home is absolute rubbish, and again strikes at the very heart of social work which is about empowerment,  social justice and lots more, including the Childs welfare, which is paramount.

MP John Hemming should consider the consequences of such comments to all the families that we are dealing with. Many families really do benefit from Social work support and our aim is not to remove their children but to help families remain together.  My local council are looking at even more ways in which we can work together with families to enable them to bring up their children safely so that they do not have to be removed.

If we do have real concerns about parents abilities to care for their children we spend thousands and thousands of pounds on expert assessments, which help and guide the professionals to decide if the child/baby would suffer significant harm if cared for by their own parents. The judge then makes their decision based on

 i) the social workers report,  

ii) expert reports,  

iii) children’s guardian reports,  

iv) the parents solicitors,  

v) assessment reports  

vi) and any other interested parties.

I can say very very confidently that there has never been any directive in any of my care proceedings that adoption should take precedence, it is and should be the very last resort.

These comments by MP Hemming can only widen the fear that people have already about social work involvement, which is totally unfounded and his comments remain in the dark ages along with MP John Hemming.

Anon: 

As a Child Protection social worker I must point out to John Hemming that Social Workers do not have the ‘power’ to ‘snatch’ babies and it is up to Court who makes the final decision in many cases, unless parents agree to their children being placed in care.  From a personal point of view I find it distressing as a worker to take children away from their parents and I cant imagine what it must be like for parents and children to be separated.  Therefore as a Social Worker every consideration is given to the child remaining with ther parents unless there is a risk to the child  In these circumstances the child is then accommodated, BUT only after a multi-agency decision making meeting has taken place which is chaired by an independent reviewing officer. 

Therefore the decision to ‘ snatch’ children from the parent is not only a Social Workers decision but the decision of the Court, sometimes the parents, and many other professionals.  In addition a decision would never be made to ‘snatch’ children from good, stable, loving homes but only from homes where they are at risk of significant harm.

Anon: 

I have been a child protection social worker in a number of local authorities for nearly twenty years and I have never experienced or heard of decisions regarding a child’s removal from their parents being based on a hypothetical risk. In fact quite the opposite, I am increasingly concerned that babies are being left with carers who have quite clearly shown that they are not up to the task of safe parenting time and again because we are advised that with each new baby they need to be given a fresh opportunity to show that they have changed. I do not believe that this is child-focussed practice.

Ken Phillips Social Worker, Carrick Children’s Team, Truro, Cornwall 

I have 13 years experience in front line child protection work and have undertaken substantial work in family proceedings, some of which have led to adoptions.

I am happy to see MP’s taking an interest in our work but wonder whether Mr Hemmings has spent any time with a frontline operational  team so that he can better understand the reality of the jobs we do in the community.

This would perhaps make his perspective more informed and balanced and less distorted by the mixed agendas of pressure groups who oppose adoption in all situations  

Perhaps he could undertake to make such a visit to a local team in his district 

Martin Challender: 

It is really disappointing that an allegedly responsible politician should choose to make such an ill informed and ill judged comment as this. The fact is that thousands of Social workers across the country work extremely hard to try and maintain children with their families. Usually this hard work is carried out by teams which are, overstretched, understaffed and under-resourced. Sadly John Hemming appears to know very little about the way in which most councils operate as Child Protection and Adoption services are generally run separately so the suggested potential conflict of interest is extremely unlikely to arise. Perhaps he should try and find out a little bit more about some of the serious abuse issues which social workers have to deal with.

Darran Russell, social worker, Southampton City Council:

I have never felt pressured to remove children from their families in order to meet targets. I would be interested in seeing Hemming’s ‘clear evidence’ of children being removed to meet targets, I’m not convinced that this is even a policy operated by local authorities. As social workers, my colleagues and I are dedicated to making the right decisions to secure the safety and wellbeing of children. In most case this is preventative and supportive work to help children remain with their families. I find it insulting that John Hemming is making such sweeping statements towards a profession that struggles to maintain a positive public image despite the hard work and dedication of it’s workers.

Adam Wilson, Child Protection Conference Chairperson, Essex County Council: 

Without knowing about your campaign on this issue, I followed this up with John Hemming independently.  I had a decent correspondence over 5 emails back and forth.  He was unable to explain his figures, but eventually admitted that the fault, in his view, lay with the system, rather than individual social workers.  He does not think our court system of checks and balances with judges and Children’s Guardian’s works as they are likely to be collusive with social workers.  He said that, “There tend in professions to be professional loyalties that deter people from shopping their colleagues.  You cannot realistically expect the guardians to be relied upon for reporting bad practise”.

He ended by saying that “What is unique about public family law is that the details of proceedings remain covered by the contempt rules unless permission is given. I am saying that the system is fundamentally flawed.”

