Even the head of the family courts admits over 72,500 in care is too many.
And many more are kidnapped, as my daughter was at 10 by s20 agreement forced by an LA threat of a care order.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/03/state-secret-kidnaps-children-herefordshire-council?CMP=share_btn_fb
Yet 10,000 a year go missing from ‘care’, managing themselves to escape.
LAs are made bankrupt paying for all this private ‘care’.
And there is no evidence it is protecting our children quite the reverse, many are groomed, never traced and so damaged are then fed into the billion pound private mental health industry.
https://finolamoss.wordpress.com/2017/08/15/blood-on-our-hand-state-trumps-autonomy-and-care-feeds-mental/
Social workers are employed effectively by private companies and trained and paid to harvest for the care industry, and care courts rubber stamp, effectively kidnapping our children with our public money, spending billions on supposed child ‘protection’.
Judge here how permanent and successful a solution adoption is yet up to £54,000 of public money can be paid for a deemed ‘hard to adopt’ child.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/301889/Final_Report_-_3rd_April_2014v2.pdf
A residential school/ care home is paid up to 200,000 a year per pupil and US venture capital backed Acadia/Cambian are now the main providers.
Few Care Court judgements are published and even fewer on an adoption breakdown, here is an analysis of one that I found and wrote an article in the Solicitors Journal now no longer in existence despite being the main Solicitors periodical since 1823.
Unconditional Love
Grooming scandals, and the inept, process driven world of adoption exposed by Re K ( A Child: Post Adoption Placement Breakdown ) [2012] EWHC show child protection services remain systemically flawed, but still the government refuses to act, instead limiting judicial scrutiny of, and intervention into these services by a 26 week care proceedings limit.
The state promotes adoption, but has not yet monitored the number of adoption breakdowns, and encourages care orders, but cannot cope with, afford or even trace the over 67,000 orphans, it has now created and parents at a cost of £ 3 billon per annum.
75% of English residential homes are privately owned- 5 made £ 30million profit last year. Yet the £200,000 per annum, paid per child, does not even provide a proper 24 hour service, last year the police spent £ 40 million searching for 10,000 children who had absconded from care , the Department of Education’s published the figure at 930, with 80 still missing.
Re K involved the removal of four year old ‘Katie’ from her poor parenting, fragile mentally mother and five siblings, to first over a year in foster care, and then to adoption by middle aged, middle class parents with their own two teenage girls, and finally to a residential placement/school, where Katie, at 14, suffered her most serious harm- rape by an acquaintance on one of her frequent absconsions.
The state promised Katie ‘a permanent family, who could offer her stability and unconditional love.
’To maximise her chances , the Coventry adoption social worker presented Katie in glowing terms, preferring her foster carers’ opinion, that she was ‘open and truthful’, to the Bradford guardian’s that she was’ sly and devious at times, and ‘has taken things that do not belong to her’.
The adoption panel were unaware that Katie had regularly witnessed her mother’s self – harm, and her older sister’s sexual abuse, and possibly her own, details only retrieved from her social work files four years later.
Her adoptive parents had stated in their application they ‘[did] not feel able to take a child who has been sexually abused’’, and admitted they would not have adopted Katie had they known of possible sexual abuse..
They were also only approved to adopt a child with’ no major emotional problems’ ,yet Katie, presented, ’as indiscriminate in her relations with adults’, ‘extremely needy’, and in need of ‘a good level of support following placement’.
Despite this Katie’s psychological assessment was glowing, stating she ‘could make secure attachments ’, but was written by the psychologist advising her foster parents, who had never met Katie.
A proper assessment was essential to ensure Katie was capable of forming the permanent attachments needed for a successful adoption.
Within three months of the final adoption order, following a glowing placement report, Katie now 7, was suspended from school for downloading pornography.
Three years later Katie was taking things, self- harming, absconding from home day and night, and blaming her mother for not being able to live with her birth family.
Only then, at age 11, did the post adoption support team arrange a consultation with CAMHS, access Katie’s social work files to begin her life story work and provided parenting strategies, which only served to decrease her parents’ warmth and empathy, so that they complained this was not what they ‘ signed up for’.
