torsdag 9 maj 2013

dailymail: How social services are paid bonuses to snatch babies for adoption

Parents who ends up under scrutiny of socialservices wrong convictions, has to fight alone against a whole army of crazy government workers and politicians and that's an impossible mission. The social services destroys families and their future, and nobody with mandate to do something about it seems to care.

"Meanwhile, millions of pounds of taxpayers' money has been given to councils to encourage them to meet high Government targets on child adoptions.
Under New Labour policy, Tony Blair changed targets in 2000 to raise the number of children being adopted by 50 per cent to 5,400 a year.
The annual tally has now reached almost 4,000 in England and Wales - four times higher than in France, which has a similar-sized population.
Blair promised millions of pounds to councils that achieved the targets and some have already received more than £2million each in rewards for successful adoptions.
Figures recently released by the Department for Local Government and Community Cohesion show that two councils - Essex and Kent - were offered more than £2million "bonuses" over three years to encourage additional adoptions.
Four others - Norfolk, Gloucestershire, Cheshire and Hampshire - were promised an extra £1million.
This sweeping shake-up was designed for all the right reasons: to get difficult-to-place older children in care homes allocated to new parents.
But the reforms didn't work. Encouraged by the promise of extra cash, social workers began to earmark babies and cute toddlers who were most easy to place in adoptive homes, leaving the more difficultto-place older children in care.
As a result, the number of over-sevens adopted has plummeted by half.
Critics - including family solicitors, MPs and midwives as well as the wronged families - report cases where young children are selected, even before birth, by social workers in order to win the bonuses.
More chillingly, parents have been told by social workers they must lose their children because, at some time in the future, they might abuse them.
One mother's son was adopted on the grounds that there was a chance she might shout at him when he was older.
In Scotland, where there are no official targets, adoptions are a fraction of the number south of the border, even allowing for the smaller population.
What's more, the obsessive secrecy of the system means that the public only occasionally gets an inkling of the human tragedy now unfolding across the country.
For at the heart of this adoption system are the family courts, whose hearings are conducted behind closed doors in order to protect the identity of the children involved.
Yet this secrecy threatens the centuries-old tradition of Britain's legal system - the principle that people are innocent until proven guilty beyond all reasonable doubt.
From the moment a mother is first accused of being incapable as a parent - a decision nearly always made by a social worker or doctor - the system is pitted against her.
There are no juries in family courts, only a lone judge or trio of magistrates who make decisions based on the balance of probability.
Crucially, the courts' culture of secrecy means that if a social worker lies or fabricates notes or a medical expert giving evidence makes a mistake, no one finds out and there is no retribution.
Only the workings of the homeland security service, MI5, are guarded more closely than those of the family courts.
From the time a child is named on a social services care order until the day they are adopted, the parents are breaking the law - a crime punishable by imprisonment - if they tell anyone what is happening to their family.
Anything from a chat with a neighbour to a letter sent to a friend can land them in jail.
And many have found themselves sent to prison for breaching court orders by talking about their case.
As High Court judge Mr Justice Munby told MPs last year: "It seems quite indefensible that there should be no access by the media, and no access by the public, to what is going on in courts where judges are, day by day, taking people's children away."
However, it is not only secretive and publicly unscrutinised family courts that are creating an injustice in our adoption system.
There is a more worrying factor involved. Look at the official figures. Why are they so high? Is it really true that more mothers are becoming potential killers or abusers?
Or are the financial bonuses offered to councils fuelling the astonishing rise in forced adoptions?
John Hemming, a Liberal Democrat MP campaigning to change the adoption system, said yesterday: "I have evidence that 1,000 children are wrongly being seized from their birth parents each year even though they have not been harmed in any way.
"The targets are dangerous and lead to social workers being over-eager.
"The system's secrecy hides any wrongdoing. One has to ask if a mother is expected to have problems looking after her baby, why doesn't the State help her instead of taking her child away?"
The MP's concerns are echoed by the Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services (AIMS), a body which advises new mothers.
Spokeswoman Beverley Beech insists: "Babies are being removed from their mothers by social workers using any excuse.
"We strongly suspect this is because newborns and toddlers are more easily found homes than older children. They are a marketable commodity.
"I know of social workers making up stories about innocent mothers simply to ensure their babies are put up for adoption.
"Suitable babies are even being earmarked when they are still in the womb."


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