My aim in discussion with him was to encourage him to move away from inflammatory language directed at individual social workers.  I hope that I had some success by drawing him to this conclusion.

Chris Kijak, acting service manager, South West Adoption Network:

I’m puzzled by John’s comments and wonder where he got his information from.

It may be correct that there are more babies and young children being placed now than in 1995, but it’s erroneous to suggest these children are being wrongly placed placed for adoption and being “snatched “ from loving homes.

We know more these days about the harmful effects of substance abuse - drug and alcohol related - on small children and I’m sure far more children placed today have these factors in their backgrounds than we were aware of in 1995.  Perhaps more babies and young children should have been placed back then, if their birth families were unable to provide “good enough”

care, despite repeated attempts to provide support.  I sit on an Adoption Panel and know the enormous efforts made by childcare social workers to support parents to enable children to remain with their birth families if at all possible.  John also seems to be ignoring the Court process, where judges and magistrates need to be convinced by the evidence that a child should be removed against parental wish and placed for adoption and don’t automatically agree with local authorities.

I know many adults who wish they had been adopted or fostered, rather than brought up in their abusive birth families.

I’m interested in others’ response to this.

Lesley Singleton: 

I do not agree that children are being removed without good cause. I left front line children and families because I was refused permission to remove when clearly there was significant risk to the baby/child. I do agree that focus of protection is placed on younger children and those over 5 get left at risk and yes that is due to the government targets of preventing children from being in long term foster care. However I do agree that not enough is being done for parents who are not providing their children with good enough parenting. Also no money is being placed in preventative service and all the money is held in fostering and adoption to meet the targets. High case loads prevent practitioners from being able to work alongside parents to improve parenting and families power is being taken from them we need to utilise the skills of extended family members. Too much emphasis is placed on statistics.

Sam Christodoulou, social worker, CAFS Harlow 

I would like to suggest to Mr Hemming that IF the children were returned to the family and another one had suffered ambiguous injuries that could not be proven non accidental by health professionals – what might he have to say then?

 I would guess it would be along the lines of the usual media hype and blame faced by social services.

Damned if we do and damned if we don’t!

Moraene Roberts, Family member, ATD Fourth World: 

Dear Sir,

This is not a question.

I want to congratulate you on your courageous comments about the taking of children from loving families. I am a member of ATD Fourth World, an international human-rights-based anti-poverty organization that supports and empowers families experiencing long-term poverty. I have received years of support to keep my children with me and I am now part of the U.K. policy team.

Our main focus for several years has been supporting families who are, or are likely to be, subject to social services intervention - usually around issues of alleged neglect. This focus came about as a result of many years working with very poor families and the realization that their greatest struggle was in accessing the support services needed to help them to keep their children out of the care system from which many of the parents had emerged. This focus is as relevant today, if not more so, as it ever was. We are in touch with many families who are put under terrible pressure by services that are meant to help them and we are witness to the loss of far too many babies and children into care and to adoption. Because of the stigma attached to having a child taken and adopted without parental consent, parents feel forced into silence about their experiences. There are few people prepared to publicly champion the human rights of non-abusive families living in poverty to be allowed to raise their children without interference and intervention. When I read in Community Care magazine the report of your comments, I was heartened and wanted very much to thank you.

Yours sincerely,

Patrick Docherty: 

I would suggest that John Hemming needs to check his information before he goes into print making wild allegations against social workers. who are frankly a very easy target on account of the prevailing low esteem that the public have for the work that we do and this is maintained or magnified by individuals such as Mr. Hemming make public statements such as What is utterly unacceptable...is the clear evidence that social workers are literally snatching newborn babies and children from good, stable, loving homes.”

Mr. Hemming clearly has not taken the time to investigate the required process before making such comments and does not appear to Know that before a social worker can remove a child against parental consent it is necessary to first obtain a court order eg. Interim Care Order (the Children Act 1989 s38) and these are not undertaken lightly!!!

Paula Smith, social woker, chidlren and families social work:

I have never read anything so ridiculous, that practice certainly does not happen in this local authority, any social worker found to be trying to meet targets instead of doing what is best for the child should be struck off,  In my local authority I am unaware of  government adoption targets but maybe Scotland is different!

Von Coulter and Bee at unity-injustice.co.uk:

Hello John,

At Unity-Injustice we know your perceptions to be true, we see cases of just delivered mothers, being subjected to harrowing abuse just after delivery.

Basically the  build up to this, is no information for the parents,in the months and weeks before hand, leaving them on tender hooks while the social workers smooth over their reluntance to state yay or ney to them, because they already have it planned to step in and act as soon as delivery has taken place....

Court orders are slapped on the cots to state they “belong” to a said council. The only crime the mother feels she  has committed is giving birth here in Britain.

Should she be put in this position  to feel she has committed some sort of crime, then struck into confusion at what the earth it is, she has done wrong?