CAMHS’s diagnosis of a’ huge attachment disorder’ after an initial diagnosis of autism, ought to have been obvious to any informed observer, let alone an adoption support team.
CAMHS commenced Art Therapy, and advised Katie’s parents to change their parenting style.
A Family and Adolescent Support Services worker, initially ignorant of attachment disorders, worked with Katie and her ‘ support’ proved ineffective.
Later a court expert was to explain why.
Katie was ‘yearning to be accepted and nurtured for herself’. As her parents’ focus on high achievement… [did] not equip them easily to accept Katie unconditionally’. They trusted their own high achieving teenage daughters, which left Katie feeling a failure, and not part of the family.
The report of the Bradford Adoption Panel had already prophetically stated,
‘she would benefit from being in a home where she does not have to compete for attention’, but had not been ignored,
However with therapy, common sense and proper support, costing far less than Katie’s residential school, Katie could still have remained part of her new family and thrived.
But instead social services had held a professional meeting and noted, ‘professionals have offered as much as they can. Nothing else seems to have worked, only option is bring her into care’.
Declared the parents, ‘high risk abusive parents’, and commenced care proceedings arranging for Katie to be moved to a residential school over 100 miles away.
The parents knew nothing of these meetings or intentions, nor the effect of the subsequent care conference, despite working together to safeguard children guidance, and the accepted importance by Social Services of Katie maintaining her relationship with her parents.
Before Katie had been due to be driven by her parents to this ‘school’, she absconded and was found by the police, who in breach of their promise not to, drove Katie in the middle of the night to her residential school.
Katie complained her father had assaulted her, (- grabbed her in restraint for her own protection her, and to guide her to his car), both parents were arrested, but never charged.
Social services maintained a zero tolerance to restraint, advising her parents to let Katie abscond, wait 30 minutes, and ring the police. This, together with advice not to show anger, paradoxically resulted in Katie assuming her parents did not care, escalating her bad behaviour.
But by contrast restraint was allowed and used in her residential school by strangers.
Within a year of being in the childrens’ home Katie had absconded six times , been raped by an acquaintance, been physically restrained, spent a night in the police cells after an assault on a carer , and been fitted with a contraceptive implant, without her parents knowledge. Katie was not yet 15.
Although at the final hearing the parents conceded the care application, the judge insisted they fully contest.
And whilst he, and the expert agreed, that the threshold criteria was satisfied, Katie had suffered significant harm, and was beyond parental control, this was not due to her parents ‘punitive regime’. In any event they agreed with judicial guidelines, that apportioning blame is not generally in a child’s best interest.
As a care order could only worsen the parents’ relationship with the social services, and force them to say goodbye, and have ‘a very negative impact on Katie’, the judge preferred wardship, but felt restricted by 100 (2) (b) Childrens Act 1989, which appears to exclude such orders where a child is accommodated, or subject to a care order.
The Ministry of Justice’s Practice Direction 12 D, however, is far less restrictive, and states wardship should not be commenced unless it is clear that the issues concerning the child cannot be resolved under the Childrens Act 1989.
Thus it allows wardship, whenever there is no other means of satisfactorily resolving a care dispute, regardless of the current status of the child. Wardhip therefore, could and should allow ‘a legal framework which kept all parties on equal terms’, as it did in K Children 2012 EWHC, where it achieved the best outcomes for a family with four severely disabled children.
Had Katie’s parents applied for a wardship order, they would not need leave, and Katie might still be part of her family, instead, her parents were replaced by an independent reviewing officer, an executive of the social services, whose only check on their employers’ care of Katie is to refer them to CAFCASS for breach of Katie’s human rights. And to date no action has been taken against any authority for such breach.
A&S v Lancashire County Council [2012] EWHC saw a local authority sued for breach of two boys’ Articles 3, 6 and 8 rights, in forcing them to endure 77 and 96 different placements and abuse. Their IRO blamed a tick-box culture, non-existent supervision, inadequate training and a 200 caseload.
