Stitched Up Care Courts?

The care courts policy of permanent, enforced removal of our children from loving parents, to feed a multibillion pound private care industry, is in breach of EU and international law, and s3, s6 and s8 HRA .

https://celticknotblog.wordpress.com/2014/11/11/briefing-paper-on-non-consensual-adoption-and-the-law/

Coronavirus has resulted in emergency legislation to make fostering and adoption easier.

And appears ripe for the executive, LA’s usurpation of the Care court function, as Liberty Safeguards have usurped the Court of Protection’s function.

Might be real reason for latest push for a public enquiry of the family courts.

Care courts have already become largely superfluous, as apparently, 96% of all LA Care applications are now successful.

And, these local care courts are easily controlled by secret networks like Common Purpose UK.

And answerable to no one, as appeals are effectively impossible on cost and law, judgements generally not published, and proceedings in secret.

A secrecy so great, hundreds of parents each year are jailed for contempt.

One mother, for revealing welfare professionals mishandling on social media.

Mother Jailed For Posting About Her Children on Facebook

In view of the draconian powers of Care Courts to destroy families for ever, the most, not the least transparency should be required.

It is a shocking indictment on the UK, that other than in the rest of the world, a parent has no legal right to their own child.

And other than PORTUGAL there are no forced adoptions

Parents only have ‘parental responsibility’ , all Statutes having failed to legislate common law parental rights, and are not interpreted in compliance with the HRA, as required by s3, so our and our childrens basic rights to their own family are ignored by both Parliament and courts.

And EU and UN declarations on them are similarly ignored.

I, myself, was summoned to the Sheffield Care courts in 2007, at less than 24 hours notice, and risked the removal of both my daughters, for no reason, other than one was autistic, and had been abused in her inappropriate school placement, and had a facial impaction .

And I had dared to complain about the horrific effects of her CAMHS treatment of Risperidone.

https://finolamoss.wordpress.com/2006-7-camhs-risperidone-care-action/

As for my own seeming ‘advantage’ of legal advice and representation, now only funded for those on basic benefits, my experience speaks for itself on my lawyer’s function and effectiveness, evidenced by a parents lawyers’ 96% failure rate.

Apparently, parents’ lawyers are known as ‘paid losers’ by their own fraternity.

Our representation consisted of explaining LA, court letters/applications/orders, and allowing LA secret hearings (without us present ) with the Judge and persistent ,including a drafted GP instruction to the effect that my other daughter’s eczema was caused by stress ( presumably of her autistic sister), with a threat of a care order in respect to her, which would have doubled our solicitors legal aid certificate limit to 10,000.

But the big flaw in the Care Court process, is that the CAFCASS guardian and LA instruct and remit all expert witnesses,

meaning, as the Websters/Clarke/Canning found, a parent is forced to rely on expert evidence pointing to parental abuse.

https://www.solicitorsjournal.com/family/children/bearing-false-witness

The Children Act 1989 promoted collaboration between parents and social services, furthering an inquisitorial approach to care proceedings, trusting social services to respect parents and only intervene in a family’s life when absolutely necessary to protect a child.

Parents were allowed to instruct their own independent, state-funded expert evidence to defend themselves in the purported adversarial arena of a care hearing.

But initiatives to avoid cost and delay have resulted in rules (rule 25.7 FPR 2010) which force parents to jointly instruct and rely on experts chosen and remitted by social services, and now judicially managed and timetabled under the public law outline.

Despite a threat by our own solicitor, that the court would ‘have nothing to go on and assume the worst’, we refused unnecessary LA psychological or any assessments of us, other than by CAFCASS, whose guardian had many hours meetings with us at our home , and at my daughter’s school, where embarrassingly, her teachers were also interviewed, although, despite lawyers’ efforts my daughter was not subject to the proceedings .

Parents historically, were allowed an additional expert with the court’s permission, if thought ‘reasonable’, but this was changed by Statute to, ‘ if necessary’, which together with no public funding for an expert, makes it impossible to gain any independent evidence in favour of a parents non abuse.

This despite all exposed miscarriages of justice being caused by this flaw in care proceedings.

https://www.newlawjournal.co.uk/content/dangerous-consensus

So this flaw has been made worse, and the recent need for the accreditation of Care experts will not help as all these Professor Meadows etc would have been accredited.

Rarely, if ever is a CAFCASS guardian cross- examined on their report and complaints about it cannot be made within the CAFCASS system.

So care proceedings, are very much a rubber stamping inquisitorial by State process,with no actual examination of any witnesses, nor consultation with the children, it is charged to protect and who are so draconically affected for life.

Clearly, care courts do not appear to afford anyone other than the State a ‘fair hearing’.

Here is the letter I wrote to the Times in 2008 of my experience, now buried deep and behind a pay wall on its website;

Conflicts of interest in childcare
The provision of legal representation needs to be independent and accountable.

Sir, The provision of legal representation per se due to lack of adequate funding ( letters, July 19) is irrelevant if that representation is not truly independent and accountable and provided within fair and transparent court procedures.

Parents are provided with a list of solicitors specialising in defending care actions. These solicitors also represent the children’s guardians in other cases, an obvious potential conflict of interest, particularly given that government remuneration is more likely to be dependent upon outcome, unlike legal aid. The role of the parents lawyer also has to be clarified , as at present, because of the quasi-inquisitorial nature of care proceedings, it generally consists of court housekeeping and advising parents to co-operate by agreeing social services interim applications.

The law itself is vague and expansive. The threat of obtaining an interim care order is used to ensure compliance with interim orders, even where the main order is merely supervisory. Parents are excluded from all interim hearing and thus unaware of the arguments made and more importantly, the Judge’s response to them, making the system ripe for manipulation and inaccuracy.

Invariably, the court’s judgment concurs with the recommendations in the childrens guardian report, which is filed before the court hearing to test the creditability and admissibility of the evidence upon which it is based. Despite conflicting interests to reduce costs, only one expert is generally instructed to act for three separate and opposing parities ie child guardian, the social services and the parents.

Until these serious flaws are addressed, remuneration will only remain of paramount importance to the lawyers.

Eleven years later and billions of public money spent, the system appears worse.