For example,  Any mother who has learning disabilities or disabled, managed unaided for many years, or a  mother that has rectified her life, should she be penalised for the past.

Or quiet plain and simply has never given anyone any notion of any failure what so ever at her ability to  being a good mother, to only have it recorded in reports , “the baby MAY be subjected to abuse in the future”....or “AT RISK of mother that MAY suffer post natal depression, then an order before returning home that baby is the property of the said council involved!

Is this not rather premature presumptions?

Could you please say also, do you feel too many funds are  going into “claiming these children to the state” then to actually, if the need be, to help these parents at home with a home service which is available but not widely used, due to no bonuses for the employees concerned if this “Ruling in social care in the community” was instrumented on a wider scale. After all, there are guidelines to this method to aid the service users, yet rarely is put into pratice?

Do you have any percentages  of  social service departments  helping families in their own homes BEFORE taking children into care, as too many families are not basically being even given a chance? This would reflect the extent of failure from social services to follow the guidelines set out for them before inflicting such harsh measures  as fostering and adoption.

Jackie O’Connell:

John Hemmings comments are ridiculous and do nothing for the moral of overworked social workers working in arguably the most difficult area of social work, dealing with very complex and emotive issues. Child protection social workers work hard to ensure that children’s needs are central to the process and that decisions are made in the best interest of the child.

I worked for three years until recently as a children’s social worker. I have never experienced any pressure to remove children from their families in order to provide children for adoption. Quite the reverse, since social workers work to the philosophy on the Children Act 1989 whereby the best place for the child is within the child’s own family. It is only when all other avenues have been exhausted and a child is at risk of significant harm do child protection procedures commence.

Child protection statutory agencies have a great deal of difficulty recruiting and retaining staff and comments such as Mr Hemmings do very little to improve the situation.

Debbie Labrosse Team Manager Wyke area family resource centre. 

I think this is an appalling statement made by Hemmings, the figures for children under 5 coming into may have increased, this is not about reaching targets, but about safeguarding the welfare of children. I manage a team, where we have recently had a number of babies who were removed at birth and placed in care and subsequently placed for adoption. This was after a pre-birth assessment had been completed with  recommendations that a number of parents could not care for their babies due to chronic drug use and their life styles. The courts and the best interest panel need evidence that supports the decision that there are no alternatives other adoption. I think Hemmings needs to understand the process that social workers have to undertake in order for children to be adopted, then he may not be so rash in his critscm of social workers.

Rosie Jakob, CAFCASS:

As someone who has worked in the child protection arena for the past fifteen years, I have never come across any social worker, good or bad, who has been eager to remove a baby at birth, no matter what the concerns. These kind of decisions are made with a considerable level of analysis and assessment. Even when babies are removed at birth, great efforts are then made to consider whether the child and parents can be reunited or placed with extended family.There may be mistakes made but they are rare in my experience.

Mr Hemming’s comments are the type of scaremongering that ensures that social workers’ efforts to build trusting and workable relationships with families are further obstructed. As for adoption targets being met - i could list numerous babies who have been waiting in care for adopters for some time and any child older than two is generally difficult to place.

Viv Stuart, acting team manager adoption, Barnsley: 

Crazy idea, baby snatching, absolutely not!! We are trying to improve placement of children who need adoption so they can have permanent families but most of those are from families with multilple problems, older children and with complex needs. I think our babies have dropped in nos. in the last few years. If a social worker presented a baby to adoption panel from a happy stable family they would be sent packing.

Elaine King: 

words fail me! The court makes the decision about whether there is enough evidence to indicate that a child is not safe and needs to be cared for by others . the idea that social workers are snatching babies to fill adoption quotas is absolutely ridiculess.

Dammed if you do /Dammed if you don’t

Ruth Mueller: 

I’m one of the german Social Workers who have been recruited to fill in the gaps of the social work posts. i am really amazed by the feed back from the public and now even MP’s.

We just can not get it right can we? It does not really matter if we take Children into care, which makes us ‘child snatchers’ or if we don’t take them into care because that makes us to ‘allies’ of abusing parents who’ side we’re taking.

Long live BBC- Brittains Blame Culture- and may you never fail to point the finger at the people who may have to do the dirty work, but very often don’t really make the desissions as they are ruled by inspections, performance indicators, budgets and sometimes even bad management rater then by the welfare of the children who should be paramount.

But just let me tell you discouraging people to become Social workers will only increase the caseloads further and bring up more bad assessments as there is such an ammount of work which is simply not manageable.

(- By the way an adoption is acompanied by such an ammount of paperwork, that I do not think too many Social workers will volounter to go though it if they do not see a need for it-)

Miss Rozier:

Dear John,

I completely support your recent comments and i think clear investigation is needed.