Such freestanding human rights actions are often overlooked by parents and children, because of a belief that there is a high threshold for engagement. But whilst the ECHR appears subsumed by the need to act in a child’s best interest, this interest is often best served by the maintenance of the family unit, and on such analysis, most interference by the state may be deemed substantial.
Katie’s parents could have sought a remedy for breaches of their, and Katie’s Article 8 rights, due to the social services procedural unfairness, and the removal of Katie into care. And clever injunctive use of Art 8 might ensure Katie’s future care was fit for purpose.
But they would have borne all the legal costs of the other side had they lost – an insurmountable hurdle to justice.
We will never know what happened to Katie, nor of the thousands in similar positions, who due to their attachment disorders ‘use a compulsively promiscuous strategy to avoid genuine intimacy’. Hale LJ has stated that ‘If the state is to interfere in the child’s right to respect for his family life, it has a duty to use its best endeavours to make good what it has taken away’. It certainly did neither for Katie, nor for many missing or abused in care.
Here is the profit already made from fostering from Corporate watch- most start off small as individual often social workers and then get taken over by the big boys there is scant accountability for services or oversight as this is by the LA who pay for and commission the services and would therefore be liable if they proved inadequate.
https://corporatewatch.org/news/2015/dec/15/foster-care-business
https://corporatewatch.org/news/2015/dec/15/foster-care-business
Foster Care Associates
Owned by: Jim Cockburn and Janet Rees through Ideapark Ltd
Income from foster care in 2014**: £127.2m
Payouts to owner in 2014: £7m
Highest paid director salary and other benefits: £406,000
National Fostering Agency (includes the Foster Care Agency)
Owned by: Stirling Square Capital Partners (previously Graphite Capital until April 2015)
Income from foster care in 2014*: £94.5m
Payouts to owners in 2014: £14.4m to Graphite Capital
Highest paid director’s salary and other benefits: £318,112.
Acorn Care and Education (includes Fostering Solutions, Pathway Care Fostering and Heath Farm Fostering)
Owned by: Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan
Income from foster care in 2014*: £73.1m
Payouts to owners: £13m accrued in 2014
Highest paid director’s salary and other benefits: £266,420
back.
Partnerships in Children’s Services (includes Orange Grove, ISP, Fosterplus and Clifford House)
Owned by: Sovereign Capital
Income from foster care in 2014*: £29.8m
Payouts to owners in 2014: £1.9m
Highest paid director’s salary and other benefits: not shown in accounts
we have not heard back.
Swiis Foster Care
Owned by: Dev Dadral and family
Income from foster care in 2014: £29.4m
Payouts to owners in 2014: £1.5m (from the wider Swiis group, see below)
Highest paid director’s salary and other benefits: £169,000
Capstone Foster Care
Owned by: Different individuals and companies (see below)
Income from foster care in 2015: £21.1m
Payouts to owners in 2015: £406,000
Highest paid director’s salary and other benefits: £185,000
Compass Fostering (includes The Fostering Partnership, Eden Foster Care and Seafields Fostering)
Owned by: August Equity
Income from foster care in 2015: £25.9m
Payouts to owners in 2015: £3.1m accrued
Highest paid director’s salary and other benefits: £131,000
caretech
Owners: shares are publicly-listed – Farouq and Haroon Sheikh biggest shareholders with 20%
Income from foster care in 2014: £12m
Payouts to owners in 2014: £240,000 in 2014
Highest paid director’s salary and other benefits: £324,000
Mohammed Imran Ali Akhtar, 37, of Rotherham, denies four counts of indecent assault, one of supplying a controlled drug, one of rape, one of procuring a girl under 21 for unlawful sexual intercourse with another, one of aiding and abetting a rape and one of sexual assault.
Tanweer Ali, 37, of Rotherham, denies two counts of indecent assault, two counts of rape and one of false imprisonment.
Oliver was an athletic, handsome, mild mannered 18 year old, who had never been involved in any altercations, living happily with his family and was about to start a BTEC at a National Star college.
