Children stolen for forced adoption

[torchy]

the can be only one principal...................

[wouldntyouliketoknow]

1. How many internationally qualified social workers have you appointed
over the last three years? Kent County Council has employed 101 qualified
social workers.
2. How many such social workers have left your Department? 19
3. How many do you employ at the present time? 82

4. What are their countries of qualification?


American 20
Belgium 1
Bulgarian 1
German 16
Hungarian 1
Portuguese 9
Romanian 27
Spanish 5
Swedish 2
Total 82


5. If such social workers are on time limited contracts or have time
limited immigration status do you have any plans to replace them and, if
so, what are they?

The American social workers have a time limited work permit/certificate of
sponsorship which expires 2013. The requirement for such workers, and
whether to retain them, will be assessed before this point against
business need and the prevailing job market.

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/s ... ing-214920

[wouldntyouliketoknow]

Court orders hundreds of children should be removed from parents

HUNDREDS of children from 220 families were put up for adoption in Northern Ireland without the consent of their parents or guardians during a six year period, it can be revealed today.

The figure was obtained by The Detail as part of an investigation into our family court system.
The “freeing orders” were made during the years 2005-2010 and in each of the 220 family cases more than one child may have been freed for adoption. They may not all result in a final adoption order being made.
Many other life changing decisions are regularly made behind closed doors within these courts.
As well as children being taken away from their families, custody battles are fought, allegations of abuse within families are dealt with and plans for forced marriages involving young people have also been thwarted.
The family courts currently fall within the Department of Finance and Personnel (DFP) but discussions are currently taking place between officials in DFP and the Department of Justice about the transfer of a range of civil powers.
Judges who sit in the Family Division of the High Court have jurisdiction to hear the most complex cases relating to children and they also hear appeals from family proceedings courts and cases transferred from the county courts or family proceedings courts.
The press is allowed to report on proceedings in our criminal courts, including rape cases where the victim automatically receives lifelong anonymity, but reporters cannot attend proceedings centred on families.
In England, family courts have been opened up to the press but serious restrictions on what can be reported often mean that few journalists attend.

A leading media lawyer interviewed by The Detail says that change is essential and warns that the current situation means that serious injustice could go unreported.
However, Justice Minister David Ford appears to have already ruled out Northern Ireland following in England’s footsteps and opening up the family courts to the media.
He told The Detail: “I have never been convinced by the argument that the media should have access to family court proceedings. It is difficult to see how this can be reconciled with putting the interests of the child first."
The British and Irish Legal Information Institute (BAILII) publishes court decisions online including judgments made by the Northern Ireland High Court of Justice Family Division. The decisions – which are anonymised – give a fascinating insight into the family court proceedings.
So far this year, five family division judgments have been published online.

The cases include a freeing order for a two-year-old girl, an abduction return order, care proceedings relating to sisters aged seven and one, a ruling on a mother’s attempt to relocate to Romania with her three-year-old child and non-molestation proceedings brought by a 14-year-old girl against her former boyfriend.
The cases dealt with by the High Court of Justice Family Division in 2010 include a ruling which allowed a mother to relocate to Australia with her two children.
Another case centred on a three-year-old boy, a Portuguese national, born here.
He was left in Northern Ireland aged two by his mother who returned to Portugal. His father was in prison in Portugal. The boy was left, purportedly on a temporary basis, with a friend of his mother’s but ended up in foster care. The court decided to begin a care plan to enable him to move to live with his aunt in Portugal. This is likely to include freeing him for adoption. At the time of the hearing, the toddler could only speak English.
In March last year, a forced marriage protection order was made in the case of two girls aged 12 and 14 living in Northern Ireland who were British of Pakistani descent. It is alleged that the girls’ two brothers had already been forced to marry during a trip to Pakistan in 2005.

In April 2010, the High Court Family Division rejected a mother’s claim that her son was conceived as a result of rape. This was used by her as a reason to refuse the father contact with their child.
Important statements are often made by judges during family court hearings but, due to the private nature of the proceedings, these are not routinely heard by the public.
Justice Weir dealt with a case in June 2010 where a health trust had applied to the court for a determination on whether non-accidential injuries to a child were deliberately inflicted.
“Significant bruising” was found by a doctor on the youngest of three siblings at a time when the two older children had just returned to their mother after time in foster care.
The mother originally said the boy fell from a climbing frame but then changed this account to say she lost her temper and pulled him down the steps of bunk beds. She said she did not put this explanation forward at first because she was terrified that this “momentary loss of control would result in my children being taken away from me forever”.