I am a practicing social worker primarily with physical impairments however adults with Physical Impairments are an extreme target with regards to babys and small children and it is becoming a little concerning.

An example i went out on a community care assesment friday, to a young family, mother is 22 with Cerebral Paslsy and slight learning difficulty however college educated with prospects a husband and 12 week old baby, a child care worker had been into the care environment and deemed that the way in which the family were living and taking care of the baby was not to HER standards and therfore the continuing care team started care proceedings, i was asked to go out and see if before it got to this to see if could provide a parenting package to assist them... when in reality the couple are managing just fine, the baby was clean, well fed, happy and a bundle of joy - the parents were coping had engaged in their own support networks with surestart amongst other groups and i identifed no risk at all.

I think a point to be made is that practioners today are self analysing situations based on their own living, their own opinions on how others should live, yes there is a clear line between good care and bad care but i think some of us are forgetting our normal is not the normal in which we are supposed to be assessing upon. we are suppose to asssit family units to remain together not take away at any given opportunity!

Liz McAteer, independent social worker 

As a social worker of over 20 years standing, who has removed children permanently from their families, can you supply me with the research information which allows you to make such certain statements about how and why social workers remove children inappropriately from their families in order to meet adoption targets?

In all cases decisions to remove children permanently are made by a multi professional process, have you ‘shadowed’ a social work or CAFCASS team? What have you to say about other agencies roles in the decision making process?

Do you know that in many instances, social workers are often faced with pressure to leave children at home in abusive situations, in order to meet the targets of reducing the numbers of ‘looked after’ children?

Perhaps you would like to meet front line workers face to face to explore this subject more fully, if so I would be only too pleased to attend.

Julie Ensor: 

I am unsure what planet this person appears to be living on, but clearly its not the one that I live on.

To place a child for adoption is the must difficult process that there is and it should remain as such. In the five years that I have been a social worker I have placed 5 children for adoption. Everyone one of those children could not live with their birth family for many different reason. The independant Adoption Agency, the Decison Maker and the Court where satisfied that the children “ought to be placed for adoption” so why is Mr  Hemmings suggesting  that SW’S  care about any targets! ( I sleep fairly well at night knowing that what I do is the right thing, the only reason I lay awake is because I hope I am not going to have a file audit/ paperwork/ paperwork and paperwork).

The targets that are  set, on just about everything, is realy the deal of the people who set them, If they want to spend all day collecting this rubbish and have got nothing better to do then that really is for them.

I just have not got the time to think about such rubbish that means nothing.

If someone has any spare time then they are welcome to send the resources to the “front line” to assist in admin tasks, and paper chasing, possibly for the numbers counting that they are on about.ZZZZZZZZZZ zzzzzzz......

I think that Mr Hemmings is confusing Social Workers with people who care about the numbers game, maybe some people have to pretend that they do., clearly I am not one of them!! The Social Workers that I know attempt ( and its not easy) to ensure that the welfare needs of the client is the prority, if that has to be adoption, then so be it.  ( the aformentioned will soon tell you if you are right or not)

As highlighted above to get there ( adoption) is difficult and  should remain so to ensure that the children are not removed from their birth family, unless they absolutley have to be.

To say that SW’s baby snatch from the arms of mother’s as they have just given birth is an awful thing to say and in my expereince is not the way in which SW’s would act.

I wonder if Mr Gorden Brown is going to mention the SW word? have not heard anything that could aspire me to think that he will.

Anon: 

What a complete and utter load of rubbish! 

Don’t you think that given the negative press social workers have received when following a risk assessment, a child is left with a so called “loving family” and ends up dead? 

We are living in a society that is becoming increasingly fearful of litagation, therfore local authortiies and social workers find themselves in a position where they dare not leave a child in a family if there is any concern about risk, no matter how small. 

And, lets not forget that it is the Courts which ultimately decide whether or not to make a child subject to a Care Order and/or Adoption Order, not the social worker.

Brian Sexton: 

If what is being alleged here has any basis of truth, why hasn’t it been taken seriously up to now.  This should have been headline news.  Has the information been presented to news programmes such as BBS Radio’s Today programme or Panorama?   Maybe it is even necessary to sink to the Daily Mail and the like to get publicity.  I really can’t believe that everyone is ignoring this, and has been for many years.

I can certainly believe that this could be a possibility, yet another negative side effect of the Government’s beloved targets, so the publicity profile has to be raised to make sure it is fully investigated.  What has prevented this from happening for all these years?

I will certainly be happy to support any campaign to raise the profile of this dreadful situation to establish the truth of it

Anon: 

As if social workers have nothing else to do than take kids into care, we only doit for the best intrest of the child. I think he shold try and work with in a social services department then he might know what he is talking about

Sally Attwood: 

Questions for John Hemming.

