Tim Worstall

Targets! Targets!

Oh happy day! Frabjous! Your children belong to the State and we are geting ever closer to that glorious day of utmost perfection, when all the targets will have been met!

Vanessa Brookes, 34, who is due to give birth early next month,
smuggled taping equipment into a meeting with social services
officials, fearing they would try to take her baby for forced adoption.

She recorded a social worker telling her and her
husband Martin, 41, that even though there was "no immediate risk to
your child from yourselves", the council would seek a court order to
place the child in foster care.

Mother and baby
would be allowed "two or three days" in hospital together, but should
not leave the premises until social workers came to remove the infant.
In a desperate attempt to keep their baby, the couple have published
the recorded conversation on the internet.

The tape is here. The council is taking legal action to have it removed, so would someone with the requisite skills like to copy it?

So, why is this happening?

The case returns the spotlight to claims that social services are being
heavy-handed in removing children from their parents, in order to meet
Government adoption targets.

And tractor production is up! Glories Comrades!

In

18 responses

  1. Kay Tie Avatar
    Kay Tie

    Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat put under public scrutiny.

    Reply
  2. DocBud Avatar
    DocBud

    People are beginning to fight back:
    http://www.forced-adoption.com/introduction.asp
    What is needed is an offshore website where people can anonymously post the names of the state and judicial (in these cases are they separate) people involved until such time as the proceedings are made public. Rather along the lines of the NZ website where they seem to have a similar problem:
    http://www.cyfswatch.org/index.php

    Reply
  3. Derek Buxton Avatar
    Derek Buxton

    I noticed in the Sunday Telegraph which contains an article about these clowns, a letter fron one such saying how good they are at their job. She also said that we should not criticise them, they do go to magistrates before “stealing” children, doesn’t say much for magistrates does it.

    Reply
  4. knirirr Avatar
    knirirr

    Here’s a suggestion if you want a http://www.techcrunch.com/get-youtube-movie/

    Reply
  5. JuliaM Avatar
    JuliaM

    “I noticed … a letter fron one such saying how good they are at their job.”
    Well, of course. Once upon a time, they would have made sure that letters were all you heard, too.
    Now, thanks to the Internet, they don’t have it all their own way any longer.

    Reply
  6. Devil's Kitchen Avatar
    Devil’s Kitchen

    I now have a copy on my machine…
    DK

    Reply
  7. Philip Thomas Avatar
    Philip Thomas

    My mum’s a social worker so I’m not keen on all this portrayal of them as eeeeeeeeevil. All the people I’ve met at her work have been decent ardent sorts that aren’t authoritarian in the slightest though are rather too generous for their own good. They all work twice the hours they are paid for and it’s not like they are paid well for the hours they are supposed to. There’s a lot of people trying to do some good in this country and are struggling under the bureaucracy and target-skewed mentality of this government.
    I don’t know about this couple but for some children, foster care for all the horrors it risks is safer than where they were born to. For all people talk about being removed from the children they “love”, you have to do more than say it, you have to show it through provision and support. Their emotional bleating is hollow without real effort and investment.

    Reply
  8. DocBud Avatar
    DocBud

    I can trump you, Philip. My mother is a retired social worker, my brother is a social worker and my wife is a social work student. That does not blind me to what is going on here. The state is stealing babies from couples not because they have harmed their children or because their children are in immediate danger, but because some expert is prepared to say that they may possibly be in danger of some kind of harm at some point in the future. What is happening is heartless and evil. Given that the UK state has demonstrated time and time again that it is the last body that should have charge of children, we should be leaving children with their parents at every opportunity. Strangely, when children are being abused, the state seems less keen to intervene, perhaps because once damaged by their parents, children are of less value to the state because they are unadoptable. Little babies fresh from their mothers’ wombs are what are needed to meet the targets. The secrecy of the family courts needs to be protected so that this can go on without basic principles of law applying.

    Reply
  9. JuliaM Avatar
    JuliaM

    “For all people talk about being removed from the children they “love”, you have to do more than say it, you have to show it through provision and support. Their emotional bleating is hollow without real effort and investment.”
    Of course, you can see the ‘real effort and investment’ in their children in the cases of Victoria Climbie and others far too numerous to mention.
    That does not appear to be the case here, and before you say that’s just a non-social worker’s opinion, lets not forget that in most cases, the alarms are raised by neighbours & members of the public. It’s the social workers who then convene endless useless case conferences (if they even visit at all) while the children are being murdered by their ‘carers’…
    As DocBud says: “..when children are being abused, the state seems less keen to intervene..”
    Sorry if you feel some commenters are ‘too hard’ on social workers. It just seems that they are not the safety net they want us to think they are. The secrecy of family court, and the heavy-handed action in this case, helps to form that opinion.