Justice Weir’s postscript to the case concludes: “I am often struck in these cases by the paucity of such help for parents in the community, especially for parents who lack familial support. By comparison, the level of help and respite provided for foster carers seems for some reason to be very much greater.
“What is badly needed is more practical day to day support from people with practical parenting skills, probably more mature people who may have raised their own families and thereby learned from their own successes and mistakes. An investment in recruiting support of this type would be both effective and cost-effective in maintaining families within the community and avoiding the costly involvement of the care system.
“An outcome of permanent removal of children from their families is, too often, as much an indictment of a failed system as it is of inadequate parents.”

In the same month, Justice Weir, the principal judge in the family division, also spoke out about false claims when dealing with a divorce case.
The mother of two young children made an allegation of serious sexual abuse against their father. The judge said she was a “highly unsatisfactory witness” and concluded that she was motivated by spite. He added that the children’s grandparents and father had been “maliciously deprived” of monthly contact with the children because of the allegations.
After being warned about the consequences of lying under oath, the mother later withdrew the allegations made against the children’s father and each of his parents.

Justice Weir ordered that copies of his judgment should be provided to Social Services and kept on their file.
Media law expert Walter Greenwood co-edited ‘McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists’ for 30 years and advises news organisations in Northern Ireland.
He said: “There is a strong argument for much more open justice in the family courts even if the families concerned have to be anonymised. It would increase public confidence in the courts.
“The great danger of the present system is that where serious injustice takes place it may go unreported if an individual judge will not allow reporters in or, if they are allowed in, suppresses details from being reported.
“Judges have even been known to forbid parents from speaking to anyone about their grievances about their children being taken away.
“On the mainland there have been disturbing cases causing real distress where a terrible mistake by a social worker or a doctor has meant that parents have been wrongly accused of harming their children, leading to the children being removed from the home.

“The agencies working with children do a splendid job but if occasionally they persist in misjudging the situation in spite of strong evidence to the contrary then this injustice must be exposed.”
Mr Greenwood said that experiences in England with new rules allowing some access by the press have been mixed.
“There is often so little that judges will allow to be reported even if journalists are allowed entry,” he explained.
“In these circumstances newspapers are reluctant to send reporters to family court unless they know sufficient information is going to be allowed to be published.
“The best solution would be to allow open access to the press with a legal prohibition on the publication of anything that would lead to the identification of the people concerned. This is wider than a mere ban on names and addresses.

“This form of ban seems to work well in the youth courts and also in adult criminal courts where a judge specifically prohibits identification of a juvenile.”
In relation to the freeing for adoption orders made in Northern Ireland, “at least” one final freeing order without consent was made in each of the 220 cases over the six year period up to 2010. This means that more than one child in each family may have been freed for adoption.
We asked the Northern Ireland Court Service to give reasons for the orders but were told: “This information could not be provided without a manual trawl and given confidentiality of proceedings it would not be appropriate to release.”
A court spokeswoman said that freeing applications are only made in public law cases were the child is in care and the long term care plan for the child is adoption. They may not all result in a final adoption order being made.
It is understood that families across the UK have taken legal action to challenge some of these orders. We asked how many families had taken legal action against the courts in Northern Ireland and what stage the proceedings are at.

The spokeswoman replied: “We don’t record this specific information. We would have no way of identifying these cases.”
Evidence of the extremely difficult decisions involved in freeing order cases can be seen in one of the online judgments.
In this case, Judge Morgan voiced support for the adoption of a five-year-old girl by her long term foster carers even though her birth mother, who wanted her to be returned to her and was successfully parenting two other children, had been assessed as having “excellent parenting skills”.
The judge said there was a real risk to the child’s welfare if she was moved from her foster placement.
John Hemming is a Liberal Democrat MP in Birmingham who chairs the Justice for Families Campaign Group. It campaigns for “a just system of public family law where the right decisions are taken through due process and with proper evidence”.