In response to the article in Community Care, referring to John Hemming’s views that Local Authorities are ‘snatching’ young children from good enough families, is he aware of the following;

a) the very rigorous standards of evidence required to be reached before a Court will agree that all prospects of the family of a child being helped to change in order to provide a safe and nurturing environment for a child to grow up in have been exhausted?

b) the length of time that child care cases take to go through the courts, during which time social service workers continue to work with the families to attempt to achieve change?

I would agree that there have been, and sadly will probably continue to be, a very small number of cases where a tragic  error is made - often connected to medical evidence - and that every effort should be made to avoid this, as the best option for all children is that they should, wherever possible, grow up in their own birth family.

Is he aware of how hard social workers work to  support families, before taking the step to initiate legal proceedings that will then lead to a care order, only if the evidence is sufficient to cross the threshold required in law?

If his views about Social Service Department heads wanting to improve their statistics of children adopted from the Looked After Child population  have even a shred of  truth in them, does he think that the moral integrity of social workers can be so easily corrupted?

Whilst I would agree that it is easier to place younger children for adoption, this is because many, many more families come forward requesting adoption assessments for the younger children, than people willing to consider starting family life with a child aged 6 or above.

Tricia Evans: 

I am a Social Worker in a duty & assessment team in Child Protection and although my job is extremely stressful I have never felt pressure to remove a child from a home unless there is evidence to show that the child is at significant risk of harm. We are aware that a child fares better within their home environment and should remain there wherever it is possible.

As a Social Worker we are ‘dammed if you do and dammed if you don’t’ it would be nice once in a while for someone to appreciate the commitment of most Social Workers and give some encouragement to the hard and sensitive work we do.

Clive Birkhamshaw, QRS Group Manager, Greenwich Children’s Social Care Division,

 I feel no pressure to meet adoption ‘targets’; am aware of very few cases in my 33 year social work career in which children have been removed without good reason; would note that they can not in any case be removed without a court being convinced of the likelihood of significant harm; and have often come across the far greater problem of children being left for too long in families which have caused them significant harm, so that when they do end up in care their prospects of recovery are bleak.

Anon: 

I suggest that this man gets out to Local Authorities and other agencies that deal with children finding homes and see at the coal face, what social workers have to go through to get a child removed from birth parents.  Having worked within local authority children’s services for the past 25 years I can assure him that the opposite is true and too many children are left with parents who are not capable of caring and nurturing their children.  Social workers have to jump through hoops to place in foster placements and if adoption is considered, have to satisfy the court that adoption/long term care is in the child’s best interest as well as having to document what has been offered by local authority social workers to enable a birth parent to care for his/her child. 

It is people like Mr Hemming that makes social workers job much more difficult and stressful with scathing comments that children are being abducted.  He would not last a month in a busy assessment team or child protection team in the vast majority of local authorities in London.  What angers staff even more is that Directors of social services do not go out and challenge statements such as Hemming spews out in the media, their silence adds weight to the comments in the minds of the public who have little understanding of what social workers do in caring for children at risk or in public care.

Jill Merriott, Senior Practitioner C&F Duty Team, Kent

Is John Hemming familiar with the Working Together To Safeguard Children (HM Government 2006)???

Why oh why does an MP not know that social workers do not have the power to “snatch” children. He is only fuelling the public perception that this is what we do.

Any applications that are put before the courts by local authorities are based on multi-agency decisions decisions ( as per working together) and it is the courts that decide if children can be removed from their parents. Social workers can only make recommendations.

Steve H, someone who has been involved in child care social work for many years:  

In response to the comments made by the MP anyone who has been involved in child care social work for any length of time will know that social workers are under more pressure to not remove children as the cost of looking after them is something that local authorities do not wish to face.............. thresholds are therefore quite high!

What he is quoting is seriously flawed.

Carol Behenna 

Didn’t even know we had targets. Social workers don’t get involved with targets unless they are in adoption team and I have never heard of an adoption worker snatching or removing babies.

Christine Maynard, social worker, Welcare in Croydon 

I think that statement is dangerous and completely without thought or evidence.  Social workers do not make the decision to remove children.  These decisions are and must be presented to a court of law where if there is evidence of risk to any child or likelihood of harm then the decision is made to remove the child for their own protection, by the courts.  The idea that Social Workers could make the decision to remove children from loving stable homes to fulfill an adoption quota for their team is preposterous.

Anon

The proposal that social workers are literally ‘tearing new born babies from their mothers arms’ is preposterous.

As an Adoption manager in a local authority who do indeed have a high percentage of Looked After children placed for adoption, I can assure you that in each case we have tried extremely hard to re-unite the child with its birth parents or in its extended family. Social workers assessments are also examined carefully by the courts - we do not and indeed cannot simply place children for adoption without clear evidence. Where is John Hemmings evidence to the contrary?