    Reply
  10. Philip Thomas Avatar
    Philip Thomas

    DocBud, JuliaM,
    The perversion of the role of social workers is caused by circumstance: an opaque system and inappropriate targets. Change that and the system alters accordingly. However, because they are potentially using their powers inappropriately, it does not stem that they should not have those powers. Rather it should be clear what the circumstances are to justify their use and relevant checks in place. I may be a libertarian but it is clear that some parents, a tiny minority I grant you, cannot raise their children without royally fucking them up and that need for health and security of the child abrogates those parents’ rights to possession.

    Reply
  11. DocBud Avatar
    DocBud

    I don’t disagree, Philip. There are a tiny minority of people who should never be allowed to have children. That would not appear to be the case in this instance or a large number of other cases that have come to light recently. However, the state should be required to show, in open court, why it considers it is necessary for children to be taken into care and the parents should have the right to present their case, question the state’s officials and provide their own expert opinion. We need to do this because it is right and fair and because we need to ensure that only children who absolutely need to be taken into care are taken into care because the state has a proven record of stuffing up the lives of those it arrogates for itself. What we do not need is children being taken into care because their parents do not meet the state’s definition of ideal parents or because parents display a certain level of dischuffment when the state insists on poking its nose it to their business.

    Reply
  12. Cleanthes Avatar
    Cleanthes

    “Rather it should be clear what the circumstances are to justify their use and relevant checks in place”
    And it appears that these circumstances are NOT clear, that the relevant checks are NOT in place and that no-one appears to be worrying about that.

    Reply
  13. JuliaM Avatar
    JuliaM

    “However, because they are potentially using their powers inappropriately, it does not stem that they should not have those powers.”
    No, absolutely. But there needs to be far more real independant oversight, less nebulous targeting and airy-fairy ‘grounds’ and real penalties for those who DO abuse their authority or are found to be incompetent.
    “There are a tiny minority of people who should never be allowed to have children.”
    Agreed. But as we’ve seen, these parents don’t seem to meet that criteria (as we can all see on the YouTube clip), and others that certainly do, slip through the ‘net’ & go on to become headline news.

    Reply
  14. Thom Avatar
    Thom

    My Aunty is a social worker and she has seen the widescale corruption and insanity in treating children over the last decade in which standards have fallen, especially amongst staff. One member of staff was so morally corrupt she signed off double her work hours whilst only turning up for half of her established time, had “problem” children under her care assaulted by staff she had hired through very nepotistic means and has threatened several staff, including my aunty, both verbally and physically if they were to come forward.
    To add insult to injury this same member of staff has already been reported AND investigated only to have the charges quashed; not because of the validity of the claims which were air tight on several grounds but because of counter claims of racism and prejudice (the individual is black).
    In general social workers have a crappy job; they are hated by all despite having one of the most important public service jobs going. It does not help that government intrusion into every aspect of our services has led to policies, targets and leadership has led to a web of secrecy in almost all of our social services. This is done because if we realised the extent of the corruption (and to a sadder extent if the media reported it properly) we would never have voted this autocracy in. Greater visibility is what is needed in all arms of governments (perhaps with a few cut off for good measure where they are too diseased).

    Reply
  15. john b Avatar
    john b

    One point that might be relevant here is that kids who are taken into care at birth or not long after tend to end up with long-term adoptive parents rather than in care homes, and to turn out broadly OK; whereas kids who are taken into care later in life are far more likely to end up in homes (and the associated deprivation and poor life chances).
    In other words, if parents are likely to turn out bad, the harm to the kid of taking it into care at birth will be far less than if that becomes necessary five years down the line.

    Reply
  16. DocBud Avatar
    DocBud

    Who judges that parents are “likely to turn out bad”? This is all done in secrecy without the parents being able to put up a defence. There are cases where there can be little doubt that the child should be removed at birth, but the recently publicised cases do not seem to fit this mould. These cases are about parents who may harm their children in some undefined way at some point in the future as judged in secret. Most of us would fall foul of these judgements if we came to the attention of the authorities, I know I would as I am very intolerant of state intervention in my life and apparently that is a character flaw. We should all welcome nanny’s unbridled interference, only the guilty fear nanny.

    Reply
  17. vnfds Avatar
    vnfds

    The Nazis had a similar scheme of child procuring called ‘Lebensborn’ — and I just cannot help but think of the theft adoptions scam as ‘New Labourborn’.
    And in 18 years time, there will be quite a few kids who’ll find out that they were cheated out of their real family by their adoptive parents and the social workers that fenced.

    Reply
  18. vnfds Avatar
    vnfds

    them.
    (forgot the final word, oops)

    Reply

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