In April, Mr Hemming used parliamentary privilege to name a woman involved in a child custody case who was threatened with jail for speaking to politicians. And just last week, he caused a storm when he used Parliamentary Privilege to name Ryan Giggs as the footballer at the centre of the superjunction row.
In an interview with The Detail, he said: “A lot of the problems in England have been caused by the drive to have children in care adopted. Adoption targets were abolished in 2008 but the culture has not shifted. There are around 3,000 forced adoptions in England every year. around doesnt he know

“It is very rare that decisions are reversed. No one wants to take the chance and would prefer to stick with the status quo. There should be more of an effort to keep children with their families.
“There is still a perception that adoption is the perfect solution but it is not. About a quarter of forced adoptions in England break down and the children return to care psychologically damaged.”
Mr Hemming claimed that the views of families are often ignored.
“The judges in family courts depend on the information put before them and that is largely controlled by the health trusts or the views of unreliable experts,” he said.

“Journalists are not going to sit in family courts if they cannot report on them and in the meantime life changing decisions which are often very damaging to children will continue to be made behind closed doors.
“Parents who are unhappy with decisions made can appeal to the Court of Appeal or even the European Court of Human Rights and we do advise families on this including families in Northern Ireland. But this can take years.”
However, children’s charity Barnardo’s Northern Ireland takes a different view.
Stephen Knox, the charity’s assistant director of Children Services, said: “The removal of a child from a parent is one of the most serious interventions a state can make in the lives of its citizens. Freeing orders are therefore not granted lightly.

“They are not a quick way of removing children from their parents they are a legal process which is open to scrutiny with right of appeal and published judgements giving clear indications of their determinations.
“Adoption is a real option and can give many children the stable and loving home they might not otherwise have.”
The charity cited the case of a 16-year-old girl from Northern Ireland who had had more than 40 foster placements by the time she was 12. Her behaviour became more difficult with each move.
Barnardo’s said that adoption at a much earlier stage could have had an enormous impact on Kelly’s life.
Our second article today centres on some freeing order case studies.

· Do you have a story to tell about our family courts? Email Kathryn at ktorney@thedetail.tv.


http://www.thedetail.tv/issues/10/famil ... om-parents

[Hope]

keep talking
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... JzoIm_qsVw

[Hope]

This man has done more to expose what is happening to the children than all the MP's and groups put together

Brian Gerrish - Blowing The Whistle conference [23rd October 2011]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8b7ujQ0-KsA


The time for sitting back and doing nothing is up

[Hope]

This man has done more to expose what is happening to the children than all the MP's and groups put together

Brian Gerrish - Blowing The Whistle conference [23rd October 2011]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8b7ujQ0-KsA


The time for sitting back and doing nothing is up

‘ Arms dealer donated £15,000 David Cameron’s Leadership Campaign & £131,805 to Conservative Party – linked to Liam Fox treason scandal. The arms dealers wife ran an art exhibition that featured Christ with an erection. National security papers being throw in a bin by Oliver Letwin MP’ and much much more.

[Hope]

How many more grandchildren should have stayed with their grandparents instead of being placed for forced adoption with strangers , does this mean that no family will stand a chance of keeping their children with relatives


Court of Appeal finds for grandmother in foster care payments ruling

Monday, 14 November 2011

A local authority has lost its appeal over being ordered to pay a grandmother the same rate as a foster carer for looking after her granddaughter.
In the case of SA, R v Kent County Council [2011] EWCA Civ 1303 the grandmother was approached by Kent’s social services department around Christmas 2004. She was told that her then 10-year-old granddaughter – being cared for at the time by her mother – would be put into care unless she agreed to look after her.

The grandmother agreed. She received £63.56 a week for looking after the girl, compared to the £146.23 weekly that the average foster parent receives.

The local authority justified the differential on the basis that it was a private arrangement between the mother and the grandmother. This decision was challenged by way of judicial review.

In the High Court, Mrs Justice Black ruled in favour of the claimant, saying that – on an examination of the facts – the presence of the grandmother did not enable Kent to “side-step” its s. 20(1) duty under the Children Act 1989. That duty had come into existence and the council then discharged it by a placement under s. 23(2) rather than s. 23(6), the judge said.
Mrs Justice Black ordered Kent to give the grandmother the same support as a foster carer and to make back payments. She also gave Kent permission to appeal.