A childs birth parents have many opportunities to put forward their evidence and it is not uncommon for numerous assessments to be carried out within the extended family - to ensure that all possibilities are considered.

Often young children are difficult to place for adoption - as there are frequently uncertain prognosis about their health or development and the issues in relation to their birth family history is the same whatever the childs age.

I would be grateful if these comments could be forwarded

 Anon: 

Never have I read such ridiculous comments as those in this article.

Clearly the author is not a practising social worker out there in the field.  Could it not be the case that the increase in adoptions from care is as a direct result of clearer social work practices under the provisions of the new Children Act?  Further, the New act places a significant emphasis on retaining children permanently within their families of origin even when parents are unable to provide direct care or safety.  Certainly in my direct experience this is the case and Local Authorities are increasingly supporting children young people permanently within their extended families via Residence Orders and Special Guardianship arrangements.  It is my opinion that this article expounds a biassed and uninformed view of children, particularly very young in the care system.

David Lawrence 

I absolutely agree with the view that children are being inappropriately removed from families.

I worked in as a social worker in child protection for 15 year before taking a sideways step after becoming so disillusioned  with how things were going.

I agree that adoption targets are one cause - it dictates what is seen as good enough parenting not professional assessment.

However of at least equal significance is the safety first approach that is prevalent in children services.  

I was taught as a young inexperienced social worker to ‘first do no harm’ and to accept that social services intervention in a child’s life is inherently harmful and therfore there must be benefits that outweigh this impact.

There is now a view that all parents are suspect.

Removing children from their families is obviously sometimes necessary but again needs to be regarded as a last not a first resort.

The quality of care provided by social services is variable being both excellent and poor but essentially Social Services are poor parents in many ways.

An example is the quality of aftercare.

I have a son of 23 and a daughter of 25 and whilst pretty independent still need support occasionally.

Social Services abandon people they have cared for, sometimes for years, as soon as possible without any assessment of their ability to cope.

Finally adoption can be a very positive experience but it has it’s downside as I witnessed during my role as counselling adults who were tracing their natural parents.

So again it should be the last not first resort

Anon: 

I would like to ask a couple of things here:

1. Do you believe that Social Workers may be overstretched and because of the Victoria Climbe case cannot afford to ‘take the risk’ of working with those families who are having their children taken from them.

2. There has been a story in the media recently, of a couple with learning difficulties having their baby son taken from them. Would it be fare to say that perhaps some of those babies being taken for adoption could be babies who’s parents may have learning disabilities/difficulties.

3. Do you think there should be new guidelines for social workers working within child protection on issues of ‘working to target’ in relation to adoptions?

Amos I. Okafor, Senior Practitioner, Children & Young Peoples’ Service 

I strongly disagree with this notion that Local Authorities are snatching children from good parents capable of providing “good enough parenting”. Social workers do a very difficult job in safeguarding and protecting vulnerable children from suffering neglect and abuse, the claim that social workers are snatching children to meet adoption targets to my mind is absurd.

People like the MP should commend social workers for the job that they do than sit at the parliament making baseless accusation that is unfounded.

Paul Brewster, Trainee social worker, Waverly Locality Team 

John,

I am a social worker of 21 years experience working with children and families in statutory agencies. I currently work in the Family Courts where the final decisions to adopt a child, are made. I find your comments quite astounding, and I do not find that they match my experience in any way. Have you based your views on a good body of evidence, or just a handful of anecdotal information? Do you accept how much more difficult it could make an already extremely complex job, if views such as these are publicised without first being tested against the reality of the situation?

 If for one moment we give you the benefit of the doubt with regard to your assertion that “...newborn babies and children [are being snatched] from good, stable, loving homes.”, can we please have a response from you with regard to the following point?  It is actually the court (or in some circumstances a police officer) who authorises the child’s removal.  It could be argued that the social work perspective is given great emphasis in the court room, however the events that lead up to an application are considered in an inter-professional way (ie: Child Protection Conferences and Core Group Meetings).  Therefore even if local authorities were trying to gain advantage from removing children we would have to argue the point with our colleagues from health, education, the voluntary sector, CAFCASS and many others.  Not to mention a couple of highly paid barristers and a judge.  Given that this is the case, why do you place the blame, if indeed there is any, firmly at social workers?

Please note that the opinions voiced in this question are my own and do not represent either my employer (Surrey County Council) or my university (Reading).

Anon
If Mr Hemming really thinks that the Courts are making Orders to allow the removal of children on grounds that the ‘mother might get post-natal depression’ or that the child ‘is at risk of emotional abuse in the future’ then he is catastrophically ill-informed. Is he perhaps a Daily Mail reader who believes that social workers can waltz into someone’s home and remove a child on a whim (or to meet the adoption targets he refers to)? Does Mr Hemming realise that social workers need to meet the threshold laid down in the Children Act 1989 before a Court considers making an Order? Is he aware that the primary goal of Children and Family Services departments is to keep families together and that children are removed, on the Order of a Court, as a last resort? That even when children have been removed the social worker is obliged to consider rehabilitation plans?

