JUST JUSTICE-ITS THAT SIMPLE!!!

This sorry story dates back to the six years 1960-1966 when I was a Kent County Councillor and a mother came to me for help because social workers had taken away her son,Trevor, aged 12 of near genius IQ because he got bored at school and played truant! She was denied all contact and when I asked where he was and if as the mother's elected representative I could at least see him myself I was told to mind my own business ! I found him at a special private school owned by the deputy leader of the Labour party at the time that was charging exhorbitant fees more than 3 times those charged at ETON or HARROW !Young Trevor informed me that the boys were paid the sum of one shilling (5p) when required to sleep with any of their "over affectionate" teachers at this very "special" children's home! Eventually after acrimonious debates in the council chamber and a court action he was returned to his mother and I was asked to help many other parents whose children had been removed for absurd reasons.

I applied in court for the discharge of care orders. I called the parents and sometimes the children themselves as witnesses in court against my own Council and I never lost a case so I was not best popular with my colleagues and the social workers! However after 6 years of neglecting my language school (then in Ramsgate) I decided not to stand at the next election as I really had to earn my living and look after my family so I reluctantly gave up the battle. . . . . for a time

In 2004 there was suddenly a lot of publicity when it was admitted that thousands of children had been wrongly taken from mothers who had been diagnosed with munchausen's syndrome, meaning that mothers who took their children to hospital too often were deliberately hurting them to draw attention to themselves ;This was one of the absurd notions of the now discredited professor Meadows which had no scientific basis that could possibly justify attributing the syndrome to so many unfortunate women. Worse still was his completely unproved theory that two cot deaths in the same family were 70 million to one ! Hundreds of women were condemned for murder. Their surviving children and babies born subsequently were taken away and given for adoption by strangers. Only later was it realised that genetic factors made it far more likely for cot deaths to repeat in the same family than elsewhere and odds reduced to about 60 to 1.

These cases were in the Criminal Courts so they got fully reported and this provoked me to write to the Daily Mail detailing some of my experiences on Kent County Council all those years ago. They published my letter and I was surprised subsequently to receive several requests from mothers and parents trying to recover and in some cases just to contact children snatched from them by social services. I am now comfortably off, my 7 children are adult, and I am in my seventies with the time, and still with the energy to once again take up the battle with social services ! Far from improving ,the situation had obviously deteriorated ,so how did this come about?

It was in 1989 that the situation really  got much worse !!

enforced a blanket of secrecy over proceedings in the family courts. The press and public are not admitted, and even grandparents, aunts, and uncles are not permitted to sit in court to support the distraught parents of the children concerned as they are not parties to the case. This ruling exists on the absurd basis that it protects the identity of the children (from relatives who already know who the children are !!). What it does do however is prevent the exposure of the injustices that occur so regularly in the family courts, and worse still prevents any parent from complaining publicly about the way they and their children have been treated by the family courts as if they reveal publicly the smallest detail of the court proceedings they risk prison for contempt of court .

The situation deteriorated still further when Tony Blair called for an increase in the adoption figures of at least 40% in an effort to save the costs of keeping children in care in children's homes .These amount to nearly £2000 per week per child in state homes ,and up to £7000 per child per week is paid out of taxpayer's money to enrich the owners  of private homes ( I  "crossed swords" with one such  wealthy owner  who was a member of the very same Council that placed the children in his school in Kent !)An average of 60 vulnerable children die prematurely every year when in  the "tender care " of these hugely expensive and profitable establishments !! .On the other hand foster parents can be paid as much as £400 per week per child (official figures for Slough !) A foster parent in Slough taking on 5 children can live pretty well on £2000 per week compared to birth families who would be lucky to get much more than 10% of this figure.Many such foster parents naturally have little interest in encouraging parental contact or doing anything that might lead to the reuniting  of children in their care with their natural parents ! One third of the present prison population consists of children who grew up in care; These unfortunates are the natural criminal products of the "crime academies" originated and supervised by Social Services when in fact their publicly supported  plan was to "train as good citizens" those children whose parents they  had "assessed" as unfit to keep their own offspring

Just look how the situation has continued to deteriorate from the early 60s to date as the following recent case shows only too clearly! Sometimes the behaviour of social workers is so outrageous that even a normally compliant family court judge cannot tolerate it !