The Court of Appeal last week rejected the local authority’s arguments. Giving the lead judgment, Lord Justice Ward said the issue at the heart of the appeal was money.

He said: “Making financial provision for children being looked after by local authorities under the Children Act 1989 is expensive. Not surprisingly, local authorities are keen to trim their obligations to the minimum possible.”
The judge cited statistics produced by the Department of Education, in March 2010, which showed that 64,400 children were being looked after by local authorities in England. Of these, 38,200 were subject to interim or full care orders and 21,200 were in voluntary placements under s. 20 of the Children Act.

The key legal issue was whether the child in SA was a child being looked after by the local authority as that phrase is defined under s. 22 of the Act – "whether, as a matter of law, a child who is not the subject of an interim care order can be a looked after child where she goes to live with a relative in circumstances where the local authority is involved in setting up and funding the arrangement."

Lord Justice Ward and Lord Justice Rimer said Mrs Justice Black had been entitled to find as she did – i.e. that the local authority had placed the girl with her grandmother pursuant to s. 23(2) of the 1989 Act and that it followed that the girl remained a ‘looked after’ child within the meaning of s. 22(1). Kent’s appeal was dismissed.
A spokesman for the council said the authority accepted the judgment and would not be challenging it.

He insisted that the council recognised and valued the important role that families and friends can have in supporting children and young people who are unable to live with their birth parents.
The spokesman said the council had played a leading role in discussions with the Department of Education as to the best way of providing support for family and friend carers.

He added: "Following recent changes in national legislation and guidance, the council consulted with a voluntary group, which supported family and friend carers, and revised the way children and young people are supported, when living in this kind of arrangement.

"Yesterday's judgement was on a case that predated the changes in legislation and has clarified an important legal point about the then arrangements. Kent County Council accepts the judgement and will not be challenging it."

The grandmother’s lawyer, Nigel Priestley of Huddersfield law firm Ridley & Hall, said: “Local authorities across the country have been waiting for this decision. They were roaring Kent on from the terraces. It will be a major blow to them that Kent lost 3:0!

“We’re delighted with the outcome. The county council argued that they had no duty to the child even though their fingerprints were all over the case. Kent put forward the radical suggestion that it had no significant financial duty to a child they had placed with a relative. They denied that she should be treated as a ‘looked after’ child. The judge rejected this argument. The Court of Appeal agreed with her.”

Priestley claimed that it was a landmark case, adding that it would cost Kent “a five-figure sum” in legal costs and back payments. “It has implications for many children Kent has placed with relatives,” he said. “Many carers will be losing out. That’s why Kent wanted to appeal the decision.”

The Ridley & Hall lawyer argued that the grandmother’s situation was not unusual in England and Wales. “Because of a shortage of foster carers, ‘kinship’ carers are increasingly being used,” he said. “However, local authorities are not supporting them appropriately.”

Lynn Chesterman, Chief Executive of the Grandparents Association, said:
“Too often, as in this case, grandparents are struggling to cope financially – living on a pension and bringing up children. They simply do not have enough money to live on. I hope that Kent has learnt its lesson – and that other councils start taking their responsibilities seriously.”

http://localgovernmentlawyer.co.uk/inde ... st-stories

[wouldntyouliketoknow]

Roger Hayes stood up on stage at the end of Sunday 23 October Child Stealing Conference and invited everyone to the next British Constitution Group Conference in London on 5th November to hear the about the Lien process that they were using and to offer their help.

http://www.thebcgroup.org.uk/video/commercial-liens

The UK Column Newspaper need your information and evidence , the more evidence they have the more it can be exposed for what it is CHILD ABUSE/CHILD TRAFFICKING these are their details Call 01752 - 478050 ask to speak to Pat or Brian (if you are lucky enough to get him )You can also email Pat who is absolutely wonderful at childstealingbythestate@ukcolumn.org or brian@ukcolumn.org

Post a letter address to Brian Gerrish / Pat Johnston The UK COLUMN The Annexe, Scott Lodge , Scott Road , Plymouth PL2 3DU

[Hope]

Kent council among worst in UK for losing vital information

Kent County Council has been ranked the second worst authority in the UK for losing sensitive and personal information - including details of children.