The very fact that Mr Hemming refers to ‘social services departments’ when, as an elected member of the House of Commons, he should be expected to know that all Local Authorities were obliged to bring together their Education and Social Services departments together to form Children’s Services Directorates by the 2004 Act, is a very clear indication of the calibre of Member that the good people of Mr Hemming’s constituency enjoy. 

Sarah Welsh, independent social worker and provider of social work resources: 

I find the suggestion that anyone working in social care would consider targets before a child’s welfare, insulting, unrealistic and contrary to our profession’s Code of Conduct.  Furthermore, social workers do not ‘snatch’ any child or make decisions about adoption.  These are made by a court based upon evidence, professional opinions and assessments provided by people from a range of disciplines. Yes, young white healthy babies are adopted more easily, but this does not signify a correlation between this fact and and their placement for adoption.

Funding should not be related to targets either, but rather to need.

Susan A. Clark, team manager, support and supervision:
Social Workers work within legislation. In terms of Scottish legislation no social worker can “snatch” any child. Removal from parents even direct from hospital at birth requires an order granted by Sheriff. I suggest this MP needs to check process and legislation

Anon: 

I am concerned about the comment made and would like to know what the evidence is?  Social workers do not work in a vacuum.  There are many professionals and procedures before removing a baby. Furthermore social workers are more concerned about children’s wellbeing than any statistics.  Do you feel that we are statisticians or people who actually care about the care of young people?

Nikki Underwood, Gloucestershire: 

This suggestion that Departments are endorsing the removal of children from stable environments in order to meet targets is absolutely outrageous.

I am a Social Worker in a Looked After Children Team and am involved in the adoption process for children. 

The fact is that these children will be subject to lengthy child protection processes including care proceedings that take many many months and involve professionals acting on behalf of the parents seperate to those of the children and of the local authority and that independent psychological assessments of the parenting capacity based on evidence are a major part of the process.  The care proceedings alone are extremely complicated and lengthy and require social workers to have water-tight evidence that has been gathered over a prolonged period of time - however, the difference now is that since the new Adoption Act, the adoption process now runs alongside the care proceedings where it is believed adoption will be the best option.

The situation relating to new born babies is less complicated in that these babies often do no leave hospital with their parents but go into the care of foster parents - this will be based on evidence that the parents would be unable to care for this child - again this will be based on factual information that is gathered from a variety of sources and stringent checks that are based on how the parents are able to care for themselves, other children they may have and whether they have been able to safeguard the unborn child through their actions whilst the baby is in-utero.

The parents of these babies are usually ones who have a history of drug misuse, alcohol misuse, severe domestic violence where the safety of other children or the unborn baby has been at risk of significant harm or have demonstrated that they are a risk to the immediate safety of children because of violence or risk of sexual abuse.

What we have to remember is that it is not the parents’ rights that we need to focus on but the rights’ of the child to be protected from harm and where parents cant or wont take steps to protect their children then the local authorities have to.  These parents will also have been given many opportunities and a lengthy period of time to improve their behaviours which place children at risk - they will have been monitored over lengthy periods of time and subject to support and guidance to improve.  As social workers we hold the belief that the best place for children is with their birth parents where at all possible, however, their safety must be paramount. 

If ‘John’ would care to visit some of the social work departments and actually experience for himself some of the cases that we work with, he might then see that there have been many children over the years who have been done a misjustice and have not been given the opportunity to develop as healthy and happy children who have the potential to achieve, because the care proceedings process takes such a long time and is quite cumbersom that by the time adoption is on the cards many of the children are hugely damaged as a result of their home life.  It is for this reason that babies, where it is evidenced that they are at risk of significant harm if they remain with their birth parents, are placed in foster care from the outset and then on to adoptive parents relatively quickly and the process is much smoother so that they have a greater chance  of a life where they can thrive and not just survive.

I can only comment that ‘John’s’ viewpoint is antequated and ill-informed and people who are prepared to make these sort of judgements should be prepared to see for themselves exactly what social worker’s have to go through to safe guard children.  This process is also not without sacrifice for the professionals involved, as it is extremely traumatic to work on an adoption case at times - we are not monsters, most of us have children of our own!

Zoe Holman, senior social worker: 

I am very concerned that an MP is making these allegations about Social Workers snatching children from stable families. 

It is very important to remember that Social Workers cannot ‘snatch children’ but that the Court makes the decision based on evidence whether the child is at risk of significant harm or not.  Social Workers have no powers to remove children without parental consent or Court Orders.  Ex Parte Emergency Protection Orders are extremely difficult to arrange now because of human rights issues and case law, which leaves children in vulnerable positions when they are at risk.  I am not aware of any targets that my local authority has to meet in terms of the number of children in Local Authority Care and placed for adoption.  If anything, in my experience, we are working hard to return children to their families providing it is safe to do so and it is much more difficult to separate children from their parents nowadays, even when the concerns are clear.  A lot of money is therefore spent on residential assessments and parent child foster placements (at a cost of £3000 per week) when actually it is clear that the parent is unfortunately not able to parent this child in the long term.  If we have to accommodate children, we always look at placing children within their own families.  Why on earth would we want to remove children unless there was a good reason and grave concerns?   The reason for the increase in children who are accommodated swiftly moving to adoption is that we are getting better at promoting optimum outcomes for the children who really cannot return to their birth families.  A quick move for the young children enables them to settle with permanent carers so they can form attachments to those carers - which is crucial for their long term well-being.  However, it is not as if we bi-pass the Court system, which can often be long processes and it is ultimately the Court that makes the decision.

It annoys me that an MP is fuelling the negative public perception of Social Workers - when infact we have little power.  This makes families more frightened to work with us, which leads to little change being made, risks increasing and the likelihood of needing to accommodate the children increasing.  Mr Hemming’s comments therefore could ultimately lead to more children being accommodated, as parents refuse to work with us because they are so frightened.  I have to say that I have worked with more cases where the child has returned home than where they are adopted, and I work mostly with babies and toddlers and ‘children under 5.’  Maybe if the family court system was open to the ‘public’ - they would understand what really happens in terms of how much opportunity birth parents do have to look after their children (which is right) and how children are often left in situations that place them at risk, leading to greater difficulties later on in life.

Ann Tyson, adoption support social worker: 

As a an ex child protection Social Worker, who worked in a hospital social work team, I find the MP’s statement outrageous, professionally insulting and above all so completely untrue and based on ‘urban myth’ that I am shocked that he has aired the view.

Figures as anyone knows, but politicians certainly do know, can be interpreted in any manner of ways, particularly if you have a bias or slant in mind when you review such things.

I was never under pressure to meet government targets, nor to hurry through adoptions of white children under 5 to the ‘army of adopters’ waiting. Factually there is a national shortage of both foster carers and adopters, and because of this the use of kinship carers(Birth family carers) has developed, very successfully in many areas.

For any child to be ‘removed at birth’ a Court, following the review of evidence from multiagency professionals, has to grant permission for their removal, but only if it believes the evidence before it proves there is a significant risk of harm.

I believe the MP in question should apologise to the profession for making such a defamatory statement.

Attacking a profession, that is universally unpopular because of years of media and political assault, which is deeply misunderstood, very unfashionable, and largely without a right of reply is such an easy unthinking thing to do, but the damage of his ill conceived words will mean more Social Work shortages and MORE children at risk.

Sue Williams, registered social worker: 

This is just a typical soundbite from an MP who is anxious to raise his profile. Anyone who has had to take children into care, would never do it just to meet government targets and it is an outrageous slur to suggest otherwise. I’m not saying the courts, social workers or doctors are infallible and mistakes are never made but I would want to see what evidence John Hemming has for his assertions. Certainly from the days when I was a frontline practitioner, care was the last resort and family circumstances had to be very abusive and damaging before children were removed. Moreover the majority of children were placed with other family members.

Perhaps someone should offer John Hemming the opportunity to spend some time in a busy Safeguarding and Assessment office. He may come to temper his views but I don’t suppose he will be keen to do this. After all ‘social workers do a good job’ is hardly headline news.

Chris Brazendale: 

Mr Hemmings produces no evidence for the allegations he makes.  All my colleagues and everyone involved in Child Protection / Adoption take these difficult decisions extremely seriously and practice based on evidence. 

It maybe true that certain managers see adoption as an easy route out of “Care” but I never felt pressured to do this and have like most colleagues worked hard to keep families together.  Even if it were so there are many internal and external checks on adoption being the plan and it has to be in the child’s best interests.  My experience of Childcare Judges is that they take their duties very seriously also.

Mr Hemmings doesn’t know what he’s talking about but why let that get in the way of old fashioned Social Worker bashing as you climb the greasy pole?

Leon Wolszczak Assessment team manager, wallasey 

Before making such an outrageous statement it may be beneficial to speak to someone in social care about what is involved in our daily work. As a manager of an assessment team I spend much of my day refusing to accept parents looking for their children to be looked after. Your argument that ‘” it seems to follow that…” is terribly flawed. There is a vast amount of work involved in a child being adopted which is constantly checked by a variety of agencies, panels boards, courts etc.

If you didn’t represent the liberal democrat party I would have simply dismissed this as raving, but I would have thought you would know better.