According to research from the civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, in the past three years the council has had 72 cases of data being lost or stolen.

These include:

Scanned case notes relating to children found on Facebook. It contained information that would identify individuals
An outreach worker who lost a memory stick travelling from one school to another. It contained personal data of 30 pupils from 16 schools including assessment results
A 2010 diary which was left on top of a car. It contained details of appointments with clients
A social worker's car broken into, containing a laptop and diary holding client information
A child's report sent to the wrong set of parents
CSS child protection team faxed information, containing sensitive personal data about a child, to the wrong NHS team
An email plus attachment sent by the Learning Disability Team to the wrong recipient. It contained sensitive personal data about a client
A primary school sent unsuccessful application emails copying all other unsuccessful applicants in
An individual's NHS records found behind a desk. This included immunisation records and schools attended
A laptop carrier left on a car roof containing information about social care contracts

According to the report, Buckinghamshire came out as the worst authority, with Essex placed below Kent in third place.

Almost all local authorities responded to the Freedom of Information request, which covered loss of personal information by council employees and contractors between August 3 2008 and August 3 2011.

Maria Fort, research director of Big Brother Watch, said: "It's extremely worrying.

"This research highlights a shockingly lax attitude to protecting confidential information.

"A lot of the data belonged to vulnerable individuals, and parents should be concerned.

The key findings nationally

A total of 132 authorities were involved in 1,035 incidents of data loss

At least 35 councils lost information about children and those in care

The information of at least 3,100 children, young people or students was compromised in 118 cases

At least 244 laptops and portable computers were lost

A minimum of 98 memory sticks and more than 93 mobile devices went missing

Of the 1,035 incidents, local authorities reported that just 55 were reported to the Information Commissioner's Office

Just 9 incidents resulted in termination of employment

"These are public sector employees who are handling private information.

"If it's not made clear to them from the start how information needs to be treated and handled then we will continue to see these breaches taking place.

"It's dangerous and guidance needs to be clear."

The report comes a month after The Information Commissioner's Office reported the Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust breached the Data Protection Act by accidentally destroying 10,000 archived records.

The records, which should have been kept in a dedicated storage area, were put in a disposal room due to lack of space.

The records were then mistakenly removed from the room and destroyed.

The hospital failed to realise the information was missing for three months.

David Smith, from the Information Commission's Office, addressed the latest local authority blunders.

But he said the blame should lie with individuals.

He added: "There is an element of individual members of staff being careless, but it's the lack of proper training for them.

"Storing data on memory sticks and laptops is a real problem."

A Kent County Council spokesman said it was no surprise the authority came out close to the top in the survey, as it was the largest shire county.

But he added: "Clearly, we would look at each case individually and take appropriate action depending on the severity of the case, which could include dismissal.

"We have a robust information security incident protocol in place, so consequently we log, monitor and investigate all reports of any alleged security breaches, regardless of cause or eventual outcome."

The spokesman said some of the incidents were beyond employees' control, such as in cases of theft.

"We are continually monitoring our procedures to make sure we have the correct policies in place to be able to deal with such incidents of personal data being lost, stolen or shared inappropriately."

Tuesday, November 22 2011

http://www.kentonline.co.uk/kentonline/ ... in_uk.aspx

[Hope]

The Kent Freedom Movement proudly present an evening with Bill Maloney from 'Pie 'n' Mash Films'

Time: November 24, 2011 from 8pm to 10pm
Location: The Three Daws Riverside Inn
Street: 7 Town Pier, West Street,
City/Town: Gravesend, Kent DA11 0BJ

'Pie 'n' Mash Films' produce Hard hitting, gritty working class films and controversial documentaries covering sensitive and sometimes taboo issues relating to institutional child abuse and the erosion of civil liberties.

'Pie n Mash films' believe in 'telling it like it is' and Bill and Lilly are well known figures in the truth movement.

Bill will be talking about his latest work in helping to reveal abuse of children and help with parents when their children have been taken away from them unlawfully and Bill is tireless in his support for these people who would not normally get a voice.

http://kentfreedommovement.ning.com/eve ... ill-malone